Weekly Online Game

[jungleboy]

Ahh yes, of course, that was my suggestion

[jungleboy]

Guys, I might be a late injury withdrawal. I just burned my Carcassonne-playing hand and it really hurts!

[danisthirty]

Sorry to hear that jungleboy. I hope you recover soon.

[jungleboy]

OK, I am ready to play after all. Those who want to play, join the chat room here: http://sydby.com/carcassonne/irc/index.html

The game starts in 5-10 minutes.

[danisthirty]

Good game guys! I think The Tower brings out the worst in me.. 

[danisthirty]

Here are some screenshots and a quick summary of how I felt the game went:







To be perfectly honest, I did enjoy this game but I really felt that the towers spoiled it. Whether or not this is actually the case remains to be seen, but it seemed to me like the majority of the captured meeples belonged to me and I struggled to keep anything on the board in the first half of the game. Even when I tried to defend certain meeples by putting other meeples on top of towers ("capping" them?) the capper meeples would just get captured and then on the next move I'd lose the meeple I was trying to defend. I never actually ran out of meeples somehow, but at one point the other 3 players were sharing 6 of my meeples between them.

A good example of my frustration was when jungleboy captured yet another of my meeples (he finished the game with 3 of them but had 4 at one point) from a city and I made some comment or other. He replied that I should have been defending it better and I pointed out that the tower foundation was 6 tiles away and I'd already capped it twice! I did eventually complete the city in question but this was only because of a lucky tile draw rather than any amount of skill, tactics or planning...

I enjoyed the game a lot more once everyone else had run out of tower foundations! I used the last of mine to get my phantom back from B1nder and then captured a farmer belonging to jungleboy which had been there for most of the game. I had been sharing the farm with him earlier but, surprise surprise, my farmer got captured which left it all to him... or so we thought. It wasn't until I tried to claim the farm with my phantom (having successfully removed jungleboy's farmer) that I realised Rosco also had a farmer on it. Apparently nobody else had spotted this either (apart from Rosco) as he was connected to it from an adjacent farm which went under a bridge. It seemed too late to do anything much about it by this point but then I started thinking about how I could get onto it using some of my bridges and a plan (albeit a very optimistic one) began to form...

The last dozen tiles went very quickly as they included 2 bazaars; both were drawn by Rosco meaning I got first choice of tile both times. I extended an unclaimed city with a cccr tile and claimed both fields either side of the road with a meeple and my phantom. Not noticing that he'd run out of tower foundations, jungleboy placed a tower tile directly next to my tile with the intention of capturing yet another meeple of mine, but then realised he couldn't. This really helped me out though as I then used one of my bridges to connect both farmers to the main farm. It was so beautiful it deserves a screenshot so here it is:



I was leading on points and was guaranteed 30 bonus points from trade goods too but the scores were close enough that I needed the farm as well, even if it was shared. Rosco joined a second farmer of his onto the farm with his last tile but I was happy with this as it was still tied and felt safe. However, the last tile of the game fell to B1nder to place and it was a fffr tile with cloister. I don't know if it was deliberate or not as he hadn't really been taking part in the farm battle but he placed the cloister such that he could get 8 points from it and in so doing joined a third farmer of Rosco's onto the main farm. This lost me the farm, and consequently the game. To my discredit, I wasn't really very happy about this...

Anyway, all's fair in love and Carcassonne. The bridges really added an extra element to it although the castles were largely ignored, as was the builder for some reason. Well done to Rosco, and thanks also to jungleboy and B1nder for the excellent game!

[jungleboy]

Here are some screenshots and a quick summary of how I felt the game went:

Quick!

To be perfectly honest, I did enjoy this game but I really felt that the towers spoiled it. Whether or not this is actually the case remains to be seen, but it seemed to me like the majority of the captured meeples belonged to me and I struggled to keep anything on the board in the first half of the game. Even when I tried to defend certain meeples by putting other meeples on top of towers ("capping" them?) the capper meeples would just get captured and then on the next move I'd lose the meeple I was trying to defend. I never actually ran out of meeples somehow, but at one point the other 3 players were sharing 6 of my meeples between them.

If you don't like the tower, so be it. It's certainly true that the majority of followers captured were indeed yours! But playing with the tower is a skill. You need to consider where towers are, and where towers could appear, with every tile placement (and especially every meeple placement). If there is a tower anywhere in the row (within say 4-5 tiles) of where you want to place a meeple, you probably shouldn't place it there unless it's a feature you think you can close quickly. And if you do place what you think is an important meeple (i.e for a big farm or city) on the board, then you should try to make it tower-proof in your subsequent turns by placing non-tower pieces around it where possible.

I did eventually complete the city in question but this was only because of a lucky tile draw rather than any amount of skill, tactics or planning...

