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Messages - danisthirty

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5851
Leagues (including expansion leagues) / Re: A Carcassonne League?
« on: June 17, 2014, 07:02:34 AM »
I have switched around a couple of the round 4 fixtures such that jungleboy will now be playing rfielder and jvnoledawg will face Rosco.

The jungleboy vs rfielder match is scheduled to take place tonight (more from rfielder on this soon I believe) and there's a chance that Carcking vs quevy may also be happening this week (@quevy - please check your email).

Best of luck to everyone involved!

5852
Thanks.

I look forward to hearing about your match quevy! Apart from this there's not been a lot of round 4 action so far...

5853
General / Re: Carcassonne E-mail game test 1
« on: June 15, 2014, 02:58:01 PM »
Nobody else interested in trying this out?

5854
I struggled to start the game as JCloisterZone wouldn't let me rotate the tile I'd been given at first. Even after I'd managed to place it the game got off to a bit of a slow start with both of us carefully considering our options with every move. I was the first to score with a 4-point city but "MrNum" quickly overtook me with a 5-point road.

It was always going to be a very hard-fought game so we were both looking to gain the advantage by trapping each other's meeples at every opportunity. This made some tile placements more obvious than others and a lot of the early stages of the game came down to the luck of the draw as much as anything else. This said, I got the impression that MrNumbers was thinking further ahead than I was and as such he had the foresight to place an early farmer which turned out to be a key placement.

My next feature to score was a 4-point road but MrNumbers followed this up with two 4-point cities to take the lead back again and then build it up to 5 points. There then followed a 6-point city to me and then a 4-point city to MrNumbers; both of us were working hard to keep our scores ticking over although MrNumbers always seemed to have the advantage until I took another 4-point road to settle the scores on 18 - 17 to me with 34 tiles left to place.

A few tiles later I scored yet another 4-point road to increase my lead to 5 points. I couldn't really tell who was winning at this point as two of my meeples had been successfully trapped whereas I'd only managed to trap one of MrNumbers'. Elsewhere I had two cloisters next to each other and a small but completeable city against two very strategically placed farmers of MrNumbers' and two potentially valuable cities.

As the game continued I completed an 8-point city, placing a farmer outside it in the process, and then shifted my attention towards my cloisters as it was clear to me that I would struggle to keep myself in the game with just a single meeple in my supply. MrNumbers meanwhile was continuing to spot good places to farm whilst working towards completing a medium-sized city in the south-east corner of the map. I attempted to either "glom into" his city or make it incompleteable but failed on both counts and felt very demoralised when he completed it with his next tile for 12 points. A lucky draw perhaps, but I was still ahead (albeit by only 1 point) until a 6-point city extended my very narrow lead back out to 7 points bringing the scores to 36 - 29 with 16 tiles left in the bag.

I'd realised by this point that if I wanted to stand a chance of winning the game I needed to get a farmer onto the main farm. I had spotted a couple of good opportunities to do this but was also trying to block MrNumbers from merging this farm with his other farm to establish an overall majority. After resisting the temptation to use my final meeple elsewhere I dropped him on an adjacent farm but my attempts to join the two farms were made considerably more difficult when MrNumbers placed a tile which caused my chances of success here to hang on my drawing one specific tile (cfrr). I knew there was at least one of these left (there were actually two) but it was starting to seem increasingly unlikely that the game was going to end well for me.

A 4-point road for MrNumbers in the final stages of the game meant there were just 3 points between us as I did my very best to claw a meeple back from one of my cloisters whilst simultaneously attempting to prevent MrNumbers from completing his ever-growing city. I eventually succeeded in completing my cloister with 4 tiles left to be placed which stretched my lead out to 12 points (45 - 33) and won me back a meeple. I used this to win 2 points for a short road with my penultimate tile, and with the final tile of the game took a 4-point city at the same time as joining a farmer onto MrNumbers' main farm to tie it for 12-points each!

I finished the game with 2 incomplete cities worth 4 points each, 2 farmers worth 3 points each, a cloister worth 8 points and a farmer on the tied farm worth 12 points. On top of the 51 points I scored during the game, this took my total score up to 85. MrNumbers had 2 farmers sharing 12-points between them, a third farmer worth 6 points, a fourth farmer worth 12 points (tied with me) and 3 incomplete cities worth 16 points between them. This brought his final score up to 79 points meaning I won by 6 points!





I felt like I'd won the game with a lucky last tile, but even if it hadn't been the one I needed to join my farmer onto MrNumbers farm (and complete a 4-point city in the process) there was also an unclaimed farm serving two cities which, if I'd claimed this instead, would have meant the final scores were lower (78 - 76) but still weighted in my favour.

