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Topics - danisthirty
Pages: 1 ... 16 17 [18] 19
256
« on: February 05, 2014, 03:07:48 AM »
Hello.
Since they're not doing anything useful I've decided to get rid of some of my spare Carcassonne bits and bobs. Everything is free (except for postage) so if you're interested in any of the items below please post here saying what you'd like and I'll PM you for your address:
Boxed Mini Expansions
- The Robbers: 8 tiles + 6 robber figures - complete and unopened (claimed by Fritz_Spinne)
- The Count (German edition): 12 tiles + count figure - complete and unopened (claimed by 24hourpartymeeple)
- King & Scout: 5 Carcassonne land tiles, 2 special tokens for Carcassonne (King & Robber Baron tiles), 5 Hunters & Gatherers tiles - opened once but never played (claimed by 24hourpartymeeple)
Carcassonne: The Phantom
- Set of 5 phantom meeples (no purple) in RED meeple-shaped case - opened once to remove purple phantom (claimed by Ratz65)
- Set of 5 phantom meeples (no purple) in YELLOW meeple-shaped case - opened once to remove purple phantom (claimed by Ratz65)
Loose tiles (no boxes but all brand new and never played)
- 12 tiles from Bridges, Castles and Bazaars (no bridges or castles) (claimed by Fritz_Spinne)
- 12 tiles from The Count + count figure (claimed by wicke)
- 5 Cult Places tiles (with crown watermark) (claimed by DOCTORawfulMD)
- 4 Cathars tiles - NOT originals but good quality homemade copies (bought on eBay by mistake) (claimed by Apostolicartist)
- 12 blank tiles - pressed out but never used (claimed by Apostolicartist)
Because I don't know what interest is going to be like, for the sake of fairness I'd prefer to restrict things to 2 items per person for the time being. This can be lifted if there's still anything left after a week or so.
Enjoy!
257
« on: January 13, 2014, 08:42:05 AM »
Hello, I have a quick (hopefully) question regarding the rules outlined in the CAR relating to castles...
The third paragraph from the bottom of page 107 of the current CAR (6.4) states that:
"At game end, all uncompleted castles score no points and their followers are removed from the board. A castle gets no points for farms."
For clarity, I assume the last sentence here should read "An incomplete castle gets no points for farms."? This is how I understood castles to work anyway. However, point 340 on the following page seems to contradict this:
"The RGG Big Box 3 scoring guide at the end of the rules claims that farms only score points for completed castles, but this is presumably a misprint, as there is no indication in the rules that this is actually true (especially as followers from incomplete castles are removed, so there would be no way to tell which castles were incomplete and which were complete when scoring farms)."
I'm probably wrong but these two statements seem to contradict each other unless I'm missing something? If telling the difference between complete/ incomplete castles is that big a problem you could always just leave followers atop incomplete castles at the end of the game as they're not worth anything anyway and this would make it be possible to tell which castles were completed.
Any clarification would be greatly appreciated!
258
« on: January 06, 2014, 09:11:13 AM »
I downloaded the Carcassonne app for Android recently and have been working my way through the list of "Achievements" which form a kind of career mode of sorts. Some of them are very simple and can be won almost straight away whereas others such as accumulating 20,000 points or winning 500 games are simply a matter of time. The one I've been struggling with though is scoring 150 points or more in a single game. This seems like a lot to me so I'm interested to know what others would consider to be a good score for a standard 72-tile game for two players?
I've come close enough to 150 to know it's achievable but it does seem to depend on at least one valuable farm combined with probably four or five cloisters and good use of roads. Does anybody here regularly go three or more times round the scoretrack when they play? If so, what's your best advice for a high-scoring game?
259
« on: October 18, 2013, 04:54:10 AM »
Hello all!
I'm feeling very excited at the moment as my wife has just given birth (at 8:20 this morning) to our second child; a son! (see new profile picture)
We haven't made any big announcements yet but I was desperate to tell someone so thought I'd share our news with all of my Carcassonne buddies! Looking forward to teaching him how to play our favourite game (along with a lot of other things) but it may be a few years off yet...
All the best,
Dan, Becky, Jess and Ben
260
« on: October 14, 2013, 03:38:20 AM »
Hi all,
I have a couple of questions regarding how the rules of certain expansions work under exceptional circumstances as described below...
