I've been thinking about the rules for this promo expansion, and if we take them at face value there are a few odd consequences that I'd like to point out. For context, I will quote my own
English translation from the News thread — and I absolutely welcome any corrections where my translation may be faulty.
Gerber-Viertel: Bei jeder Wiesenwertung am Spielende, in der du die Bauernmehrheit besitzt, erhältst du zusätzlich zu den normalen Punkten für Städte 2 Punkte für jeden Stall (Kuh, Esel und Schwein) und jeden Bauernhof, der in der Wiese liegt.
Tanner District: During each farm scoring at the end of the game in which you have the majority of farmers, in addition to the normal points for cities, you get 2 points for each stable (cow, donkey, and pig) and each farmhouse that lies in the farm.
When a
barn forces farmers to score, there will be no Tanner District bonus points, since they are explicitly defined to apply only during end-of-game final scoring.
Personal commentary: Seems like an unnecessary and anti-thematic restriction.
Hast du mehrere Meeple auf einer Straße, darfst du nur einen davon nach Leipzig schicken. Für den anderen Meeple darfst du aber die Punkte für die Straße nehmen.
If you have several meeples on a road, you can only send one of them to Leipzig. For the other meeple(s), you may take the points for the road.
Since there is no rule to the contrary, I think we have to assume that
the majority is not recalculated. That is, if you and I both have 2 thieves on the road and you send one to Leipzig but I do not, we both still get to score for the road. Nothing in the rules says that you have to recalculate your majority, and it does not say your remaining thief scores only if you still have the majority; it simply says your remaining thief "takes the points for the road." This all seems to suggest that the timing goes as follows:
- determine majority
- each player in majority chooses whether or not to send 1 thief to Leipzig
- each player who was in the original majority and still has at least 1 thief left on the road scores the road
What all this means is that the majority is not recalculated
except that if you only had 1 thief, sending him to Leipzig effectively removes you from the majority.
Personal commentary: Seems like it would have been more logically consistent to recalculate the majority after the thieves leave, but apparently that's not what the design intent was. So we just have to live with the inconsistency that if you send your
only thief you lose your majority, but if you send
one of multiple thieves you do not lose your majority even if you now have fewer thieves than somebody else.
Schickst du dabei den Meeple ins Wagner-Viertel bekommst du gleich die Extra-Punkte (siehe unten).
If you send the meeple to the Wagonmaker district you get the bonus points (see below).
This does not say "you get the bonus points
if you still have a thief on the road," just that you simply get the bonus points. So it would seem that when you have only one thief on a completed road, and that thief is in the majority, and you send him to the Wagonmaker district, you score zero
baseline points for the road (per one rule) but you still get 1
bonus point for each segment since you went to Wagonmaker (per this other rule).
Personal commentary: This inconsistency is more jarring to me than the other ones, probably because it is so subtle and easy to miss. And it leads to another question...
Note that this rule seems to apply only on the turn in which you send a follower to Wagonmaker. If you
already had a follower in Wagonmaker and send your only thief from a road to some other Leipzig district ... I guess you
don't get the Wagonmaker bonus points in that case because there's no special rule for it?
It's really unclear to me which exceptions they did and did not mean to communicate here. Which exception was it supposed to be?
- In spite of sending your only thief away from the road and getting no baseline points, you still get the bonus points but only if you are sending him to Wagonmaker right now.
- In spite of sending your only thief away from the road and getting no baseline points, you still get the bonus points if you have a follower in Wagonmaker (previously or just now arriving).
- Oops, we didn't mean to give you bonus points when you aren't receiving baseline points. This Wagonmaker thing only applies when you have other thieve(s) that are remaining on the road and you are sending a follower to Wagonmaker right now.
- Oops, we didn't mean to give you bonus points when you aren't receiving baseline points. This Wagonmaker thing only applies when you have other thieve(s) that are remaining on the road and you have a follower in Wagonmaker (previously or just now arriving).
- We didn't realize how inconsistent these things are. Perhaps we should discuss and get back to you.
I guess you can probably tell that confusing rules really frustrate me. Now, it's possible that there could be problems with my translation, or that some cultural conventions might make this more clear to a German reader. But if the translation is accurate and there are no "German unwritten rules" to guide us, then it seems to me that either this design was not sufficiently analyzed/playtested, or the rules as written were not intended to mean what they are saying.
Happy to be corrected if I've missed something, and happy to hear other opinions on (a) what you think they really meant and/or (b) what would have worked best.
Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=3621.0