The second game was very different but MrNumbers is going to write that one up. Without wishing to undermine the excellent (and ultimately far superior) game that MrNumbers played, I think I possibly deserved to do better as I somehow managed to lose the main farm (worth 27 points) despite having placed 3 farmers on it very early on. Not only did MrNumbers take this farm with one farmer more than me but he successfully blocked every one of my increasingly desperate attempts to tie it, leaving me with no meeples with 14 tiles to go! He also tied a 44-point city of mine with 2 knights each as I seemed powerless to stop him! I can't complain though as he did what he had to do, and I'm sure I would have done the same!

5855
News and Events / Re: UK Carcassonne Championship 2014
« on: June 13, 2014, 02:52:22 PM »
Thanks for pointing that out asparagus.

I didn't realise this but my wife took a picture too. She took it from the other end of the row of tables so it's better of the Ticket to Ride games that were going on next to me than it is of Carcassonne! Here is the link though:


5856
Leagues (including expansion leagues) / Re: A Carcassonne League?
« on: June 13, 2014, 02:32:16 PM »
MrNumbers and I have just had our match. He is an insanely good player! But, I got lucky in the first game (the last tile was a very good one for me) so wasn't too bothered that I got totally outplayed in the second and was happy to settle on a draw. I will add a write-up of the first game soon, and MrNumbers will do the same thing for the second game tomorrow.

Is anybody else expecting to play soon?

5857
News and Events / Re: UK Carcassonne Championship 2014
« on: June 13, 2014, 09:33:17 AM »
They finally published the results!

http://www.halesowenboardgamers.org.uk/expotournaments/2014/carcassonne.htm

I almost played a game against the guy who eventually came 2nd but after he and another guy came and sat down at the same table as me, one of the organisers came and said they were at the wrong table so they both moved to another table. I would have loved to have seen how that turned out!

5858
General / Re: Carcassonne E-mail game test 1
« on: June 12, 2014, 03:21:22 AM »
Thanks for the game Yellow (and for correcting the scores)! Here are a few thoughts on how the game itself went from my point of view...

I didn't feel like I'd got off to a very good start but managed to build up an early lead of just 4 points after completing a cloister and a couple of short roads. Elsewhere, Yellow and I had both started building our own cities quite close to each other. I would have been content to have kept them separate but when he joined them together it became a race to get as many knights as possible into the resulting mega-city!

Competition was understandably fierce, but despite my best efforts I eventually lost the city (which became uncompleteable in the process) by three knights to two. I ended up with a further two meeples trapped in another city and Yellow lost a fourth meeple too. Ultimately, we both lost four meeples and it didn't take long to work out that the upshot of this would be a 15-point bonus to Yellow in the final scoring. This was definitely an "ouch" moment for me.

As the game continued I began to slip behind as Yellow put his remaining meeples to good use. An 8-point city and a 7-point road helped to swing things back in my favour but a cloister and a short road for Yellow ensured I didn't get too far ahead! This was definitely a low point for me but I hadn't quite given up despite realising that I needed to use my meeples very carefully indeed in order to keep myself in the game.

The game really changed with the last 20 tiles or so when the mountain I'd been climbing became more of a large hill and I had a fair bit of luck which helped me towards what eventually settled on a 16-point lead (before final scoring). For one thing I claimed a two-city farm which I was able to expand to cover three cities. I also completed a 10-point city and placed a farmer outside it for a further 3 points. The game felt much safer when Yellow placed his last meeple in a city that was unlikely to be completed, and an unusually detailed plan began to emerge after I claimed two more 4-point cities on a new and unclaimed farm.

My last three tiles were exactly what I needed to fulfil my plan as I claimed a 4-point city followed by a 6-point farm and then, with the final tile of the game, joined my farmer at the top of the landscape onto Yellow's farm to take a share in his 9-point farm (netting myself an additional 6 points in the process). When the final scores had been calculated and agreed upon (eventually), I was relieved to see that my calculations had been correct and I won the game by a single point! It certainly wasn't a high-scoring game (89 vs 88) but this is to be expected when you've only got three meeples for most of it...

I've never played Carcassonne by email before but it was a fantastic experience. Yellow has done an excellent job of setting up the board and establishing how to communicate each tile placement via email in a way that can (and hopefully soon will) be processed automatically at the other end. It's a new and exciting way to play (for me) and I can't wait to see how this project develops.

5859
General / Re: Carcassonne E-mail game test 1
« on: June 11, 2014, 02:41:33 PM »
I didn't even realise this thread was here! That was a manic game!

Please can an independent third party re-assess the final scores? Yellow has scored the game 91 - 89 in his favour whereas I believe it is 89 - 88 in my favour...

5860
World Cup of Carcassonne Central / Re: Carcassonne World Cup!
« on: June 11, 2014, 05:30:03 AM »
So far we have 8 "nations" taking part in our "world cup":

- danisthirty
- Yellow
- Jere
- MrNumbers
- evmillan
- rfielder
- jungleboy
- Carcking

(if I've missed anyone out please correct me)

Hopefully we can sign up another 8 people soon and then kick things off by allocating everyone into groups A to D (4 per group).

