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Topics - danisthirty

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1
The Marketplace / Dan's Carcassonne Sale
« on: February 27, 2024, 07:12:08 AM »
Yo dudes! :) :(y)

Since discovering Carcassonne in 2012 I spent over a decade building my collection of Carcassonne expansions, promos and the many special editions and rarities that once filled my boardgame shelves. It certainly wasn't a cheap hobby by any stretch of the imagination, but I loved the buzz I felt every time something new arrived and constantly rearranging my display to make sure everything was presented as perfectly as it possibly could be. I also loved that visitors were always amazed by everything I had, although somewhat surprised that so much of it remained unopened. But my real joy came from simply owning everything I owned (rather than playing it) and that's how it continued for many happy, busy, expensive years...

Fast forward to today and I'm somewhat less in love with Carcassonne than I used to be. Not for any particular reason; I still play the game every now and again, but have distanced myself from much of the competitive international scene that I used to be so closely involved with, and it's been years since my collection brought me the same joy or excitement as it used to. :( I guess it had to run out sooner or later! This aside, I don't have any plans to disappear from here any time soon, and will continue to hold my position and keep paying the bills, even if I'm not exactly one of the regulars anymore. I do however feel that the time is now right for me to part with the majority of what I've collected, so that it can go on to spark others' excitement and bring them closer to that ever-elusive state of "completion".

Unfortunately I can't afford to give anything away as I have done with my giveaways of previous years, but I have tried to price things fairly based on their rarity, condition and what's currently available. Money aside, my main hope is that everything will find a good home to go to and form part of other collections that bring just as much joy to their owners as mine used to bring to me (this is why I'm listing my sales here rather than on eBay on BGG Marketplace).

At present I have eight items to sell (although there will be more to follow). Each item has a post of its own which includes details, starting price and some photos. For convenience I've provided links to each of these eight posts below. If you see anything you're in need of for your own collection then please bid on the specific item/ post and I'll finalise things on Friday the 8th March by arranging payment and postage with the winning/ highest bidders:


Best wishes and good luck finding something you need!
Dan

2
The Marketplace / For Sale: Spielbox Issue #6 - 2010 inc. The Plague
« on: February 27, 2024, 04:50:35 AM »
Spielbox Issue #6 - 2010 inc. Carcassonne: The Plague
Language: English
Condition: Magazine in excellent condition; Plague expansion still in shrink-wrap
Note: Plague expansion is still in place within the magazine, magazine has been kept inside dust jacket/ cover permanently although it is no longer sealed
Starting Price: £60 (please bid below) - add £5 for postage but I'll refund the difference if actual postage cost is less



(please see parent post for context)

3
The Marketplace / For Sale: Carcassonne (first edition) +Le Sac
« on: February 27, 2024, 04:48:20 AM »
Carcassonne (first edition) +Le Sac
Edition: RGG (English)
Condition: Not in shrink-wrap but good for age
Note: Includes the original 70-point scoretrack as well as a 50-point grey scoretrack that I must have added to it at some point, as well as the "Le Sac" tile bag (in very good condition - never used)
Starting Price: £150 (please bid below) - add £5 for postage but I'll refund the difference if actual postage cost is less





(please see parent post for context)

4
The Marketplace / For Sale: Carcassonne Travel Edition
« on: February 27, 2024, 04:45:15 AM »
Carcassonne: Travel Edition (sold)
Edition: RGG (English)
Condition: Not in shrink-wrap but unpunched/ never played - slight sun-damage to 2 of the box edges
Starting Price: £25 (please bid below) - add £5 for postage but I'll refund the difference if actual postage cost is less



(please see parent post for context)

5
The Marketplace / For Sale: Carcassonne Wheel of Fortune
« on: February 27, 2024, 04:42:24 AM »
Carcassonne: Wheel of Fortune
Edition: RGG (English)
Condition: Still in shrink-wrap
Starting Price: £40 (please bid below) - add £5 for postage but I'll refund the difference if actual postage cost is less



