The Gingerbread Man – Element of the Week #46

[Whaleyland]

ELEMENT OF THE WEEK: THE GINGERBREAD MAN

Carcassonne has definitely taken strange turns in the past ten years, so these few expansions may not be in your knowledge bank, but that doesn't make them any less official (or does it?). So as we conclude this series over the next few weeks, feel free to express any form of praise or criticism you may have for these off-beat elements.

Christmas in July/August! This week, we present THE GINGERBREAD MAN, an oft-overlooked expansion since it is part of the Winter Edition and its graphics, therefore, do not match with the rest of the tiles. However, it was pointed out early on that this expansion still functions perfectly well with the base game and that other tiles, such as those from Catapult or Celebration, could be used in place of the Gingerbread Man tiles to keep the landscape green. The expansion includes six tiles with icons on them representing a special figure: the Gingerbread Man. Whenever one of the GBM tiles is placed, the placing player puts the GBM into an unfinished City (a different one if it is already in such a City). Players score for the GBM when it leaves a City. Each Knight they have scores 1 point per tile (but not for Pennants) and they remain on the City for later scoring. "But what if the GBM's City is completed?" you ask yourself. Well, then the GBM scores first for all the Knights THEN the City is scored normally and the player who completed the City (not necessarily won the points for it) gets to move the GBM it to an unfinished City. In other words, it will probably be moving around a lot throughout a game.

This fun expansion was included with the Z-Man Games Winter Edition and, for everybody else, it is also available on Cundco. It adds a lot to the basic Winter Edition, which is already an oversized version of the Carcassonne base game since it includes an extra 12 tiles (that were intended for use as an official variant but nothing seems to have come of that idea). Regardless, it is definitely a small expansion I'd recommend for owners of Winter Edition and it is so easily adapted for use in standard Carcassonne that I can only recommend it for that as well. Put your Celebration and Catapult tiles to use! Heck, you'll even get more tiles that way! Discuss your relationship with The Gingerbread Man and how you optimise your use of this strategic element.

Next Week: The Abbot   

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=1984.0

[danisthirty]

This is one of my favourite expansions. The Gingerbread Man and the points he generates can really add a lot of fun to the game but it probably isn't one for the more serious/ competitive players as these little bonuses can really distort the scores.

Another thing I like about it are the tiles themselves. Almost all of them feature city segments in multiple different cities. Great for stopping people from glomming into your cities, or for getting extra knights into your own cities.

Overall, it just feels like it works really well; it's fun and the theme of it feels in keeping with Winter Edition. We never play Winter Edition without it...

[Paul]

I got six copies of the Ark but no copies of the Winter edition.  Perhaps it's time I get one?

[jungleboy]

I like the Gingerbread Man too but I’m not sure the publishers truly understood its power and how this power affects the way the game is played when they published it.

The problem with the Gingerbread Man is that in order to maximise its power, you need to abandon all other aspects of the game. You build yourself a massive city and try to add all your followers to it and move the GBM in and out of the city as much as possible, and forget about roads and cloisters and farms and everything else. Jéré was the first to show us all that you can easily score 1000+ points this way using two copies of the base game on iOS. Whenever I play against AI players, I play this way, trying to score as many points as possible with the gingerbread man and completely ignoring the rest of the game. So in this way, it’s very ‘unsociable’.

If you play with real opponents, I’d say you would need to introduce a ’spirit of the game’ clause that blocks players from adding unneeded followers to their cities purely to maximise points from the GBM. As long as players are playing fairly, then the GBM can be a lot of fun.

[lomdr]

If I had the blank tiles, I would try to reimplement this expansion as The Noble/The Queen, with 6 new landscape tiles that doesn't do anything (unless if the city tiles complete the tile with the Noble/Queen in it, more on that later) and 6 golden coin tiles that move the Noble/Queen around like in TGBM.  In a completed city, Noble/Queen will grant standard city scoring + 2/4 for those with majority, end game scoring (1 per tile and pendant) for those that had at least 1 knight (In a case of 3 for red, 2 for black, and 1 for orange, Red would get Standard + Noble/Queen points while Black and orange gets endgame scoring).  When the Queen/Noble gets moved to a different city, they 'pay' all of the nights 1 point per tile, with the majority leader getting + 1/2 points.  All you really need is a color agnostic Meeple/Figure or the Queen Meeple from MeepleSource (like if you won a single transparent meeple from Quevy or have any meeple that doesn't match any of your player sets).  I can figure that this can work with The Count and/or the Wheel of Fortune, but not so much with The River series (maybe set aside one river with a city at random at set up and have that as the start player's first move (but they can only claim the road or field on that tile )(or second player's first move if you are playing with set aside fork rule)

[quevy]

I have played only once with it. I thought it was funny, me and my cousin we made a game using the normal game, with personalized tiles with the same graphics of the original game, without exploiting the bug of the high score.

[Decar]

It's got by far the most amazing meeple design 

[Paul]

There. I put in an order for it. There's still a few copies here but why wait. Was only 25 Euro and will pick it up at the local store.

[Christopher]

Ah, the Gingerbread Man. Lovely expansion. Great fun. Lots of points, interesting mechanic. It's nice having a mechanism like this which can stay in play. I know it's not the same, but I always think about the Mage, but he sticks around for two minutes then leaves. The Gingerbread Man hangs around! I enjoy this expansion so much, it's what inspired me to get the fan expansions, The Pope of Avignon and The Family of Valois. I often use these, rather than re-purpose other tiles for the gingerbread man in the normal game. As was said a few times, the scores can get a bit wild, so I prefer to do it this way. Although, when using the Winter Edition as an expansion for the main game, we always include the Gingerbread Man!

[Whaleyland]

I've fan varianted this one into regular Carcassonne. I used an Abbot figure for the Gingerbread Man and I believe we used the 10 Festival tiles as the tiles for it. Worked pretty well and I was happy overall.

I probably should make and print off the Gingerbread variant rules for base Carcassonne as well as my own Abbot/German Monasteries variant for Carc1.0 since neither are in the CAR obviously.

[Christopher]

I've fan varianted this one into regular Carcassonne. I used an Abbot figure for the Gingerbread Man and I believe we used the 10 Festival tiles as the tiles for it. Worked pretty well and I was happy overall.

I probably should make and print off the Gingerbread variant rules for base Carcassonne as well as my own Abbot/German Monasteries variant for Carc1.0 since neither are in the CAR obviously.

Good idea! We could have a separate document for common variations. A CARV! (Complete Annotated Rules for Variations!) Obervet will be thrilled...