Carcassonne Dream Teams

[danisthirty]

Rosco and I teamed up against “The Glomming Knights” (Hounk and Merlin_89) for a friendly team game last night, so I thought I’d share some feedback here...

Firstly, the expansions we used (River 2 + Princess & Dragon) worked well and provided a lot of interest. Trying to protect two different colours from the Dragon was a very new and interesting concept for me!

Secondly, the game was very slow (especially since it was a friendly and there was nothing at stake). I think it would be fair to say that Hounk and Merlin_89 took the majority of the time whereas Rosco and I played relatively quickly, communicating via a direct conversation from the chat room. For this reason, I think the use of something such as Skype where you can talk directly to your team mate would be very useful and would help to speed things up a bit. This is what Decar and I are hoping to do anyway.

Thirdly, it’s good to know that if you draw a tile that doesn’t benefit you in any way, you can usually find a way of helping your team mate out. I was a bit unlucky with the tiles I drew and had a score of just 8 as the final tile was being placed , but I was able to generate some good points for Rosco on a handful of occasions.

Fourthly, it works well to share features with your team mate as often as you can, even if one of your opponents also has an equal share in the feature. A 24-point city being scored equally between 3 players still represents a 24-point advantage for one team. Trying to win features outright is a waste of meeples unless you’re competing against one (or both) member(s) of the opposite team.

Fifthly, don’t play with Rosco. He does weird, inexplicable things . Good luck MrNumbers!

[quevy]

I do not know what you think, but I think the talks with teammate on where to place a tile should not be there.

[Rich_The_Fish]

Thanks for the all the info Dan, looking forward to playing my (our) first game. Hadn't thought about trying to share features with my team mate - that's a very good tip! Cheers

[jungleboy]

I do not know what you think, but I think the talks with teammate on where to place a tile should not be there.

I've been thinking about this too. I'm not sure what my preference is. There are some team card games where you're not allowed to talk to your teammate, and part of the skill of those games is to understand what your teammate is doing and how you can best work together without being able to discuss strategy. So that could also be a nice aspect of this event. 

[Hounk]

I would not have considered it, if it would not have been brought up by the other players yesterday. But I like the talks, and it's even included in the official non-coop-Carcassonne rules. But I think, this is a point, we should go for skype to speed things up by talking instead of writing.

Another point is, that farm hints are prohibited by the rules. I think without, you will always take a little more time checking the farms. I'm totally OK with this, but people less patience should maybe consider agreeing on using them. In regular games, I'd switched them sometimes briefly on to get a quick overview on field battles with let's say 5 farmers vs. 4, not letting other players wait. But with P&D there normally aren't that much farmers in a particular field anyway, because the dragon eats some of them. And coop might even decrease that a bit, like Dan pointed out. So this is probably not critical.

[Leven]

I do not know what you think, but I think the talks with teammate on where to place a tile should not be there.

I've been thinking about this too. I'm not sure what my preference is. There are some team card games where you're not allowed to talk to your teammate, and part of the skill of those games is to understand what your teammate is doing and how you can best work together without being able to discuss strategy. So that could also be a nice aspect of this event.

Please consider that there are teams here where the two players cannot communicate so effectively (either in writing or by talking) simply because they don't speak any common language like native. I'm afraid that could lead to a slight advantage of those teams where both players speak native English. That's why I'd like to suggest NOT using chat rooms to give hints to the teammate.

[Decar]

Dont forget one of the teams consists of a couple sat in the same room; we cannot expect them to play in silence.  Time constraints are always an issue, but games can be saved and continued later if necessary. Carcassonne supports inter-player chat, I see no reason why this cant be through chat, hangouts with translate, skype, semaphore or even rfc1149. Or just screaming NO before your team mate commits their turn, if there is no common tongue.

[danisthirty]

OK, so it seems we’ve come unstuck a little already. Please allow me to attempt to stick us back together!