Then there's the small matter of deciding how the games are going to be held in terms of expansions used. I'll get the ball rolling by offering the following suggestions and we can go from there:

Group stage : The Phantom + Inns & Cathedrals (90 tiles)
Quarter-Finals : River 1, The Phantom, King & Robber Baron, Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders (130/131 tiles - depending on whether basic crfr start tile is reused)
Semi-Finals : River 2, The Phantom, King & Robber Baron, Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders, Abbey & Mayor (142/143 tiles)
Final : River 1 + 2, The Phantom, King & Robber Baron, Inns & Cathedrals, Princess & Dragon, The Tower, Abbey & Mayor (176/177 tiles)

(a bug in JCloisterZone means that games can crash if Traders & Builders is played with Princess & Dragon so I've removed T & B from the final)

How does this sound? Too many? Not enough? Bad combinations? Please let me know your thoughts.

@kettlefish - it's a shame you can't play, but those surprises sound very interesting so thanks for your involvement!

5861
Leagues (including expansion leagues) / Re: A Carcassonne League?
« on: June 11, 2014, 04:59:55 AM »
I'm hoping it will be a very interesting round for everyone MrNumbers, but I can't deny that I am especially looking forward to our match!

5862
Leagues (including expansion leagues) / Re: A Carcassonne League?
« on: June 11, 2014, 03:23:05 AM »
Hello.

A massive thanks and a pat on the back for everyone for your involvement so far. I hope you're enjoying taking part in the league as much as I am, and are all set for an epic fourth round (more on this below). First though, here's a somewhat detailed look at the way things are at the moment starting with a round-up of all the round-3 action:



Wins all round (for half of us)! And not a draw in sight...







(thanks for the suggestions I've had regarding stats I should be tracking, if you can think of anything else please let me know and I'll add it to my ever-growing spreadsheet and end-of-round summaries)

As you can see, MrNumbers is still at the top! In fact as well as being unbeaten, the most anyone has scored against him in a single game is 79 (the least is 69, average is 73.5). Defensively, this makes him the most consistent player of all of us, but whether he can hold on to his impressive track record remains to be seen. With 4 rounds to go there are still plenty of points to be won and I firmly believe that anyone could finish anywhere at this point so let's bring it on!

As some of you may or may not have noticed, the league so far has actually been run as two "mini-leagues" of 4-players each. These mini-leagues were organised alphabetically with Carcking, myself, jungleboy and jvnoledawg forming the first group and MrNumbers, quevy, rfielder and Rosco forming the second. Now that we've reached the end of round 3, both mini-leagues are complete meaning that players in each group can be ranked from first to fourth as shown below:



Ultimately, our positions in each of these mini-leagues won't have any impact on our final position in the overall league. But what this does mean is that we can now play our same-ranked opposite numbers between the two mini-leagues for our round 4 fixtures. I'm hoping that this will lead to some very close and competitive matches, and I'm particularly looking forward to facing MrNumbers as a result!

So, fixtures for round 4 are as follows:

Match 1: danisthirty vs. MrNumbers (3-hour time difference)
Match 2: Carcking vs. quevy (6-hour time difference)
Match 3: jungleboy vs. Rosco (same time zone)
Match 4: jvnoledawg vs. rfielder (same time zone)

Good luck everyone!

5863
I use a knackered laptop with a 17-inch screen and no "u" key. The battery doesn't work anymore and the power supply is so dodgy that if you breathe too close to it the laptop turns itself off.

Yep, Carcassonne Central is fairly well represented on Facebook. Scott (or whoever looks after the Facebook page) does an excellent job of finding interesting Carcassonne-related things to post about quite regularly so I'm sure he wouldn't have a problem linking to live-streamed Carcassonne matches if he thought they would be of interest.

5864
World Cup of Carcassonne Central / Re: Carcassonne World Cup!
« on: June 10, 2014, 07:52:36 AM »
It sounds good to me too, especially since it means everyone will get at least three games at the group stage before the top 8 go through to the knock-out stage! But I do have one reservation which is that, unless I'm wrong, reducing the pool of active players from 16 down to 8 under this model will require 24 games (in a single group, 6 games will be required to ensure that everyone has played everyone, so this multiplied across 4 groups equals 24 games).

Considering that the league has been running for over a month now and has consisted of just 11 2-game matches so far, the idea of running a 24-game group stage seems a little bit daunting. This isn't to say it wouldn't be possible, but I think it would require each group to have some sort of manager or admin to help to arrange/ chase-up matches and try to keep things moving along. It might also be quite helpful if each of the "group managers" was capable of hosting JCloisterZone games too as this would take the pressure off me somewhat.

All this is assuming we get 16 competitors to begin with! I guess we'll have to give it a couple of days to see who's interested...

I like the idea of the flags too, it'll be good to see people competing from all around the world!

5865
The whole screen. So it's not ideal but if JCloisterZone is the only thing running then it doesn't make much of a difference.

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