Topics

1

News and Events / Full transparent meeple sets coming to Cundco (all figures through Ringmaster)

« on: May 24, 2018, 01:46:41 PM »

 According to the newsletter I just received, these are expected to go live next week.

2

General / Printing consistency of Giochi Uniti (Italian) editions?

« on: May 03, 2018, 08:06:36 PM »

I'm thinking about buying a couple of Carcassonne-I expansions from the Italian Amazon (Tower and Princess & Dragon). All my other sets are mostly Rio Grande and HiG editions.

Does anyone know if the printing of the Giochi Uniti editions is comparable to the English/German editions? I'm thinking about quality of the cardstock and printing, as well as the coloration.

Thanks in advance.

3

Anything Else / Problems with postimg.org domain

« on: April 15, 2018, 05:46:29 PM »

So apparently postimg.org has stopped delivering hosted images from their .org domain and most of my images on Carcassonne Central (and indeed everything I've published everywhere over the past few years) have disappeared. I ran through all the images in this particular thread and updated the URLs, and it seems to have worked. However, I have no idea how long it's going to take to update everything I've ever posted.

I recall this coming up when Dan or Decar needed to make wholesale changes, an I can't remember if we thought there was any hope of a back-end solution. It's literally just one global replace for everybody who hosts on this service: change postimg.org to postimg.cc.

4

Official Rules / CAR 7.5 Prep Discussion: The Junction Problem

« on: February 20, 2018, 10:13:37 AM »

CAR 7.5 Prep Discussion: The Junction Problem

The official rulings on junctions are a bit of a little sore spot for me, and the CAR makes some absolute statements that cannot be true for all tiles. (It also contradicts itself at one point.) I plan to propose recasting how these things are presented to avoid having the reader scratch his head and say "but that can't be true."

The problem appears in multiple places, with the groundwork being laid on page 15 in footnote 15: "In the game there are crossings and junctions. But since all crossings have the same effect—namely, to bring a road to an end—it was decided to sacrifice the distinction between crossings and junctions (or T-crossings, or T-roads...?) in order to not unnecessarily complicate matters."

On page 30, footnote 38 repeats this fallacy: "The new tile is obviously meant to remind us that all junctions are considered to be ends of roads." And then on page 133, footnote 358 casts away all junction artwork as meaningless: "The three road segments on this tile end at the junction, even though there are no obstacles pictured in the road. All junctions and crossings are treated the same, regardless of the artwork." Finally, the absolute rule is bookended in the glossary, in the crossing entry on page 287: "All junctions—crossroads, T-junctions, and so on—are [the end of a road]."

But obviously this "absolute" rule is no such thing. Those statements cannot be true because of the number of Open Junction crossings which are not road-enders. Such tiles have appeared in a variety of expansions over the last decade, including Abbey & Mayor, Catapult, Crop Circles I, the first Russian promos, and even the (relatively) recent Labyrinth.



What's perplexing to me is that one of the CAR's footnotes (358) is attributed to a ruling from May 2014, a good seven years after the publication of Abbey & Mayor in 2007 made the ruling clearly untrue. Now perhaps HiG just neglected to update their old working theory to fit the newer facts, but the point is that this oft-repeated absolute rule — that all junctions are closed and they always end the associated roads regardless of the artwork — clearly does not make sense today, and has not been true for over a decade now. So I'd like to see this little mess get disentangled, or at least presented in a way that isn't a contradiction.

The ruling is a problem because it flies in the face of common sense. Consider that Crop Circles I tile:



A reasonable player who compares this to the other four tiles above would easily conclude that this is another Open Junction tile. That's what it looks like, and that's what makes it interesting. Yet the footnote 358 referenced above is actually talking about this tile; it bafflingly rules it a closed junction. However, on page 280 the CAR then contradicts that ruling and interprets this tile logically as exactly what it looks like:



Although surely not intentional, this provides a pretty good demonstration of why the confusing official ruling is a bad ruling. It contradicts our common sense, makes it harder for players to interpret the game consistently, and introduces rules complexity for no clear benefit to the game.

