Day 3 - ThursdayAfter breakfast MrNumbers taught us how to play Team Play. Mr Numbers thought I was mad risking 6 points on 5 consecutive blue cards, but I had 4 of them in my hand at the start of the game. Unfortunately, it took far too long for one of the blue 4s to come out. In that time Jenny and Gerty managed to clear up enough cards. Mr Numbers and I both made a valiant last stand, but there was no hope for us.
During the morning tournament session, team UK had to play team Latvia (Mr Numbers & Udo). I got to play Udo first. It was a very tough game, I was several points behind Udo for most of the game - we both knew that I would have to take the farm in order to win the game. With Udo's last tile he decided the claim a city for a few week points. While he was deciding where to play, I pre-drew the last tile and took a quick glimpse. My heart froze....relax Decar....don't draw attention to yourself...just don't look at the tile again.....breath....give Udo his time.....Unbelievable! I had draw a RRFF tile allowing to me to take the farm. Udo couldn't believe it, if he'd played the tile the other way he would have blocked me and allowed him to win the game! Many lessons learned from this game!
Next up was my game with Mr Numbers - The first game I lost - I scored a lot of points for the dango on the left but failed to get in on the large central farm - the final score was 84:90 so very close end!
Before lunch, we played KJW's Mistkafer! with Udo and Mr Numbers - it was a great game and the first time I'd played it. There's a push your luck element and it's fun stealing dice from each other. I was able to get the 12 required dung piles to win the game!
Next up was KJW's "One to 9" a game similar to Rummy, but I'd not seen it before. Like all KJW's designs there are only a few choices available, but it's very difficult to know which the best is to make! Mrs Decar, Christof and Mr Numbers played.
Finally, we played “Do de li do” and broke many fingers slapping the crocodile. What a silly game, it’s great fun and a great ice breaker!
While we were playing, Klaus-Jurgen Wrede demonstrated 2 games he was working on. I can’t tell you much about them, but they were consistent with KJW’s decision making games…also more tiles!
In the afternoon we visited the old town of Gorlitz. A tour guide took us for a short walk through the town:
After the tour we grabbed a coffee and I took part in play-testing a prototype mini-expansion with Mr Numbers, KJW, Udo, Moritz and Christof. That was going to be a tough game at the best of times and I performed really badly. I got to play the expansion again with 3-players later and I’ll be interested to see how they develop – it will be an very long time until they are made available to the public.
Dreams come trueOn the way home, the Carcassonne-on-tour bus at the Gorlitz go-karting track. Mortiz, Klaus-Jurgen, Mr Numbers, Mrs Decar and I spent 20 minutes on the ring. It’s the first time either of the Decars had been on a race-track, so we didn’t offer much of a challenge. In the end I believe we were a good 70 points behind having been lapped once (on the new score track of course). I say: dreams come true, because I would never in a million years have thought I’d be on a race track being over taken (or undertaking in the UK) by Klaus-Jurgen Wrede and and Mortiz Brunhhofer. It was a surreal experience! Klaus Jurgen won the race and Mr Numbers took third!
We got back to the Abbey a little later than dinner, so some food had been kept for us. We had dinner with Klaus-Jurgen and we chatted about the types of games we like to play. In typical fashion, you can never remember the games you’ve been playing when someone puts you on the spot. He said he likes to house rule some games to suite his game groups – I joked that being a game designer probably makes that a lot easier!
After dinner, it was time to compete in “Beat the Meeple” a contest of mental and physical ability – the Carcassonne Fans took on KJW and MB in a gameshow of 10 rounds. Each round the scores available jumped increase from 1point up to 10points.
Here is a collection of photos from the events. We were very lucky to have Mr Numbers on the team. One game required us to estimate the distance, as the crow files between 2 points. Mr Numbers knew that the distance must be shorter than 1200km because that was the distance he drove from Riga to Ostriz.
I took on the Meeple-catapult event. We had to race to launch 3 meeple on the end of a spoon and get them to land into the cup. In British fashion, I noticed a technicality in the rules are performed something equivalent to the Fosby-flop. Be sure to check out the photos. Through I was accused of cheating, the technique was considered valid as I had already asked that the spoon and cup could be place anywhere on the cup. My technique will be seen again in later tournaments
Other hilarious moments involved our team exactly guessing the combined height of Moritz and Klaus-Jurgen.
Needless to say: the Carcassonne-fans won and we were awarded sets of followers as prizes!
To finish we took a photo of all the attendees of the First International Carcassonne Meetup:
Then it was time for more games!
Mr Numbers taught us another game, which I cannot remember the name of – it involves trying to find treasure within a certain number of guesses. After 6 guesses the cards are reshuffled. Two players were ‘locals’ trying to prevent the treasure from being taken. I quite liked the game, as I don’t really like bluffing games, but I felt this was well implemented:
Next up: MORE SKULL KING!
I lost this game because I stupidly didn’t use a pirate to escape a turn, for some reason I’d hoped I could have thrown the last round.
After that I played Carcassonne: Safari Again, The Decars played with Maj.Frost and Mr Numbers – if I recall I managed to win by one-point – I managed to complete quite a few ‘cloisters’ giving me a lot of choice in later rounds.
While we were playing Kettlefish, Martin and Mortiz spent approximately 3 hours reviewing rule clarifications from Carcassonne Central’s forum. I know Kettlefish will update us on this in the coming weeks! It’s good to see the HiG team spend so long considering the answers!
Finally, while everyone else was playing SKULL KING, I played Over Hills & Dales with Christof and Kettlefish. It was quite funny, because none of us could quite remember the rules. I’ve only played it a couple of times and Kettlefish had done the rule clarifications. Christof had written the rules and didn’t remember them either
I won by a single point – and also made the German Flag!