1) When playing with the Mage & Witch expansion, if you place one of the tiles with the Mage & Witch symbol on it such that it completes a feature, are you allowed to add the Mage/ Witch to that feature immediately before scoring it? Just to clarify the question: if I had an incomplete city and require just one tile to complete it, and then I draw the necessary tile but it has a Mage & Witch symbol on it, can I use it to complete the city AND add the Mage into the city to get a points bonus from it at the same time?
(as far as I can tell it looks from the CAR like you can, but I just wanted to check in case I'm misinterpreting it)
2) Also, am I able to use my phantom to claim points when I've otherwise run out of standard followers? I know that normally it's placed in addition and secondarily to a standard follower (or builder, pig etc I guess) but just wondered if it can still be used when none of these are available?
Thanks!
Dan
261
« on: September 28, 2013, 09:29:08 AM »
Hello.
I have a spare copy of The Phantom - 6 translucent Meeples in a blue case (see attached photos [hopefully]).
I don't want anything for it other than about 4 pounds to cover the postage (depending on where you are) but I don't know exactly how much it will cost until I post it so will let you know once I've put it in the post.
Please send me a message if you're interested!
Thanks,
Dan
262
« on: September 25, 2013, 03:59:24 AM »
I was thinking recently about what it is that I enjoy so much about playing Carcassonne in particular. I came up with five things which I've listed below and would be keen to hear from anyone else who has anything else that they feel is missing from the list or if you particularly agree with any one of these:
1) The balance of luck, lateral thinking and experience means that players who are entirely new to the game can hold their own against those who have been playing Carcassonne for years. I've played far more than my wife has, but we still have some very close games as she's very tactically-minded and is excellent at planning ahead.
2) The variety of expansions available means that games can be customised to suit different playing styles or types of game as required. Family-friendly games might include Inns & Cathedrals and Traders & Builders whereas more competitive/ aggressive gamers may prefer the likes of The Princess and The Dragon or The Tower. Either way, adding or removing certain expansions means that whilst the basic concept remains the same, the game itself never gets boring (although it certainly can get quite complicated!)
3) It's not over until it's over! Even after the final tile has been placed, incomplete features, farms and end-game bonuses such as trade tokens can really turn things around. So it pays to keep one eye on what's going to be worth what in the final scoring regardless of how far you may be lagging behind whoever's currently in the lead.
4) One of the things I find so addictive about playing Carcassonne is the rush I get when I draw a tile that I really need! This will usually be required for completing a large city or merging two farms to give myself the most farmers on the resulting mega-farm. But regardless of how I'm able to use the tile I've just drawn, it's often more than I can manage to prevent a large smile from creeping across my face while my opponent decides where to place his tile.
5) I'm probably just weird for saying this, but I think Carcassonne is actually very beautiful and I love the way the landscape develops before you as the game is played. The combination of roads, cities, fields and cloisters is different every time and when combined with features such as rivers, towers, bridges and castles I almost always want to take a photo at the end of the game (but am not quite so bad as to print them out and put them up on the walls).
All the best,
Dan
263
« on: September 24, 2013, 04:16:01 AM »
According to the Order of Play section in the CAR, when playing with The Tower it looks as though followers are captured before completed features are scored. Does this mean that if a tile with a tower foundation is placed such that it completes a feature that this feature will go unclaimed/ unscored if any follower on the feature is directly adjacent to the tower tile being placed (and the player placing it chooses to use a tower piece to capture the player)?
I've only played with The Tower once and since I wasn't aware of this, we played that if you place a tile with a tower foundation then any features this tile completes are scored before the person who placed it has had a chance to capture any followers. It was a low enough scoring game as it was and if I'm correct in my understanding of the order of play then our scores would have been even lower!
Has anybody else found that games work better if you allow players to complete before capture or is it generally better to stick to the official rule in this case?