Now, don't shoot me just yet: I'm not planning to start a revolt in CAR 7.5 and ignore the publisher's rulings. It's crucial to faithfully relay the official rules without distortion. But it's also responsible to acknowledge areas where those rules do not make sense, and perhaps even to suggest house rules for those who want them (as the CAR already does in many places). And in some cases, it's even appropriate to bring to the publisher's attention situations where a tangle of rulings contradictions could be simplified for the good of the game. Certainly Carcassonne already has a rich history of revising its rules to make the game play more smoothly.

So with all that said, I'd like to hear others' viewpoints on this little mess, see if anyone else plays their tiles "as printed" like I do, and find out if I'm the only one who would appreciate seeing HiG re-examine this ruling and consider a common-sense revision — at least for cases like the Crop Circles tile where nothing was ever revised in a later printing (the reprinted/revised I&C tile, of course, will forever be a closed junction). That latter bit may be a pipe dream since they no longer care to rule on old-artwork tiles, but we can still talk about it.

5

The Marketplace / Dangit, they changed the artwork AGAIN??

« on: January 15, 2018, 06:26:16 AM »

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Carcassonne-Board-Game/112755450094?epid=2254309301&hash=item1a40bfa0ee:g:waAAAOSw8RZaW831

6

Official Rules / The Markets of Leipzig - Weird consequences

« on: November 06, 2017, 09:06:30 AM »

I've been thinking about the rules for this promo expansion, and if we take them at face value there are a few odd consequences that I'd like to point out. For context, I will quote my own English translation from the News thread — and I absolutely welcome any corrections where my translation may be faulty.

Gerber-Viertel: Bei jeder Wiesenwertung am Spielende, in der du die Bauernmehrheit besitzt, erhältst du zusätzlich zu den normalen Punkten für Städte 2 Punkte für jeden Stall (Kuh, Esel und Schwein) und jeden Bauernhof, der in der Wiese liegt.

Tanner District: During each farm scoring at the end of the game in which you have the majority of farmers, in addition to the normal points for cities, you get 2 points for each stable (cow, donkey, and pig) and each farmhouse that lies in the farm.

When a barn forces farmers to score, there will be no Tanner District bonus points, since they are explicitly defined to apply only during end-of-game final scoring.

Personal commentary: Seems like an unnecessary and anti-thematic restriction.

Hast du mehrere Meeple auf einer Straße, darfst du nur einen davon nach Leipzig schicken. Für den anderen Meeple darfst du aber die Punkte für die Straße nehmen.

If you have several meeples on a road, you can only send one of them to Leipzig. For the other meeple(s), you may take the points for the road.

Since there is no rule to the contrary, I think we have to assume that the majority is not recalculated. That is, if you and I both have 2 thieves on the road and you send one to Leipzig but I do not, we both still get to score for the road. Nothing in the rules says that you have to recalculate your majority, and it does not say your remaining thief scores only if you still have the majority; it simply says your remaining thief "takes the points for the road." This all seems to suggest that the timing goes as follows:

• determine majority
• each player in majority chooses whether or not to send 1 thief to Leipzig
• each player who was in the original majority and still has at least 1 thief left on the road scores the road

What all this means is that the majority is not recalculated except that if you only had 1 thief, sending him to Leipzig effectively removes you from the majority.

Personal commentary: Seems like it would have been more logically consistent to recalculate the majority after the thieves leave, but apparently that's not what the design intent was. So we just have to live with the inconsistency that if you send your only thief you lose your majority, but if you send one of multiple thieves you do not lose your majority even if you now have fewer thieves than somebody else.

Schickst du dabei den Meeple ins Wagner-Viertel bekommst du gleich die Extra-Punkte (siehe unten).

If you send the meeple to the Wagonmaker district you get the bonus points (see below).

This does not say "you get the bonus points if you still have a thief on the road," just that you simply get the bonus points. So it would seem that when you have only one thief on a completed road, and that thief is in the majority, and you send him to the Wagonmaker district, you score zero baseline points for the road (per one rule) but you still get 1 bonus point for each segment since you went to Wagonmaker (per this other rule).

Personal commentary: This inconsistency is more jarring to me than the other ones, probably because it is so subtle and easy to miss. And it leads to another question...

