Author Topic: CarcassonneCentral World Cup - Group C (Read 22817 times)

danisthirty · « **Reply #15 on:** August 12, 2014, 05:43:53 AM »

@jungleboy – I definitely agree with you to some extent. I still appreciate the elegant simplicity of the basic game, but the fact that games tend to descend into farmer wars is not always to its credit.

I don’t think there’s anything special about Inns & Cathedrals though, I think it’s more to do with the size of the game and the changes that various expansions bring with them. I imagine battles for single farms will be even less of a feature in the quarter-finals where Traders & Builders will be included too. It’s a judgement call, but I’d say that placing too many farmers early on simply isn’t worth the investment as it reduces your scoring potential elsewhere too much.

This said, the game I played with my wife ended up in a farming war and as such we both ran out of meeples with about 10 tiles left in the bag. For this reason I think the mindset and experience of the players is pretty important too, as Becky and I tend to spur each other on a bit too much!

Ultimately it depends on the number of tiles used more than anything else, and I think it becomes increasingly unlikely that a single farm will cover the majority of the landscape as the number of tiles in play goes up. Whether or not this makes for a more interesting game is another story, but it can certainly make it more varied!

jungleboy · « **Reply #16 on:** August 12, 2014, 06:26:41 AM »

Interesting Dan, we are looking at this in two different ways. I tend to think about what the single highest scoring feature in a game is or could be, and I figure that if I win that feature (without sacrificing everything else in the process), then I am more likely to win the game than not. With the base game + T&B, that highest scoring feature is still likely to be the biggest farm unless someone uses their builder wisely to win a large city with a few pennants. Also, the more tiles you add, the bigger the biggest farm could potentially be.

So that's what I think is special about Inns and Cathedrals - the fact that you can conceivably score 60+ points on one feature, and not have to permanently sacrifice meeples for end-game scoring to do it.

Paul · « **Reply #17 on:** August 12, 2014, 06:48:49 AM »

Inns also has a nice advantage.

mas9dj scored a road by himself which gave him 30 points in our tournament game!

The set of Inns and Cathedrals also has some nice tiles which allows more tile placement than the base game to conquer cities and fields.

danisthirty · « **Reply #18 on:** August 12, 2014, 07:08:34 AM »

If you’re prepared to take the risk that your opponent won’t render your huge cathedral city incompletable then it’s definitely worth the effort. I will normally dump cathedrals on my opponents cities in such a way that it makes them as difficult as possible to complete thus trapping any meeples they have in the city for a grand total of zero points (hopefully). If I fail to block them and they complete it then that pretty much gives the game away but I think it’s usually easier to block than to complete, depending on who you’re playing against.

There are at least three or four interesting tiles included with Inns & Cathedrals which are the cfrf (“rat tail” as Jere called it), ccfr and ccrf. I also like the frfr tile with the cloister in the middle of it as you can block off someone trying to steal onto your road where it wasn’t previously possible. No crff or cffr tile though...

Inns make a huge difference. Perhaps even more so than the cathedrals. If possible I like to start a long road which usually stays under the radar of my opponent and then close it as quickly as possible after adding an inn to it. Roads like that can make all the difference; my wife scored 52 points from roads alone in our game last night where as I managed just 14!

quevy · « **Reply #19 on:** August 13, 2014, 12:47:28 AM »

I'm back from vacation, I hope to soon organize a game with everyone, I will still trips but in the evening I should be getting home.

jungleboy · « **Reply #20 on:** August 13, 2014, 05:14:42 AM »

I have already played three games, more than anyone else in the group I think, so I will let quevy play against some other players first to catch up, and maybe quevy and I can play our match next week.

farin · « **Reply #21 on:** August 14, 2014, 11:37:04 AM »

back from vacation too. Open to games during Friday / weekend

Paul · « **Reply #22 on:** August 15, 2014, 02:06:03 AM »

It seems I'm destined to loose. Lol. Last two games my luck with the tiles has been riciculous.
Even if I did score some big segments I lost epic and this game proves it.

I had 4-5 cloisters most of them 8-9 points and a city with 40 points alone scored, yet my loss was huge.

One cool thing, though, game crashed yet again but luckily I was challenging the developer and he managed to fix the savegame for us to continue!

farin · « **Reply #23 on:** August 15, 2014, 02:06:50 AM »

Farin 199
Yellow 156

Winning big city it looks like easy rest of game. But underestimate cathedral city (which i don't expect to be closed) needs fight farms more seriously (yellow helps me with wrongly placed double follower)
With one freeze we make it more complicated, but it reveal process how to fix saved game to be able continue with loaded game.

danisthirty · « **Reply #24 on:** August 15, 2014, 01:13:55 PM »

Ouch! a 43-point loss! Try not to worry about it too much Yellow, that's just a few points over half the biggest winning margin we've seen so far!

Well played guys, I'm kind of glad your game crashed as we now have a fix for broken games!

jungleboy · « **Reply #25 on:** August 18, 2014, 01:24:01 PM »

It's becoming a habit for me in this World Cup to play close games and just manage to win them. So it happened again against quevy. I scored a 6-point farm on the last tile of the game and won by ... 6 points. It was a very close game with lots of interesting strategy, and I got quite lucky with tiles as quevy pointed out!

Final score: jungleboy 138, quevy 132.

Jéré · « **Reply #26 on:** August 18, 2014, 01:31:55 PM »

Good job guys!

Jungleboy, you will be my opponent for the QF!

quevy · « **Reply #27 on:** August 18, 2014, 01:36:56 PM »

Really good game, after a shaky start where I was at a distinct disadvantage are able to recover, but not enough.

farin · « **Reply #28 on:** August 18, 2014, 02:42:56 PM »

mas9dj vs farin.
We suffer with 4 crashed & loads (good news is once fixed save can be loaded without any other effort) - maybe it depends on current connection parameters.
Back back to game. I enjoyed it much, it looks long time I lost farm and wasn't be sure with anything. But finally I balanced farm, won one city and have better luck for cities with pennants.

Final score (farin 162 - 132 mas9dj) looks like smooth win but the truth of the matter is otherwise.

mas9dj · « **Reply #29 on:** August 18, 2014, 02:53:26 PM »

It all depended on this big farm, on which farin got to join the big meeple with 7 tiles left when he atacked and finally joined with 3 left. So it was really really close in reality.