Carcassonne: Expansion N°10 Under the Big Top / Manege frei

[Just a Bill]

I suspect I, like most people here, will inevitably start polluting their tiles with Carc2 material

But fortunately we don't have to. HiG has already canonized the German player community's conversions of The Abbot and The Watchtowers, and I suspect that UtBT is not too far behind them. It's hard to think of a better reason to order a bunch of blank tiles from Cundco.

In case anyone hasn't seen the artwork yet...

[wicke]

I just think that the publisher have stolen the idea from several fan-made expansions (mine included)
with taking the meeples from the stand-alone games instead of making new meeples.
I used those meeples for my fan-made expansions because I really didn't have a way of making
new meeples of my own, so it's kind of boring that the publisher don't even bother making new meeples.

Since I have been away from the forum (and the game) for about three years, I had only heard about a
new design of the original game. I hadn't realized that they have re-done the artwork for several of the
expansions as well. That's such a disaster, that I won't ever buy anything with the new design.
Back in 2013 or so, we spoke about how they treated old fans of the game by releasing big boxes with
a few new tiles in them to get fans to buy the original game over and over.
This with the new design is even worse.
It's apparent that they don't think about the old fans at all.

Strange though that many seem to think it is great that Under the Top raises the points for the game so much.
That was usually a thing that I was under a lot of pressure from people to lower the point scoring in my fan-made expansions.

[danisthirty]

Hello wicke, welcome back to the forums! It's been a long time...

You've raised some interesting points here, which I think were shared by many of us when it first became apparent to us what was happening with the new artwork edition. However, rather than being seen as an attempt to force everyone to rebuy everything, the series reboot looks more to me like an attempt to attract newcomers to the game and therefore tap into a whole new source of income as they sell all the classic expansions as and when they become available in the new artwork to a whole new audience. It's a lot of work, but there's big bucks in it if it pays off.

Personally I don't think this was an attempt to force anybody to go out and start their collections all over again, although the fact that a certain number of expansions have been released purely in the new artwork without any official backwards-compatible version for those who are dedicated to the old artwork has done more than merely raised a few eyebrows here!

Obviously HiG are a business who want to make money, but I think actions like these that can be perceived as being greedy, money-grabbing or disrespectful to their loyal fans are actually more to do with their misunderstanding of the completionist mentality among those of us who resent the idea of buying a whole new Big Box for a few extra tiles, but feel compelled to do it anyway as we'd be missing out on something otherwise. In fact, originally it was suggested that nobody would have to rebuy anything as the backs of the tiles are compatible so the different versions of the artwork could be mixed together. This is no longer a realistic option now that there have been subtle differences introduced in the expansion rules between artwork versions (the Abbots and the wagon being a good case in point), but it does suggest that their intentions were good. Or maybe I'm just being gullible.

I don't mind high-scoring games but it is important that everything is balanced, otherwise newly introduced concepts can easily negate the usefulness of, or interest in some of the more traditional features while players concentrate purely on building pyramids or placing their meeples near to the next circus tent in anticipation of a huge points payout. I do think this expansion is a little unbalanced in this respect, but it's fun to play which makes it worth the purchase as far as I'm concerned.

PS - based on their attendance record here at CarcC, I'm pretty sure HiG haven't been here to steal fan expansion ideas that they can turn into saleable expansions!

[wicke]

Thanks for welcoming me back,
although I might just vanish again, since I really don't have that much time to spend,
and since the new design have stopped my lust for collecting any more.
I might try and collect the extra tiles there are in the old design but I haven't really checked how many there are, and how to get them.
What I would like to have though, are a few Stormtrooper meeples, but sadly MeepleSource have stopped selling them.

Yes, I know that HiG doesn't really keep up with the forum (sadly) but I am pretty sure they have heard, at least rumours, about many fan made expansions, and variants.
Of course they would never admit if they had taken ideas from any fan made expansion, but never mind, I just thought it was boring that the new Under the Top expansion used old stand-alone meeples.

Keep up the good work with the forum, hope it will grow again, even though I have lost interest.

[Paul]

Today I bought Under the Big Top. English version for 18 Euros. Coulddn't wait.

[Squiffything]

My copy arrived from Cundco earlier in the week. German copy so got to find the English rules.

[Just a Bill]

got to find the English rules

There's a download link on this page: https://www.zmangames.com/en/products/carcassonne-expansion-10-under-big-top/

[Squiffything]

Thanks Bill. Downloaded:)

[ARabidMeerkat]

I suspect I, like most people here, will inevitably start polluting their tiles with Carc2 material

But fortunately we don't have to. HiG has already canonized the German player community's conversions of The Abbot and The Watchtowers, and I suspect that UtBT is not too far behind them. It's hard to think of a better reason to order a bunch of blank tiles from Cundco.

In case anyone hasn't seen the artwork yet...

This is what we want! I did try and print some tiles onto label paper but they adult peeled off and the colour looked faded. How can you make a good finish when printing tiles? Could you get a printing company to do them for you?

[Decar]

I recall having this problem when I used labels in my Canon printer (HP much better at this).  I'd recommend tinkering with the amount of ink you use and make sure 'compression' is disabled sending data to the printer.

What make is your printer?

[dirk2112]

We finally played with "Under the Big Top".  It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be.  I rarely use all my meeple, but I found myself risking it a lot in this game hoping a circus tile would come out.  The most I had was 7 meeple surrounding a circus tile (it turned into 21 points).   My wife lucked out and had 4 meeple by a circus when a tiger came out (24 points).  The elephant came up when no meeple were around and I got a point from the flea circus  .  The acrobats are really dumb, but they are unbelievably useful in stacking meeple by circus tents.  The ringmaster is great for grabbing extra points when scoring a short road or small city. 

With just the basic game and this expansion, I scored 285 points and my wife score 235!

My wife really enjoyed this and she wants to play it again soon.  I'm not quite sure what expansions would go well with this.  I am thinking something like "Princess and Dragon" to limit some of the many point opportunities.

[Decar]

Great to hear you had a similar experience playing the latest expansion.  The scoring potential for this expansions is quite something!