Note that this rule seems to apply only on the turn in which you send a follower to Wagonmaker. If you already had a follower in Wagonmaker and send your only thief from a road to some other Leipzig district ... I guess you don't get the Wagonmaker bonus points in that case because there's no special rule for it?

It's really unclear to me which exceptions they did and did not mean to communicate here. Which exception was it supposed to be?

• In spite of sending your only thief away from the road and getting no baseline points, you still get the bonus points but only if you are sending him to Wagonmaker right now.
• In spite of sending your only thief away from the road and getting no baseline points, you still get the bonus points if you have a follower in Wagonmaker (previously or just now arriving).
• Oops, we didn't mean to give you bonus points when you aren't receiving baseline points. This Wagonmaker thing only applies when you have other thieve(s) that are remaining on the road and you are sending a follower to Wagonmaker right now.
• Oops, we didn't mean to give you bonus points when you aren't receiving baseline points. This Wagonmaker thing only applies when you have other thieve(s) that are remaining on the road and you have a follower in Wagonmaker (previously or just now arriving).
• We didn't realize how inconsistent these things are. Perhaps we should discuss and get back to you.

I guess you can probably tell that confusing rules really frustrate me. Now, it's possible that there could be problems with my translation, or that some cultural conventions might make this more clear to a German reader. But if the translation is accurate and there are no "German unwritten rules" to guide us, then it seems to me that either this design was not sufficiently analyzed/playtested, or the rules as written were not intended to mean what they are saying.

Happy to be corrected if I've missed something, and happy to hear other opinions on (a) what you think they really meant and/or (b) what would have worked best.

7

Unofficial Rules / Variant Rules in CAR

« on: October 01, 2017, 07:53:43 PM »

For the record, though, I am such a Carcassonne-whore that I'd probably buy Bigfoot and the Space Hookers of Proxima Centauri.

Watch for my kickstarter.

The Pandora's Box with those double and half tiles better shouldn't have been opend at all... 

I don't think it would have been much of a problem if they had approached this with a more practical goal rather than the dogmatic belief that the "ONE TILE" view had to be driving force behind all rulings. I prefer a more common-sense approach with low rules overhead, something along these lines:

Each German castle is obviously a single tile that occupies two spaces. Each halfling is obviously a single tile that occupies half a space. Two general rules govern their use:

1. Game effects related to movement, distance, or counting adjoining tiles actually count spaces rather than tiles.

2. A space that is half-filled still counts as filled.

I haven't looked at every possible situation, but I think these two simple rules basically answer the questions with cloisters, flying machines, the dragon, and so on, without the need to errata a bunch of previous rules or make three pages of explanatory diagrams.

Once the German Castles came into existence, they should have just recognized the fact that tiles and spaces were no longer always the same thing, and made the appropriate adjustments. Heck, even the two starting tableaux could have worked in the same unified model as the halflings and double tiles. Instead, we have piecemeal rulings, dragons/fliers that can move a lot farther than originally intended, and unnecessary differences between castles and The School for no reason other than how they decided to form the cutting dies.

8

Official Rules / CAR 7.5 Prep Discussion: Wheel of Fortune Version Comparison

« on: September 16, 2017, 02:43:14 PM »

This is the first of a series of topics I hope to create to start some conversations about various aspects of updating the CAR from 7.4 to 7.5. (They may come out in kind of a weird order, sorry.)

TL/DR edit: There is now a big infographic that summarizes the whole thing at the end of this post.

The configuration of the standalone Wheel of Fortune game certainly added some wrinkles into the Carcassonne universe, and when Big Box 5 came along things became significantly more confusing (and for some, frustrating). CAR 7.4 offers a fair amount of helpful information, but the next update could benefit from additional clarity in the details, more tile distribution images, and a correction or two.

The following is the result of my research, which included a painstaking tile-by-tile comparison of these two modified tile bases (every tile detail including gameplay, watermarks, and even the decorative buildings). I welcome all feedback on whether this visual approach is helpful or not. If it is, I will likely use explanations and/or graphics along these lines in the planned CAR 7.5 update (though perhaps not with all the detail presented here!).