But luck is part of any Carcassonne game, not just games with the Tower.  This is the part of your dislike for the Tower that I don't really understand. If you play with I&C and you set up a city with a gap with four city sides so that you can complete it with a cathedral, then it's luck as to whether or not you draw one of the cathedrals or one of your opponents does. Anytime you try to join a city it's luck as to whether your opponent draws a two-city tile to block you out of it before you draw a 2+ sided city tile to jump into it. If you try to join someone's farm late in the game, it's luck as to whether your opponent draws a tile that can block you out of it or whether you draw the tile you need to join it, etc etc. At its core, the game combines skill and luck, and I think this is still true with the Tower.

I would say that using tower tiles to good effect by placing them near opponents' meeples, and using your tower pieces wisely (which I didn't do last night given that I ran out at a crucial moment) is skill, tactics and planning.



This was an absolutely epic move that deserved better! The Phantom must have risen another notch in Dan's Carcassonne Pantheon after that!

The bridges really added an extra element to it although the castles were largely ignored, as was the builder for some reason.

This was my first ever game with BC&B (I only bought the real-life expansion last week) and I quite enjoyed it. I think the bazaar variant on JCZ worked quite well, and the bridges did have a big impact.

Thinking about it now, perhaps Traders and Builders doesn't go that well with the Tower - or at least the builder part. The builder is about extending cities/roads and usually keeping them unfinished for longer as a result, whereas the Tower is about finishing features quickly before your meeple gets kidnapped, so they are not really compatible in this way. The trade goods become important with destructive expansions though, because fewer cities seem to be completed and the scores are lower, so the value of the goods rises.

[danisthirty]

Here are some screenshots and a quick summary of how I felt the game went:

Quick!

Ha ha. I did get a bit carried away didn't I? I went back and put the word "quick" in italics afterwards, but as someone who took part in the league and the world cup you should know by now that quick emails/ messages aren't something I do well (as demonstrated by this post)! 

To be perfectly honest, I did enjoy this game but I really felt that the towers spoiled it. Whether or not this is actually the case remains to be seen, but it seemed to me like the majority of the captured meeples belonged to me and I struggled to keep anything on the board in the first half of the game. Even when I tried to defend certain meeples by putting other meeples on top of towers ("capping" them?) the capper meeples would just get captured and then on the next move I'd lose the meeple I was trying to defend. I never actually ran out of meeples somehow, but at one point the other 3 players were sharing 6 of my meeples between them.

If you don't like the tower, so be it. It's certainly true that the majority of followers captured were indeed yours! But playing with the tower is a skill. You need to consider where towers are, and where towers could appear, with every tile placement (and especially every meeple placement). If there is a tower anywhere in the row (within say 4-5 tiles) of where you want to place a meeple, you probably shouldn't place it there unless it's a feature you think you can close quickly. And if you do place what you think is an important meeple (i.e for a big farm or city) on the board, then you should try to make it tower-proof in your subsequent turns by placing non-tower pieces around it where possible.

Thanks for the tips!  No doubt I have a lot to learn about the tower and I respect the fact that you and plenty of other people seem to enjoy it well enough. I struggled to track where all the towers were largely because I was playing on a computer rather than up at a table but I won't try to use this as an excuse! I frequently seemed to underestimate how far some of the taller towers could reach which didn't help either.

One criticism that I will stand by regardless of this though is that even if you've placed a meeple in a "safe" place, it isn't unlikely even in largeish games like ours that someone could place a tower foundation directly adjacent to him and capture him before you've had any chance to defend him. I think this happened quite a lot as I did at least pay some attention to where the towers were when I placed the majority of my meeples and yet they still seemed to vanish. I don't know how practical it would be but I think some sort of "cooling-off period" would be of benefit so that everyone has had the opportunity to put a meeple on top of a tower foundation before it's had the chance to be built on, although I fully expect that there could be any number of reasons why this is a stupid idea...

I did eventually complete the city in question but this was only because of a lucky tile draw rather than any amount of skill, tactics or planning...

But luck is part of any Carcassonne game, not just games with the Tower.  This is the part of your dislike for the Tower that I don't really understand. If you play with I&C and you set up a city with a gap with four city sides so that you can complete it with a cathedral, then it's luck as to whether or not you draw one of the cathedrals or one of your opponents does. Anytime you try to join a city it's luck as to whether your opponent draws a two-city tile to block you out of it before you draw a 2+ sided city tile to jump into it. If you try to join someone's farm late in the game, it's luck as to whether your opponent draws a tile that can block you out of it or whether you draw the tile you need to join it, etc etc. At its core, the game combines skill and luck, and I think this is still true with the Tower.