(please see parent post for context)

6
The Marketplace / For Sale: Carcassonne Star Wars (The Expansion)
« on: February 27, 2024, 04:40:21 AM »
Carcassonne: Star Wars Edition (The Expansion) (sold)
Edition: HiG (German/ English/ French/ Italian)
Condition: Still in shrink-wrap
Starting Price: £25 (please bid below) - add £5 for postage but I'll refund the difference if actual postage cost is less



(please see parent post for context)

7
The Marketplace / For Sale: Carcassonne Star Wars
« on: February 27, 2024, 04:37:43 AM »
Carcassonne: Star Wars Edition (sold)
Edition: HiG (German/ English/ French/ Italian)
Condition: Not in shrink-wrap but never played - box seems slightly warped
Note: This was only opened so that I could use the tiles for a little cartoon that featured in the Book of Carcassonne
Starting Price: £50 (please bid below) - add £5 for postage but I'll refund the difference if actual postage cost is less



(please see parent post for context)

8
The Marketplace / For Sale: Carcassonne Gold Rush +Sheriff
« on: February 27, 2024, 04:34:46 AM »
Carcassonne: Gold Rush (+Sheriff expansion)
Edition: HiG (German)
Condition: Still in shrink-wrap
Note: This is the same box shown in the first post of the postman thread ;)
Starting Price: £40 (please bid below) - add £5 for postage but I'll refund the difference if actual postage cost is less



(please see parent post for context)

9
The Marketplace / For Sale: Carcassonne The Card Game
« on: February 27, 2024, 04:31:00 AM »
Carcassonne: The Card Game
Edition: RGG (English)
Condition: Not in shrink-wrap but unpunched/ never played - looks new
Starting Price: £25 (please bid below) - add £5 for postage but I'll refund the difference if actual postage cost is less



(please see parent post for context)

10
As some of you may already know, HiG are celebrating their 40th anniversary this year and I've heard directly from HiG that they would like to create a special limited-edition version of the Carcassonne anniversary edition to commemorate this important milestone in the company’s history! What makes this even more special is that on this occasion they’ve decided to reach out to Carcassonne’s fans so that we can be involved by showing our support for some of their existing ideas (through voting), or even suggesting our own themes!

I don’t have much in the way of detail so far, but I do know that they are seeking similar input from their partners and other fan-communities, and that they are hoping to make some kind of an announcement regarding this in late March/ early April so it’s still early days but we can expect them to move quickly after this. They're being a bit secretive (as usual) and this is as much as I know for now, besides the potential themes upon which I’ve been asked to gage your opinion along with any thoughts/ suggestions you may have of course (post below)...

11
General / Carcassonne by Forums 2023
« on: January 18, 2023, 07:15:45 AM »
Hello all.

Back in the dim and distant past, we played a 5-player game of Carcassonne here on the forums. It took around 2 months to play but there was so much banter and tomfoolery between those of us who were playing, and the community in general, that it became quite an event and was certainly something of which I have a lot of fond memories. I recommend having a read through the original thread if you're interested to know more about how it panned-out. :(y)

I would love to see something similar being run again as it really brought the forums to life while it was running, not just for the players but for the spectators as well. Before we get bogged down in the detail though, I'd be interested to know how many people would be keen to take part if something like this were to be run again. Just to give you an idea though, the game would work as follows:

1. Players are determined, meeple colours are assigned and a starting player is chosen.
2. Starting player has a tile drawn for them at random (by me) and takes their turn by recreating the existing landscape at home and adding their newly drawn tile to it, placing meeples as required and then sharing the newly updated landscape back to the forum. Their turn is now over.
3. Scores are adjusted, then I draw a random tile for the next player and play continues in this way until all tiles have been placed.