264
« on: September 23, 2013, 05:42:55 AM »
My wife and I had friends round for dinner last Friday evening. Naturally this meant a couple of games of Carcassonne afterwards but we decided against having one big game and played two smaller games instead (keeping the number of expansions to a minimum so as not to make things overly complicated). The first game (119 tiles) included the basic tiles plus Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders and King & Robber Baron. The final scores were: Zombies - 166, Pirates - 160, Princesses - 103, Monsters - 93 My favourite feature of this game was a medium-sized city that Kat had started. This had a lot going for it as it contained a cathedral and yet despite its potential value nobody else had tried to get into it and as such Kat kept just a single knight in it. Interest in the city grew as it drew closer to completion but I was the first to attempt to capitalise on Kat's success by placing my MegaMeeple on a new city segment on the outskirts of her city such that a relatively common tile would be able to merge our two cities and swing the majority of knights in my favour. I then placed subsequent tiles to prevent anyone else from being able to join Kat and I in her city without making it more difficult to close. With the city (now mine) just one tile away from completion it became a race to close it as the person to do so would win two wine tokens, one wheat token and one silk token, plus the King tile which we'd previously agreed would be worth ten points to whoever held it at the end of the game (same for the Robber Baron). I was the first person lucky enough to draw the required cccf tile and won 33 points for the city plus the trade tokens and King tile which I kept. Since I still had four Meeples left in my supply at that time, and because we were close to the end of the game, I even placed a farmer in the middle of the city just for fun (and 3 points)...  The second game (96 tiles) included the basic tiles plus The Tower, King & Robber Baron (tiles only i.e. no bonus for largest city or longest road) and a single tile from Inns & Cathedrals which had been left in by mistake. The final scores were: Zombies - 65, Princesses - 60, Monsters - 56, Pirates - 50 My favourite feature of this game was a city that I claimed after someone else was removed from it, and then spent a while gradually trying to close it. Although it was surrounded by several towers, my Meeple was positioned such that it wasn't orthogonally adjacent to any of these and as such appeared to be relatively safe. Edd however was determined to find a way of capturing my Meeple before I completed the city and began building a tower which needed to be four-stories high in order to remove it. Brilliantly enough, he ran out of tower blocks after building the tower up to its third story and although Kat had the opportunity (and sufficient tower blocks) to remove my Meeple, she chose to go elsewhere and I completed my city for 20 points on my next turn. This wasn't even the best part though, as Edd also had a Meeple in an incomplete city on the other side of his three-storey tower. It wasn't in a prime location as the city was completely boxed-in and still needed two tiles to complete it, but even so his Meeple would have been worth 6 points in the final scoring so I was only too happy to add one of my tower blocks to the large tower and capture his Meeple in doing so.  We didn't finish playing until almost midnight which was quite a late night for us (since my wife is now almost 37 weeks pregnant!), but it was the most fun I'd had in ages and both games reminded me why I love Carcassonne so much!
266
« on: September 20, 2013, 08:15:56 AM »
Does anybody here ever play Carcassonne via the Facebook app? It can seem a bit clunky, isn't all that pretty and doesn't feature any expansion other than Inns & Cathedrals but I like it as it enables me to get my Carcassonne fix when I haven't got any "real" opponents to play against.
Would love to play a game sometime if anyone here is interested?
267
« on: September 09, 2013, 08:24:17 AM »
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the rules but I've never really understood why you'd want to abandon a city just because it's been besieged (and because you have the opportunity to do so if you're lucky enough to place a cloister/ cult place somewhere useful). Obviously it won't be worth quite as many points, but if it's a ten-tile city with a couple of pennants for example it's still going to be worth 12 points or so.
I can see that if you end up with a knight trapped in a city that can't be completed then it may be helpful to get them back by laying siege to the city, but if a city is otherwise completable I can't see why you wouldn't keep playing for the points.
The only way I'd really want to escape from somewhere would be if the points value became negative rather than positive. Imagine that! Your opponent has a huge city worth 40 points, then - bang! - you place a Siege/ Cathars tile and suddenly it's worth -40. Then it becomes a desperate struggle for them to get hold of a cloister and evacuate the city before you can complete it! Is anybody aware of any expansions that would have this effect?
268
« on: August 23, 2013, 05:55:27 AM »
I was at a wedding a couple of weeks ago and a friend of mine showed me these cufflinks (pictured). I was very impressed and immediately wanted to know where he'd got them from.
The bad news is that he'd made them himself, but the good news is that they were quite cheap and extremely easy to make! He had bought 2 Mini Meeples (12mm) from MeepleSource in several different colours and had simply glued them on to the back of some plain cufflink backs that he'd bought from eBay.
