Wheel of Fortune: Tips for Tactics & Best Expansions to Use?

[kothmann]

I'm hoping to have a few games with the Wheel of Fortune soon, and I'm wondering about tips for tactics and also what expansions work best?

Here are my thoughts, but would love advice from those who have actually played.

Adjustments to Basic Play:

• Be more eager than usual to have two knights in a city, particularly when there are multiple pennants in that city.
• Place farmers earlier--you will probably have chances to remove them later and they can bring you points from the wheel even if you aren't winning that field.
• Similarly, be more likely to place monks, because you can get points from the wheel and have a chance to remove them.

Placing a Meeple on the Wheel:

I started with some math.  The distribution of pig motion distances are: 11 one tiles, 5 two tiles, and 3 three tiles.  So, the chance that the pig hits the next space around the wheel when the first wheel tile is drawn are 11/19, or 58%.  The chance that it hits the second space on the first tile is 5/19, or 26%, but it will also hit the second space on the second tile 58% of 58% of the time (33%), so the total chance for hitting the second space on the first two wheel tiles is 59%.  By similar math, the chance of hitting the third space on the first time around is 65%.

Since you don't want to wait too long to get your meeple back, you should always pick the first or second spot after the pig, preferring the one that pays 6 points if there is no other meeple on that spot?

Expansions to Use

• Magic Portals Because of the Pestilence wheel space, there will be empty features, so these should 6 tiles should be useful?
• Traders & Builders Because 17/19 wheel tiles are roads, it would be good to make cities more exciting?
• Flying Machines Because of the city-heavy Traders tile mix, it might be good to add some more roads and open fields, as well another way to sneak into features?
• Shrines Still more tiles that are heavy on roads and fields and create empty features after a challenge? (I'll actually be using the volcano tiles from P&D as surrogate shrines.)

Looking forward to hearing other thoughts.  Thanks!

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=6041.0

[Decar]

I find this expansion and strategy don't work well together.  The primary problem is that the scoring of meeple on the centre circle is basically random.  The plague messes up most people's play, which can leave large claimed elements exposed to the next player.  And when the tiles run out, your meeple are stuck doing nothing.  The only thing that's worked for me is to get meeple on the centre circle near the start of the game; typically you find you'll rack up points for little work.

You can probably tell it's not one of my favourites   But maybe I've not played it enough to learn the subtle strategy, or played with players with equal understanding of it.

I've not played it with expansions but the ones you've suggested are probably good ones.  I suspect expansion 1 will offer additional points for traditional players not risking the centre square; but maybe that's not what you want to happen.  Having one or two meeple occupied in the centre means you'll have less to risk with other expansions.  I've got a feeling that Hills and Sheep or an expansion that gives you an extra couple of meeple to use may be good to try with it.

But don't listen to me. Have fun with the experimentation.

[Halfling]

The improved tile variation over the base game is a big positive for me. The wheel adds more options for when you get yet another road tile.

I tend to add the 10 gq mini expansion non-river tiles to give more variety without adding rule complexity.

A definite tactic is to leave a meeple on a low level road to try to limit losses from the plague, as is scoring opposing meeples that are using this tactic to up impact of plague to your opponents.

If you enjoy a mega game with loads of tiles the WoF can be a good start tile as opposed to The 12 City tiles. The extra option of using the wheel has to be carefully thought out as the numbered tiles come out less frequently. Lots of extra points will be scored and the opportunity to reclaim a rashly placed meeple via the plague.

Inns and cathedrals and traders and builders work well for sure.  Magic portals can be used instead of the flyers, better tiles, but risk element removed.

Finally, if you like a smallish game with oodles of points, try with just Under the Big Top expansion!

[Weetek23]

WoF became very popular for our family games after I finally got my hands on one after many years (a long and dull story short: I held a box of fresh new WoF game at a stall of Czech Carcassonne publisher in Prague "For Games" fair back in 2010 but as I was told that a Czech edition would be due, I did not buy it. The Czech edition never materialized.)
I noticed that most of family players largely refuse to deploy a meeple on the wheel unless we play Phantom. One extra phantom meeple makes them use it frequently.