Carcassonne Central
Carc Central Community => General => Topic started by: kothmann on December 10, 2022, 11:51:34 AM
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I almost always use only regular meeples and I only have C1 tiles. Although I have a set of Abbots, I have very rarely used them, because, as described in this old post (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=1446.0) by @CarcinFool, there is a simple optimum strategy when using Abbots in a C1 game. The post also describes how Abbots and Magic Portals combine in what seems to me an undesirable avalanche of points. (See also the discussion of Abbots in the excellent Element of the Week (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=1994.msg27140#msg27140) series.)
But recently I've been experimenting with a variant (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=6193.msg89463#msg89463) where all the meeples I have get used, except the regular meeples, and I've discovered what I think is an interesting interaction between the Abbot and the Wagon!
If there is a monastery occupied by an Abbot, you should try to place your Wagon nearby, so you can jump into the monastery if the Abbot leaves. In a recent play-test, after a monastery with a Wagon was completed, I was able to jump the Wagon a second time into another monastery! >:D To me, this seemed to make the Abbot strategy much more interesting and subtle, because you should be even less likely than usual to put your Abbot in a monastery (see footnote), for fear that an opponent's wagon will end up there when you leave. Unless you were pretty confident that you could get your Wagon onto the monastery before your opponent?! Or if the only good spot for your monastery is near an opponent's wagon, you would have to try to complete your opponent's Wagon feature before you removed your Abbot? It just seems like there are many more interesting possibilities than playing without the Wagon. I will definitely consider adding these two meeples to my games now!
I suppose my "discovery" is kind of obvious and probably something that is already widely known among regular Abbot / Wagon players? But I searched the Forum and didn't find any threads that mention the Abbot-Wagon interaction. I did find the Wagon (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=1282) in the Element of the Week, and a link from there to a very nice discussion (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=1110.0) by @MrNumbers of basic Wagon tactics. I had previously collected Abbot threads here (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=5583.0). Based on this thread (https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=4725), the Wagon rules changed around the time the Abbot was introduced (with C2? circa 2014?), and most of the Forum posts I found were evidently before that change, I think.
Anyway, I thought this might be of general interest and of course would be interested in others' thoughts or experiences combining these two meeples. Thanks!
footnote: I assume that since only the Abbot can go in a garden, but any meeple can go in the monastery, you should generally be less inclined to place the Abbot in a monastery than in a similarly valued garden? After all, if you place the Abbot in a garden and the next tile is a monastery, you can still claim the monastery, but it won't work if the draw order is monastery-garden and your Abbot is in the monastery. I haven't played C2, so this is just logical inference / conjecture.