Hi all, in the past weeks, I have been checking deep into the Cyrillic side of Carcassonne, and I wanted to share with you something interesting. An unlicensed variant/spin-off of Carcassonne in Ukraine.
LaPorxada found multiple editions of Ukrainian versions of the game. All of them are notoriously unlicensed, but they follow the path of the Iranian version I posted some months ago. I mean, they do not use any HiG material; they change the title and some names to fit better into their cultural context.
However, this post is not about those versions. They are cool, but most are off print years ago. This post is about one edition that does not include meeple nor scoreboard, but instead contains a 10x8 blue grid and new mechanics.
LaPorxada and I were chatting about it, translating the rules, and checking some details, and I found it interesting; it is more like a competitive puzzle. Maybe there are some similar variants in the forum (I did not find any).
The name of this edition is a generic name shared by all other Ukrainian unlicensed editions, Крепость.
RulesThe game goes as follows (remember, no meeples are involved):
1. First player draw the first tile (no starter tile, apparently) and puts it in any square of the blue grid.
2. By turns, each player draws a tile and puts the tile in the blue grid. I believe that after the first tile, players must place the tile adjacent to an existing tile in the good Carcassonne way.
3. If the tile cannot be deployed, the player puts it into their reserve and draw another tile. This step must be repeated up to two more times (three tiles max per turn). The active player passes if none of the three tiles can be placed.
4. At the end of the game, the player with fewer tiles in their hand (or reserve) is the winner. In the case of a tie, a minor break match is played, but using a 6x5 grid space.
Things to take into consideration:
1. There are four new wild tiles (big coat of arms tiles); they can fit without following the rules of edges-matching (kind of like the Abbey)
2. Cities must not finish on the edge of the grid (opposite of Carcassonne maps).
3. Tile distribution is quite different compared with the Base game + River. But still, it is playable as a variant.
| Tile | Крепость | Base+river |
| cccc | 1 | 1 |
| cccf | 3 | 4 |
| cccr | 5 | 3 |
| ccff-J | 7 | 5 |
| ccrr | 5 | 5 |
| ccss | 2 | 1 |
| cfcf-J | 2 | 3 |
| cfcf-S | 3 | 3 |
| cfff | 6 | 5 |
| cfrr | 4 | 3 |
| crfr | 1 | 3 |
| crrf | 3 | 3 |
| crrr | 2 | 3 |
| fffr | 2 | 2 |
| fffs | 2 | 2 |
| ffrr | 8 | 9 |
| ffss | 2 | 2 |
| frfr | 6 | 8 |
| frrr | 4 | 4 |
| fsfs | 1 | 2 |
| wild | 4 | 4 (Abbey tiles) |
| rrrr | 1 | 1 |
| rsrs | 4 | 1 |
| rrss | 2 | 1 |
| Total | 80 | 78 |
This game was produced and distributed by local companies; there are some traces of it on the Internet.
Let me know if some of you are fluent in Ukrainian to double-check the rules, or if some of you have more info about this.
Best,
Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=5987.0
Share Topic
September 02, 2020, 09:28:29 AM