It can be a bit of a chore recreating the landscape each time (especially towards the end of the game with so many tiles and meeples in play) and it was easy for mistakes to creep in so you'll either have to build out the game somewhere where it won't be disturbed for a number of weeks/ months or be good at putting it back together again in order to share each of your updates/ turns.

Like I say though, before I get too far into the detail it'd be good to know if anyone here would be interested in being part of the next game. So please, if this sounds like fun to you, give me a thumbs up below and we'll see what happens...

12
Reviews & Session Reports / WTCOC Friendly Match: UK vs. Portugal
« on: January 16, 2023, 05:25:13 AM »
It's been a while since the last World Team Carcassonne Online Championships, but 2023 will see the running of not just the annual World Teams Championship but also the bi-annual European Teams Championship. After months of hibernation, the UK team have been attempting to prepare ourselves for these upcoming championships by embarking on a series of friendly matches against opposing teams; the first of which took place yesterday evening with five of our members taking on five members of the team from Portugal.

To recap on the rules, a match consists of five "duels" with each duel being a best of three games between two players. 24 hours before the match is scheduled to be played, both teams submit a numbered lineup listing the names of their five players, and each of these players plays their duel against the similarly-numbered player from the other team. The match is decided based on whichever team wins three or more duels. All games are basegame only and the starting player alternates between the first two games, and is chosen randomly for the third game (if one is required to settle the duel). Everything is played online at BGA and all duels are played simultaneously, starting at a mutually convenient time that has been agreed between the two team captains (and their teams).

Portugal have always been a team that the UK has struggled with. They have some great players, including one who - somewhat confusingly - was declared UK champion in 2020 when there was no in-person Carcassonne championship so the UK Games Expo decided that that year's MSO Carcassonne championship should also serve the duel purpose of being the UK's championship. But this aside, when I first saw their lineup for our friendly I was unfamiliar with the majority of their players and assumed it should be a fairly safe win for us based purely on the Elo ratings and Win percentages of the players we were playing against. Oops.


Duel #1: FanaticalLime93 (1) vs. Priskus (2) :-\
#1: 99 - 67 to Priskus (watch game here)
#2: 100 - 79 to FanaticalLime93 (watch game here)
#3: 103 - 84 to Priskus (watch game here)

Duel #2: statmatt (2) vs. sisi (0) :)
#1: 111 - 78 to statmatt (watch game here)
#2: 102 - 91 to statmatt (watch game here)

Duel #3: ted the notty bear (0) vs. JMargarido (2) :o
#1: 100 - 82 to JMargarido (watch game here)
#2: 91 - 76 to JMargarido (watch game here)

Duel #4: danisthirty (2) vs. Paiva (1) 8)
#1: 84 - 80 to Paiva (watch game here)
#2: 97 - 95 to danisthirty (watch game here)
#3: 103 - 80 to danisthirty (watch game here)

Duel #5: wallaceprime (0) vs. Glovir (2) :-[
#1: 114 - 79 to Glovir (watch game here)
#2: 115 - 113 to Glovir (watch game here)

(you probably need to be registered at BGA in order to be able to watch the game replays linked to above)


This made the final scores 3 - 2 in Portugal's favour. Not quite the result we were hoping for, but it was still a great evening of international Carcassonne for us and we enjoyed the games and the experience very much despite the outcome. Thanks to the awesome Portuguese team, and congratulations on your win. :(y)

My next aim is to setup a match against our rivals from the Netherlands, and then hopefully Hungary next month. I'll be sure to share news of these friendly matches as soon as I'm able.

13
News and Events / UK Games Expo 2023
« on: January 04, 2023, 01:27:35 PM »
Yo dudes, hope you're all settling into the new year nicely.

The UK Games Expo is on this year between Friday 2nd June and Sunday 4th June. This is always a big highlight of the year for me as the UKGE hosts the UK Carcassonne championships each year, but there's much more to it than just this. It's definitely worth a visit as long as you're into boardgaming, and especially if you happen to live anywhere near the NEC in Birmingham where it's hosted. Plus there's usually at least 4 or 5 members of CarcC in attendance so it's a good excuse for a meetup!