Wheel of Fortune Version Comparison

Understanding the configuration differences between the standalone Wheel of Fortune game and the corresponding features in Big Box 5 can be daunting. Comments and discussions in various venues make reference to a variety of overlapping tile groups with counts of 1, 3, 9, 10, 13, 16, 18, 19, 72, 84, and 85, and fitting those comments into a cohesive understanding of the actual, physical tiles can be a challenge. And of course there are also the various "why did they do that?" questions. The following attempts to bring clarity by taking a step-by-step visual tour through the (presumed) design goals that brought us to where we are.

Standalone Wheel of Fortune

The standalone version begins by removing 10 tiles from the Carcassonne base game configuration. The normal CRFR starting tile was not needed due to WoF's use of a 16-space starting tableau, and 9 draw tiles were removed to be replaced by different configurations. Perhaps KJW/HiG felt that the WoF game played better with these different configurations, or maybe they were just trying to freshen and differentiate the design, so it wouldn't feel like just a base game reprint with wheels slapped on 19 tiles. In any case, these 10 base-game tiles were omitted from the configuration:



The starting tile was replaced with a copy of the same CRFR face, but on a normal back. The 9 removed draw tiles were replaced by similar-yet-different ones from various early expansion sets, as shown below.



(Edited: The CAR notes that six of these tiles were copied from Inns & Cathedrals. Initially I had thought the first one came from the Games Quarterly Mini Expansion, so I put a big "G" icon underneath it. In fact it does match the gameplay configuration of one of the GQ11 tiles, but in fact the artwork is a right-left mirror of the I&C tile next to it. So the CAR is correct and my initial assessment was wrong. I just never got around to updating that big "G.")

Then, wheel symbols in three denominations were added to 19 tiles. As seen above, one wheel was added to one of the replacements (an RRRR tile that I like to call the "tennis ball"). The other 18 wheels were all added to normal tile configurations from the original base game. All of these except two are exclusively road tiles; an image of all 19 appears near the end of this post.

With these 10-for-10 substitutions, the standalone Wheel of Fortune set had a tile count of 72, just like base Carcassonne. However, all 72 in this set are draw tiles (instead of 71) due to the conversion of the start tile's back from dark to light. All 72 tiles are watermarked with a tiny wheel icon.

Big Box 5 Wheel of Fortune

Big Box 5 is the oddest of hybrids, designed to be dual-use by approximating either the normal Carcassonne base game or the Wheel of Fortune standalone game. It starts with a core of 85 tiles, of which 12 are watermarked as a "WoF expansion" and the other 73 are not. One of the 73 has a dark back to serve as a starting tile. The players thus leave out either 12 or 1 of these tiles when choosing which version to play:

• Carcassonne base game approximation (73 tiles): Use all non-watermarked base-game tiles; ignore the wheel symbols that appear on 16 of them. Omit the 12 watermarked tiles. There will be one extra CRFR tile compared to a true base game.
  
  
• WoF standalone game approximation (84 tiles): Omit the starting tile; use the 72 base-game draw tiles and add the 12 watermarked tiles, plus the WoF starting tableau. There will be 12 extra base-game tiles compared to a true standalone WoF game.

This hybrid design can make the included tile mix hard to understand, for multiple reasons. First, 85 is a very unusual number of core tiles. Second, all possible combinations of wheel symbols and watermarks exist: just a symbol, just a watermark, both, and neither. Third, players who are aware that WoF is supposed to have 19 wheel symbols are confused by the facts that the BB5 "WoF expansion" contains only 12 tiles and only three of those have wheel symbols, with the other 16 sprinkled among the base tiles. Fourth, whichever setup the players choose, there will be too many tiles (by either 1 or 12) which can make it seem like we're doing it wrong, or at least lead to brain-burn trying to explain the tile count differences. It all feels pretty odd or even vexing at first, but hopefully it starts to make more sense when we step through the (apparent) design rationale.

Carcassonne Base Game Mode

To support normal base-game play, BB5 needed to restore the 10 original tiles that the standalone game removed, including the start tile. This is pretty straightforward, and these tiles are non-watermarked like the rest of the normal base-game tiles.



Wheel of Fortune Standalone Game Mode

All of the tiles that are shared in common between the WoF standalone product and the original Carcassonne base game were ported over to BB5, but in the process most of them lost their WoF watermarks. This was done so that the few watermarks that remain could be used as an easy way to switch in and out of "WoF mode."