We finished the night playing Love Letter. It’s a bit embarrassing, but I’ve only played this game once before even though it’s immensely popular! Having the German edition made it bloody difficult! I got some good tips from Mortiz:
However, after about 20-minutes it made sense. But by then Maj. Frost had taken the victory.
Mr Numbers and I finished the night with a quick game of Majesty, as I mentioned before, I felt like I forgot something….but neither of us could find anything in the rules to contradict what we’d done.
Day 4: FRIDAYAfter breakfast, I caught up with Benny (from CarcF) to see what improvements he had made to his Carcassonne-Magnet set. He’d been able to recess the magnets in the meeple, and they worked far better than previously!
I took a couple of snaps comparing the tiles to regular, travel and his special edition:
Another victory for Black!
In the penultimate round of the tournament the UK had to play team Hessen (Martin and Gerti). I played Gerti first and though I won by almost 50 points, thanks to a farm, it was a stressful game. Gerti was missing one or 2 important tiles and managed to draw all but 1 cloister, so the potential for big scores were on the table!
My game against Martin was very successful. He accidentally trapped 2 of his meeple in a cloister and spent most of the game with no meeple. I trapped another, which was a pretty mean move and that resulted in me taking my time to claim the best farms. I recall a good opportunity for Martin to merge my large farm with his smaller one, but I think I blocked it and backed up a farm with the last few turns.
Before lunch I played The Fruit Trees with Kettlefish, I couldn’t find this expansion when I looked for it a few weeks ago, so this was the first time I played it. It’s quite good, but our trees came out near the end of the game.
Meanwhile:
During the morning Klaus-Jurgen was kind enough to spend a few minutes chatting with me. I passed on several of the messages from members of Carcassonne Central that you’ve posted here and thanked him for all his hard work. He signed several tiles for us, he confirmed that he doesn’t sign cheques; a question I’ve been wondering about for a while. He told me he doesn’t mind signing things because he plays tennis and has strong wrists.
He wrote this very important message to everyone here at Carcasonne Central:
While this was going on I was playing a game of Go with PresetM. I saw he had brought a board with him, and I mentioned I used to play. PresetM used to write a Go-newsletter for the DDR. He absolutely mashed me, but I like to think I made him think once or twice during the game. I managed to kill a very large group of my own stones. If I had simply connected them, or better yet, make a set of eyes sooner, the thrashing would have at least been closer. It was great playing Go again and appreciative of PresetM’s teaching!
For Coffee & Cake Annett made us waffles with cream and jam. Afterwards it, was the final games of the tournament:
First up I had to play Benny, he managed to draw every road tile at the worst possible moments – I had to work quite hard to stay ahead but near the end of the game Benny was out of meeple, allowing me to nip ahead. We both needed a cloister with a road to come out, but when I looked over at Mrs_Decar’s game I realized they had 3 in their game….and no surprise: our deck only had 1!
The next game for me was vitally important!
Mr Numbers had lost 2 games (against Benny? and Kettlefish) , while I had yet to lose one. If I was able to win this next game I would be ranked the top player of the tournament. The UK team had lost a point to Latvia meaning they would have to lose their matches to come joint 1st on the team prize!
My final opponent was non-other than Maj.Frost – It was my turn to score nothing but roads. It was pretty clear that the only way I would catch up would be to take the majority in the farm, with 9 cities. Maj.Frost had set up 2 excellent opportunities to join the farm, but some how the wrong tiles were coming out for him. As you can see by the map: I managed to get one last farmer down on the RRFF tile Maj.Frost needed!
It was a terrific game all in all and meant Mrs_Decar and I would be able to claim the non-cash prizes for 2nd place team also!
The afternoon included even MORE SKULL KING and the sorting out of all the base games:
We also played this game…. I have no idea what it’s called…..we lost pretty badly!
I recall playing dodiledo again and breaking a few more fingers!
Time for some more games of Azul and Love Letter. Mr Numbers….are you the princess?
The evening started with the important prize giving:
I was awarded the top-overall player prize – which was a prototype tile created by Klaus-Jurgen Wrede for Carcassonne: South Seas. It’s a wonderful tile because it shows the banana and fishing-boat mechanics. The tile is numbered: #3
Mr Numbers & Udo (Team Latvia) won the Overall team prize, Udo was unable to attend, so Mr Numbers got to collect the impressive 5kg concrete Meeple. We all joked that his farming skills will be much improved with this large meeple to contest with
Mr Numbers was also presented a Horse print from the artist of Carcassonne:Over Hills & Dales (Doris Matthaus).
Mrs_Decar & I (Team UK) won 2nd place for the team prize – we were presented with a special Carcassonne Clock as well as another signed print of a Sheep. The sheep was very apt as my wife had spent a number of hours spinning at the event.
Next up was Meeple: Bingo!
Many prizes were presented – Mr Numbers won another signed print from Doris Matthaus & Jenny won a copy of the Hunters & Gatherers + Robber & King mini-expansion. Maj.Frost required this expansion to complete his collection and Klaus-Jurgen Wrede had already presented me with his final copy that he had signed for a giveaway.
Benny, PresetM & Kettlefish also won prizes:
We played some games with the rest of our evening, I was invited to play a very secret prototype which may be released some time next year by Carcassonne-on-Tour. I can’t say much about it, other than we played it on Friday, so I hope it receives the title: “Much Ado About Herring!”
Over on the other table Mrs_Decar and Mr Numbers teamed up against Gerti & Maj.Frost with Star Wars: Carcassonne!
More later back to work now