Please post below if you think you might be interested in attending. Hope to see as many friendly faces there as possible! :)


14
Other Games / What have you played this year?
« on: December 21, 2022, 02:07:44 AM »
Yo dudes.

With 2022 drawing to a close now I thought it might be interesting to see what games besides Carcassonne everyone has been playing this year. I'm especially interested to know what games (old and new) you've played for the first time and have enjoyed playing, and how you discovered them?

For me, Board Game Arena has been central to my discovery of new games as there's always so much to choose from that some of them are bound to stick! Thanks to some of my BGA friends who invited me to play with them, I've discovered four of my new favourite games: Cubirds (2018), Draftosaurus (2019), Happy City (2021),  and Next Station: London (2022). They're all very different games, and while nothing will ever steal the position of "top game" from Carcassonne, it's good to have a bit of variety every now and then.

More recently (within the last month or two) I've discovered a number of great 2-player games too. I have a long history of playing Bandido (2016) on BGA with @Halfling but since reaching more than 500 games between us we've both been keen to branch out a bit this year. Tranquility (2020) - and to a lesser extent Tranquility: The Ascent (2022) - was the first such game that we came to settle on as a strictly 2-player game, but we've since discovered Dragonheart (2010) and Lost Cities (1999) which are pretty much permanently on the go now as well.

How about you? What have you enjoyed playing (besides Carcassonne) this year?

15
Strategy Guide / Carcassonne Tips: "When the tiles are against you..."
« on: November 11, 2022, 05:23:36 AM »
"You can't out-think bad luck."

Often, inexperienced players will lose because they're oblivious to everything you did during a game to maximise your chances of success, and will simply say that you were lucky at the end of it. This is mildly infuriating, but it's also something I want to be clear that I'm NOT saying here!

In Carcassonne, you have to plan to benefit from the most likely outcomes. There can be a lot of maths, strategy and tile-counting behind this, but even at a very basic level you wouldn't plan to take control of a city via a cccc tile if you can see that the only cccc tile has already been placed elsewhere since the chances of this succeeding would be 0%! So you try to give yourself the best possible chance based on what knowledge and information is available to you, as what's probable is by definition likely... but not guaranteed!

Consider the situation where you have a nice city waiting to be closed. It needs a ccfx tile to complete and your opponent has created an opportunity to kill it by potentially pointing a road into the gap unless you defend it on this turn. Thankfully your tile is a cfff which is ideal, but how best to rotate it? Looking around you can see that three of the four cccf tiles have already been placed giving you a 50% chance of finishing the city if you point the city cap into the gap. Alternatively, just two of the ccff and one of the ccff splitter tiles are out meaning there are four tiles that would fit if you use the tile to create a ccff gap which you'd have a 15 in 16 (93.8%) chance of filling. So which do you choose; the 50% win or the 93.8% win? That's not even a question as we all know what the right thing to do is in this situation and a lot of Carcassonne is about understanding this and making decisions which give you the best possible chance of success.

But like I say, nothing is guaranteed, and in the example above, having created the ccff gap, I wouldn't be at all surprised if my next tile was the final cccf and then my opponent laughs smugly and berates me for making a "bad move" to unsettle me. Next goes the other splitter (to my opponent), swiftly followed by all three of the remaining ccff tiles which seals the fate of my newly-ruined city. If I'd just rotated the tile the other way I could have have completed the city and won the game! But why would I have done based on what I knew at the time? It remains the correct thing to have done even though it didn't work out on this occasion, which can make situations such as these especially difficult to learn from. If you want to take away something positive from it then maybe focus on what else you might have done to have hindered your opponent or generated points for yourself elsewhere in the game. Could you have won despite the city being incomplete?

Ultimately though, never beat yourself up for doing the right thing. Sometimes the tiles are just against you (and sometimes they're not!)

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