I would say that using tower tiles to good effect by placing them near opponents' meeples, and using your tower pieces wisely (which I didn't do last night given that I ran out at a crucial moment) is skill, tactics and planning.

I agree with this completely. Unlike most of my post, that bit wasn't a criticism of The Tower as such! I just wanted to acknowledge that I was lucky to complete this city and that it could have been any of us who did so...

This was an absolutely epic move that deserved better! The Phantom must have risen another notch in Dan's Carcassonne Pantheon after that!

I was delighted that this worked and the fact that you ended up helping me out purely because you hadn't noticed that you'd run out of tower foundations was the icing on the cake! I really felt that it should have been a winning move coming at such a late stage of the game, so I felt more than a little hard done-by when B1nder joined Rosco's third farmer onto the field with his cloister. I certainly don't hold that against him though as it was the best place for him to win points with the tile he drew (well, one of them)...

The bridges really added an extra element to it although the castles were largely ignored, as was the builder for some reason.

This was my first ever game with BC&B (I only bought the real-life expansion last week) and I quite enjoyed it. I think the bazaar variant on JCZ worked quite well, and the bridges did have a big impact.

The bridges are good fun but they can make it rather easy to "glom on" to someone else's farm (as we saw). I like that they give you extra tile-placement options though, and felt that the majority of the bridges placed in our game were used very carefully. I really enjoy castles too, but I don't think these work well with The Tower as there's usually a certain amount of waiting required for some specific feature to be completed in order to win an extra share of the points. The bazaars I don't like but I agree that the no-bidding variant fixed most of what I don't like about them, and they seemed to work well in our game (once we'd all realised that you have to click the tile before the "Select" button appears).

Thinking about it now, perhaps Traders and Builders doesn't go that well with the Tower - or at least the builder part. The builder is about extending cities/roads and usually keeping them unfinished for longer as a result, whereas the Tower is about finishing features quickly before your meeple gets kidnapped, so they are not really compatible in this way. The trade goods become important with destructive expansions though, because fewer cities seem to be completed and the scores are lower, so the value of the goods rises.

I agree with regards to Traders & Builders + The Tower not working very well together.

Closing Rosco's city was one of the best tiles I placed in this game as it virtually guaranteed me the majority of the trade goods. I was surprised though that only one other trade good was won (by you) throughout the whole game.


All things considered, a great game that provided us all with a lot to think about! 

[Rosco]

I have to say I love the towers but I agree that sometimes it can be a little unfair.  When we play , we use a rule which I thought was THE rule, but according to jcloisterzone I am wrong.
We play that the first tower block can only capture meeples on the same tile as itself. Then 2 blocks includes 1 tile in each direction horizontally or vertically and 3 blocks is 2 tills etc. Therefore you get that braying time you talked about. 
We also play that as the move the wood phase you can retrieve a meeple from the top of a tower. It works well.

[danisthirty]

Those sound like sensible house rules. If The Tower ever hits the table again in my house I think we may be borrowing them!

[jungleboy]

When we play, we use a rule which I thought was THE rule, but according to jcloisterzone I am wrong.
We play that the first tower block can only capture meeples on the same tile as itself. Then 2 blocks includes 1 tile in each direction horizontally or vertically and 3 blocks is 2 tills etc.

This is a really interesting house rule. But just to confirm that it is not the official rule. From the CAR:

Which followers can be captured depends on the height of the tower on which the tower piece was just placed. If the tower has one storey, the player has a choice of five tiles from which a follower can be taken prisoner: the tower tile itself, as well as the tiles which connect to it horizontally and vertically.

If the tower is built to the second storey, then the player has nine opportunities for taking a prisoner.

[danisthirty]

The clocks went back in the UK at the weekend which means that the weekly forum game is now going to be at 7:30pm for me rather than 8:30. Unfortunately this isn’t a good time in my house as this is when the kids normally go to bed (or will just have gone to bed) and as such I might be able to play or might have to spend the next half hour running up and down stairs fetching toys/ reading stories etc. Hopefully I’ll be able to join in from time to time but won’t commit to anything in advance without risking frequent mid-game “brb”s and I don’t want to do that to anyone else.

We’ll just see how it goes I guess.

[MrNumbers]

The same happened in Latvia and, I suppose, in all EU countries. So why don't we stick to the previous time? I think everyone will agree.

[danisthirty]

The same happened in Latvia and, I suppose, in all EU countries. So why don't we stick to the previous time? I think everyone will agree.

I didn't realise that this happened in all countries across Europe. I thought it was just a UK thing. In that case everything is fine and I will definitely be back for more of the same! 

Any idea who else can play this Thursday?

[jungleboy]

I might have to miss this Thursday's game because I agreed to teach a class that won't finish until 21:30. But I'll let you know for sure in a couple of days.

Meanwhile, we put our clocks back last weekend too.