To support full Wheel of Fortune play, BB5 also needed to keep the 10 newer tiles that had been swapped into the WoF standalone game but were not shared by the normal Carcassonne base game. Unlike most of the other tiles ported from standalone, these 10 all kept their watermarks (including the CRFR tile that backflipped from starting tile to draw tile).



Remaining true to the standalone game, in this group only the "tennis ball" has a wheel symbol; the other 18 wheels are still found on the same base-game "vanilla" tiles that were upgraded with wheels in the standalone product. Thus, our initial expectation that BB5's 12 "WoF Expansion" tiles would be chock-full of wheel symbols gives way to the reality that this group is instead characterized by non-base-game tiles that map directly back to the WoF standalone product. It's the add-on group needed to take "base with most of the wheels" and upgrade it so that it can provide the full WoF standalone experience, albeit with a dozen extra tiles.

And those extra tiles come from two sources. First, of course, there are the 9 draw tiles in the "restored" group that have light backs (the 10th one is the unused starting tile). These don't have watermarks of any kind, and thus BB5 doesn't worry about trying to separate them out. They're just "extra" when you play in WoF mode.

Second, there are a few more tiles thrown in to fill out the punchboard sheets. Normally Carcassonne tiles are printed in multiples of 6 or 12, and BB5 primarily is no exception. Because the dual-mode approach required 10 more tiles than normal, we might think there's room for two more in an added 12-tile section, and we'd be right about that. However, they decided to give the lone CRFR starting tile its own special place of honor (near the sheep and wolf tokens), so that also opens up one more slot among the 72 core tiles. Thus there's actually room for three extra tiles in the product configuration, although their positions on the sheets add another little complexity to the story.

Three Extra Tiles

The final three core tiles added are about as vanilla as they can be. Basically just three relatively boring "bonus tiles" to fill out the punchboard.



"But wait a minute," you say. "Where are the wheels? And the watermarks?" Those are good questions, since the final group of 12 tiles we're discussing clearly has watermarks on all three tiles that look like these, and wheel symbols on the two plain roads. The explanation is that there was a little switcheroo on the placements.

First, there was still a one-tile gap in the 72-tile section due to the dark-backed starting tile getting its own place near the sheep tokens; so the added CRFR tile simply filled that hole, without a watermark. (Basically, the starting tile was cloned so that a draw-tile version of itself would fill the gap created when the starting-tile version went to party with the sheep.)

Then, two of the road tiles with wheels being ported over from standalone WoF, in the same shapes as the two new ones being added, were moved out of the 72-tile section and into the 12-tile "WoF expansion" section, where they got their lost watermarks restored and filled the last two spots there. Accordingly, the two added plain roads filled those two vacancies in the 72-tile section. Thus, if you compare BB5 to the WoF standalone game, you will find that these three tiles are indeed extras. They just quietly sneaked into the three vacancies in the 72-tile group, like stand-ins or seat fillers.

And that's how we arrive at the puzzling 12-tile "Wheel of Fortune expansion" in Big Box 5.



As for why it was done this way, I would speculate that KJW/HiG were aware that an "expansion" that had only one wheel symbol would seem really odd to players. (Was that single wheel a mistake? An extra wheel relative to the standalone game?) Perhaps they realized they had the opportunity to position a couple more wheels in that group without wrecking the dual-mode strategy of BB5, and did so to make the "expansion" seem just a little less weird.

One consequence of all this is, if you decide you want to play a true, tile-for-tile representation of standalone Wheel of Fortune, then in addition to ignoring the starting tile you also need to remove 12 extra non-watermarked, non-wheel tiles from the game.



This group of 13 tiles documents the exact difference between the 72 tiles in standalone WoF and the 85 in Big Box 5.

It's too bad they didn't make things easy for players who wish to omit these 13 tiles by watermarking them with a "C" or something. Then it would have been simple to play in just about any configuration. You could start with all the non-watermarked tiles, then add the wheel watermarks if you want to play WoF, or add the "C" watermarks if you want to play base Carcassonne.