Just thought I'd share in case anyone else fancied trying the same. They looked really good and the fact that he'd made matching pairs in several different colours meant that he could wear a tie to match!
269
« on: August 21, 2013, 07:35:53 AM »
My copy of the Gingerbread Man (Carcassonne Winter Edition expansion) arrived today and I was very excited! Although there were just six new tiles I couldn't wait to play with them as they featured some really interesting configurations of city segments between them. There's usually a lot of competition for cities between my wife and I, and the inclusion of these tiles balanced this out quite nicely as the possibility of shutting each other out of our cities increased from "slim" to "reasonable". As a further consequence of this, we soon found that we completed far more cities (about half of them being two-tilers) and spent much less time patiently waiting for the "right tile" to come along.
The game itself got off to a particularly bad start for me when my wife completed a city for 26 points and received a further 20 points for having had two knights and the Gingerbread Man in it when it was completed. I almost lost interest in the game altogether after this, as it was difficult to stay motivated after very nearly being lapped whilst still on my first time round the score track! But fortunately I was soon able to reduce the gap (slightly) thanks to a 14 point city, also with the Gingerbread Man in it, which netted me 21 points and kept me in the game.
A few roads and a couple of cloisters helped me to draw level by the halfway point but we then found ourselves in the unusual situation whereby one of us closed a city and there were no incomplete cities left to move the Gingerbread Man into. In this situation we took the Gingerbread Man off the board and should have waited for a Gingerbread Man tile to be played before bringing him back (as per the official rules). Because we both enjoyed the difference that he made to the game though, we immediately placed him in the first incomplete city that became available a tile or two later.
Because the Gingerbread Man is moved either when one of the six new tiles is placed or when the city he's currently in is closed, he tended to move around quite a lot in our game and this generated a lot of bonus points. These points tended to be split quite equally between us but there was one city in particular that became rather overcrowded in order to maintain this. We weren't necessarily fighting for control of the city as it didn't look likely that it would ever be closed, but its size combined with the fact that the Gingerbread Man was in it meant that every knight either of us could get into the city was well worth it for the eventual bonus.
After placing the final tile I leant back in my chair to admire the view (photo attached)! There was a long road running from east to west which separated the landscape into a north farm and a south farm. I'd placed a farmer on the south farm quite early in the game and my wife didn't make any effort to share these points as it only touched three complete cities. The north farm however ended up being worth 27 points but we shared these at a cost of three farmers each. What ultimately (and incorrectly as it later transpired) made the difference was deciding to let the Gingerbread Man dish out his bonus one last time even though he hadn't left the city he was in. This was worth 20 points for my wife but 30 for me and this was just enough to tip the final scores in my favour by just three points!
Most of the expansions I've played for Carcassonne bring something new and vaguely exciting to the game, but this excitement can sometimes be rather short-lived if there's nothing else to look forward to once the new tiles have run out. Contrary to this, I felt that the Gingerbread Man was an excellent expansion as the new tiles alone added to my enjoyment of the game and the extra mechanic of how the Gingerbread Man himself works seem to be well thought out and in keeping with the general spirit of the game. In summary, it's difficult to imagine future games of Carcassonne Winter Edition without the Gingerbread Man and this is certainly a sign of a worthwhile expansion as far as I'm concerned!
270
« on: August 20, 2013, 02:12:51 PM »
Hello.
I've really enjoyed playing Carcassonne Winter Edition lately and I got hold of the Gingerbread Man expansion today. It was one of the most enjoyable games I've played for quite a while and my initial feeling towards the Gingerbread Man was that it added a lot to the game without being too difficult to follow or damaging to the standard rules.
Because we enjoyed it so much, my wife and I both missed the little guy when he had to be removed from the board as the city he was in was closed and there were no incomplete cities to move him to. Having read the Winter CAR it sounds as though we should then have waited for another Gingerbread Man tile to be played in order to bring him back into play. This makes sense I guess, but we decided to bring him back as soon as an incomplete city became available and I think this will become a house rule in our house...
Regardless of the above, the question I wanted to ask was if the Gingerbread Man is worth anything in the final scoring? The Winter CAR doesn't mention it (as far as I could see) but it made a big difference in our game as I finished with 3 knights in a 10-tile city with him so it was an extra 30 points if his bonus is given at the end of the game. How have others dealt with him at the end of a game?
Thanks,
Dan
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