With regard to the communication within teams, my intention was that this should be allowed as it kind of underpins the whole “team” aspect of the competition. Without it, teams are no more than two individuals with a common goal whereas I was hoping this could be an opportunity to enjoy building friendships while we develop our team tactics and a collaborative approach to game play. In short, I see no reason to forbid discussion within teams as long as it doesn’t slow the game down too much. Apologies in advance if this doesn’t suit everyone, but I think this is the most sensible and expected approach.

With regard to JCZ’s player aids, I’m increasingly aware that some people prefer to use these more than others and will probably continue to use them regardless of my requests to avoid them since there’s no way of tracking this anyway. I prefer to keep my carc games as “pure” as possible by ignoring these, but obviously this is just me. So in short, I can’t control this, so use them as you wish.

[khalidqasrawi]

OK, so it seems we’ve come unstuck a little already. Please allow me to attempt to stick us back together!

With regard to the communication within teams, my intention was that this should be allowed as it kind of underpins the whole “team” aspect of the competition. Without it, teams are no more than two individuals with a common goal whereas I was hoping this could be an opportunity to enjoy building friendships while we develop our team tactics and a collaborative approach to game play. In short, I see no reason to forbid discussion within teams as long as it doesn’t slow the game down too much. Apologies in advance if this doesn’t suit everyone, but I think this is the most sensible and expected approach.

With regard to JCZ’s player aids, I’m increasingly aware that some people prefer to use these more than others and will probably continue to use them regardless of my requests to avoid them since there’s no way of tracking this anyway. I prefer to keep my carc games as “pure” as possible by ignoring these, but obviously this is just me. So in short, I can’t control this, so use them as you wish.

I'm in favour of communication. Good fit learning and we are not quite at the point where the conventions of the game are as strong as in games such as Bridge where a strong understanding of communication through action underpins the game.

Player aids? I like projected score. I like knowing what tiles are left by keeping track in my head or on paper. I have a build of JCZ with remaining tiles but I have never used it in a match. I don't use farm preview except as a quick check sometimes but have no issues with it. When Imelda and I play base game we don't mind a quick cross check against the tile list to see how many of each there are. Counting out aloof is forbidden. I think important to allow people to see what tiles exist in an expansion at any point. I like being able to see where a tile could go but I think that should be visible to ask players.

We could add a tournament option to JCZ which implements no aids but the one that I would keep is the tile list.

My 2 cents.

[Decar]

We could add a tournament option to JCZ which implements no aids but the one that I would keep is the tile list.

I have a Change Request Open to turn off player aids for tournament games.

[Halfling]

I didn't know there were any player aids!  Doh!!

[Rosco]

i am in two minds about this - i dont like anything except projected points as it saves time because i would add it up anyway.  farm hints - i dont like this as part of the skill is seeing the farms without a computer programme.  As for tile counters - i think this is profoundly wrong - either you have the ability to tile count and therefore lucky you, or you dont and you are with the vast majority of players.  However, as Dan has said, it is impossible to control this so i think it would probably be best just to say - do what you want! just no reprogrammed versions of JCZ!!!!!

[Rich_The_Fish]

I wasn't aware there was a tile counter, although perhaps it's in a newer version of JCZ. I go find a few of the other features helpful though, such as showing recently placed tiles (handy if you don't spot where an opponent has just gone). However I agree with the general consensus on here, in that most of these shouldn't be used for tournaments. I do think that team mates should communicate, but they should type quickly! What about setting the time limit for each turn (although no idea what happens if it reaches zero).

[danisthirty]

I wasn't aware there was a tile counter, although perhaps it's in a newer version of JCZ

I think the most recent version is 3.4.1. This doesn't include a tile counter in the sense that it shows you how many tiles of each configuration are left, but it does include the tile "checklists" that come with the game (and expansions) which tell you how many of each type of tile there are in total at the start. I avoid this as it seems to me like the sort of thing that should be done from memory, but I doubt very much whether everyone else will feel the same way.

[Rich_The_Fish]

Thanks for clarifying. I agree though, it should be done by memory - it's just a shame I'm not very good at it yet! Still, gives me more reason to practice and play a few more games. I always turn this feature off in the Android app, as it ruins the game in my opinion.