Similarly, if you wanted to play a true, tile-for-tile representation of the normal Carcassonne base game, then in addition to omitting the watermarked tiles you could also remove the one extra CRFR tile that's a clone of the starting tile. (If you do so, then I tip my hat to you: you have out-OCD'd me.)

The Nineteen Wheels

Both editions of Wheel of Fortune have the same 19 wheel-symbol tiles in the same gameplay configurations. Only the watermarks differ.



The Big Box Boogie

So it is possible to summarize all of this choreography into one big Arthur Murray dance card? Let's give it a try.



I hope this helps clear things up for anyone who, like me, was still struggling to wrap their brain around these confusing hybrid products.

9

General / Thoughts on converting C2 tiles to C1 artwork style

« on: July 26, 2017, 11:22:04 AM »

* As of this writing, “minimal C2” probably means things with new gameplay: abbots, gardens, circus elements, and/or the gingerbread man.

I'm starting with a poll to try to identify the basic different views people have and get a sense of the proportions, but what this thread is really about is my own evolving response to the artwork change.

I started out as a C1 Purist and had no intention of buying any of the new stuff (for multiple reasons). But two things caused me to reevaluate: a cheap price on the new base game, which I've had for a few weeks now, and the continuing good reports on the gameplay worthiness of Under the Big Top, which I just picked up yesterday from my FLGS. And yesterday is when I decided I must actually be a C1 Converter instead.

In this thread I'll be dumping out some work-in-progress examples of my evolving attempts to convert garden, circus, and acrobat tiles to a C1 art aesthetic, for discussion and critique. (But don't expect a downloadable Big Top tileset; more on that later.) Along the way, I'll probably have some related legal/philosophical thoughts.

10

The Marketplace / Advice on "relay shipping" from Germany to the U.S.?

« on: June 16, 2017, 09:05:29 PM »

So I've been trying to find a Big Box and the prices for U.S. delivery are all well over $100 (before shipping is added) and thus way out of my reach. Several non-U.S. Amazon sites have various BBs for somewhat more affordable prices, but it seems that literally none of them will ship to the U.S. (and I've looked at a lot of items on a lot of different Amazons). Very frustrating.

So I'm wondering what options I might have to order one from amazon.de and ship it to an intermediary in Germany who will re-ship to the States — and what that might cost, in terms of the additional shipping and whatever fees this usually incurs. Also, would I have to set up an ongoing relationship (w/setup fees?) with a shipping relayer, or can I do this on an as-needed basis for one item at a time?

I have zero experience with this, and looking for advice/guidance from those of you who've done it before.

Very appreciative for any help.

11

General / Carcassonne II terminology

« on: June 09, 2017, 10:28:56 AM »

Also there's been a terminology/category overhaul for the figures.

Here's the new structure, based on multiple careful readings of all the new English rulebooks. This may or may not be what they intended, but it does accurately reflect what they wrote.

Carcassonne II Figure Taxonomy

All the wooden bits (including towers and bridges) are termed figures¹. There are now four categories of figures:

Meeples
      •   meeple
      •   ringmaster ("except that it cannot be used as an acrobat")

Figures that are used like meeples² (but not actually meeples)
      •   abbot
      •   large meeple³
      •   mayor
      •   wagon

Special Figures⁴
      •   builder
      •   pig⁵
      •   Neutral Figures (sub-category)⁶
            •   fairy
            •   dragon⁷
            •   tower piece⁷
            •   bridge⁷

Undefined category⁸
      •   barn
      •   shepherd

Personally I find it overly complicated to have four categories where only two were needed. The exceptions are the exceptions; you need to discuss them regardless. But choosing not to group things logically only makes it harder to understand and remember some of the specific interactions.

Footnotes

• We don't actually learn this until expansion 3, where they first start using "figures" by itself as a game term. It is here that the reader begins to infer that its definition must include both meeples and non-meeples. (As an aside, it seems that they were trying to use "meeples" to mean literally only the original 8-per-player figures in that specific shape ... and then the ringmaster blew that to shreds.)
  
  
• This term comes from expansion 3, which clearly enumerates the abbot, large meeple, mayor, and wagon as the occupants of the category.
  
