Carcassonne Highlights in 2016

[jungleboy]

As another year starts to wind down, I thought it would be fun if we discussed our Carcassonne highlights for the year. There's still a few weeks to go until the end of the year but that will give everyone time to think about their highlights and add them to the thread!

2016 is the year that I finally ventured out of the Carcassonne universe and discovered other games (with Chooselife and Decar largely to blame for this), but there were still some great Carcassonne moments. Since I own pretty much everything I want to own already, my list is less about acquisitions and more about meet-ups and 'experiences'.

Here are my highlights (in no particular order):

- Meeting danisthirty and Decar in London early in the year and playing my first game of South Seas with them.

- The Oxford meetup with a group of CC members, where I played my first game of New World (which I quite liked).

- The 'Carcathon' with JT Atomico, Halfling and Curt in July, where we played 20 Carcassonne games back-to-back in one crazy day. Unfortunately I played terribly more or less all day but it was still a great experience, plus I played a bunch of new Carcassonne games. Cardcassonne surprisingly stood out as a pretty cool little game.

- Receiving a shrinkwrapped version of Cathars by surprise/accident from Cundco instead of the German Cathedrals that I had ordered.

- Playing two World Cup games in person: one against Grabushka at Essen and one against Chooselife in "the greatest city in the world", Estoril. 

- Essen: Meeting Jéré, Grabushka, MrNumbers and Skane, and playing my first game of Amazonas with danisthirty and Decar at Essen. Decar really likes drawing river tiles!

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=2978.0

[jungleboy]

Am I the only person who has any Carcassonne highlights this year?

[danisthirty]

Am I the only person who has any Carcassonne highlights this year?

Sorry but I'm still too unintelligent to have thought of any because of my moustache. I'll be shaving it off on Thursday though so expect some outbursts of genius then...

[Decar]

I'm hoping to make it to December, before reviewing the year  

[kettlefish]

The highlight 2016 for  some members was the Spiel in Essen and also the special fan-members meeting.

[Luthadel]

My Carcassonne highlight of 2016 was discovering the game, and expansions, then ending up here over the weekend 

[danisthirty]

My Carcassonne highlight of 2016 was discovering the game, and expansions, then ending up here over the weekend 

Excellent highlights! Welcome to the forums Luthadel!

[danisthirty]

They say that a picture tells a thousand words, so here's 4000 words describing some of my highlights from 2016 (click photos for full details):









I'm sure there will be more to come later when I've had more time to think about the year overall.

[gantry]

My highlights:

(1) I've played more Carcassonne this year than I have in my last 3 years put together. It's great to get back into the game more often, with my wife and I both splitting out time between Carc and her favourite game Catan.
(2) I've introduced a few more friends to Carcassonne. Sometimes as we get older we're always looking to save money, but at the same time our thoughts are that in order to have fun we have to go out and spend money. I've made more of a point of staying home, inviting friends to come play some games.
(3) Last but not least, I am so very glad that our community continues to flourish with the help of so many of you. I am thankful that we have each and every one of you, the authors, moderators, admins and most importantly community members here. I'd also like to thank kettlefish especially, she is my anchor and keeps me up to date on what is going on. Unlike most other social media platforms, this one is generally low on drama (although we have our occasional share). So from the bottom of my heart I'd like to thank you all for yet another good year here on Carcassonne Central!
 

[kettlefish]

some of the highlights for the game Carcassonne - CC II New Edition.
I like the last page from the expansions 3rd, 5th, 4th and the next will be 6th.
The last page shows the game play with other expansions. Some of the clarification of rules are now part of the official rules.

[Chooselife]

My Highlights:

- Being 1/140 of the awesome present the Community, with a huge merit not to Dan off course, is a clear highlight.

- The big one I 've to say it's was the in-person World Cup game with Jungleboy, the first in-person game in ages (not counting the usual frantic National Championship ones).

[What If?]

After being a casual carcassonne player for some years it was in 2016 my son got smitten by the carc-virus and we started playing for real. As he turned 7 we had played quite a few mega-carc games and started developing house rules and such. We played with him having one more meeple, btw, typically in larger games. Nice handicap I also use when introducing the game to new people.

Finding CC, wow! I have not only tried most fan expansions that the new (2016) printer at work now has been busy with, I have recieved gifts from unknown people, met people and have also discovered JCZ here which really made all players in the house (we are quite a lot) level up their game.

This year I also played my first two tournaments here (one still waiting to be finished...) and reached qf in the world cup where I lost a very tight game against one of the finalists, ok with that!

Through CC I found spielematerial.de which let us materialize some home rules and fan expansions.

2016 also saw me pay ridiculous amounts of money for printed carton.

[Decar]

I've been wanting to sit down since December to write something here, but finding it hard to get started at the moment.

I thought I'd at least get started.  Most of you know I try to look at all the images and photos I took throughout the year to remind myself what I was up to in the world of Carcassonne.  2016 was a pretty mixed year for me.  There were some real high-highs like visiting Essen and our meetup in Oxford and meeting Jungleboy three times!  But there were some pretty low moments too.  Perhaps it's not possible to experience one without the other; but I don't think that.  I like to think positive actions build a more positive world and between us we can make awesome things happen.

January:

I bought a trunk to fill with games:

Then I bought more games, that didn't fit in the trunk:

I printed some tiles for Rosco:


And made a Colourblind Comparison sheet - my private battle with the game's industry.


February

I shared some goodies I bought in the States in 2015 and also included a Carcassonne Box. 
But no one noticed it contained a 70-point score track.

Thanks to Dan for sharing the Advent Quiz prize with me also.
I also bought a lot of tiles from Cundco - we'll see more of those and the bags of meeple later!


March
I set my computer alight and modified JCloisterzone, ahead of Paul's 10k game to play a very big game:

It took over a week for two AI to play.
March was Santorini season - I found the picture!

The completionists were getting the better of me too:

Happy to own this too:

This was my pre-Essen shelfie:


April
More purchases:

Printed some tiles:

I forgot I made this Carcassonne Expansion Buyer's Guide:


April also saw the first Meetup of the year in Oxford:

and some goodies for people:


May
Postage nightmares...I can only hope the Meeple ex Machina is causing havoc in the gear box:

Fun with QR Codes:

A Chance Encounter with Rich the Fish in Bristol too:


That's all I have time for at the moment.  Almost halfway through the year.  Hopefully that'll give enough time for people to load all the photos

[Paul]

Although I had several highlights this year, like the amazing Korn I finding its way into my possession courtesy of Kettlefish (which I will never forget!);
  Undoubtly it's the world record game set on Mars 2016 playing a single game of Carcassonne using over 10 thousand tiles that trumped everything.

http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=2382.0



Which... I will finish the diary section some day soon.

[Decar]

Who are you kidding Paul? - You know giving away an infamous Dan Chard signed tile was the highlight of your year