  
• Officially, the ringmaster is a meeple but the large meeple is not a meeple. However, unlike the other figures in this category, the large meeple (who is not a meeple) has special permission to be placed atop wooden towers. (This all seems particularly ill-conceived to me.)
  
  
• This term is introduced in expansion 2 as a non-meeple category for the builder and pig. Unfortunately, it seems they forgot the term existed in later expansions when defining the dragon, barn, shepherd, etc.
  
  
• Oddly, the pig has rules for where it deploys, but not how/when. This looks like a copy/paste/edit error from the CAR that missed some things and wasn't proofread.
  
  
• Here I am taking the texts for the fairy as a precedent-setter and assuming that all future neutral figures will also be special figures; thus my inference that this is a sub-category.
  
  
• Only the fairy is actually defined in the rulebooks as both a "special figure" and a "neutral figure." The dragon, tower piece, and bridge are left undefined, but I list them here because their neutrality is obvious. Whether or not they were intended to be also "special figures" is uncertain, but if the fairy is our precedent then that would make the most sense. Thus here I am documenting not what was actually written but what (probably) must have been the intent. It would be advisable for the rulebooks to clean this up in future printings.
  
  
• The rules leave these figures in limbo. In my opinion, the barn and shepherd should have been explicitly declared special figures to distinguish them from "figures that are used like meeples."
  

12

The Marketplace / Have: First Edition w/70-point score track; I&C w/no-junction CRCR tile

« on: May 05, 2017, 01:55:21 PM »

So I have a real early Rio Grande edition of Carcassonne with the 70-point score track, and also an early RGG Inns & Cathedrals with the CRCR tile that does not have a junction in the middle of the four-way road between two city curves. Lightly played, very nice condition. I don't want to sell these, but would like to see if I can trade them to a super-completist who might have extra copies of other stuff I've missed.

Obviously if I trade these away then I need to replace them (I do not have spares), so maybe a trade that involves a Big Box could work? Tell me about what you have and maybe your dream of these rarities and my dream of the stuff below can fulfill each other.   Here are the items on my wish list:

• The Besiegers / Die Belagerer (want 1 or 2 sets, and only want Cathars/Siege after I have Besiegers)
• Crop Circles I (want 1 or 2 sets)
• The Tunnel (want 1 or 2 sets)
• The River I (2014 edition w/sheep & vineyards)
• replacement for base game
• replacement for Inns & Cathedrals, ideally with watermark
• a Big Box in which to store my stuff
• Wheel of Fortune (after higher priorities)
• maybe watermarked versions of other early expansions (lower priority)

I have lots of good-trader reputation on eBay, BGG, and Heroscapers.com. On BGG I'm the author of the Cosmodex, basically like the "CAR of Cosmic Encounter." Hoping to ship to/from US if possible.

13

The Marketplace / wtt: HAVE 70 track, CSC, GQ11, Labyrinth, River WANT Crop Circles,Tunnel,Russian

« on: April 05, 2017, 09:45:57 PM »

Have:

• 70-point original score track from RGG 2000 base game, excellent condition, played but still beautiful
• Cult, Siege & Creativity, new in box
• Mini 1: The Flier / The Flying Machines
• Mini Expansion (Games Quarterly #11), new, on frame, in the large ziplock it originally came in
• Halflings I, new/sealed
• Labyrinth tiles, new (both art styles)
• The River I (2001 edition), gently played
• Actual 2000 RGG Carcassonne, original medium-green tiles, unpunched/unplayed

Want:

• Crop Circles I
• The Tunnel

Willing to consider partial sets if you have part but not all of something. Have tons of good-trader references on eBay, BGG, and Heroscapers.com, and even a few here now, too.

Thanks for looking!

Revision history:

• had King & Scout, new in box (English or German edition, I believe I have one of each)
• had The Count of Carcassonne, new in box
• had Mini 2: The Messengers
• had Mini 6: The Robbers
• had All components of Carcassonne II base game except abbots, unpunched
• wanted The River I (2014 edition) a.k.a. River III
• wanted an early Big Box, if the tiles are not in the newer, yellower color
• wanted Die Belagerer / The Besiegers
• wanted Traders & Builders tiles with watermark
• wanted The School with black or purple Teacher
• wanted Russian Promos (all 4 if possible)