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Carc Central Community => Reviews & Session Reports => Topic started by: carca82 on October 04, 2022, 01:45:51 AM

Title: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: carca82 on October 04, 2022, 01:45:51 AM
Me  :green-meeple: and my sister  :pink-meeple: have been playing Carcassonne together since last christmas and most of my games are against her. We like to keep track of our games so we have a sheet where we register scores, dates and which expansions we're using for each game (attached file). We realized our 100th game was close so we decided to organize a game of Mega Carcassonne to celebrate the event...

...then we realized that a true game of Mega Carcassonne was a little too much for us, so we designed a custom game (we call it CarcassOneHundred... yeah, I know) that we think it could be really fun to play. Its content (all C1):

(https://i.postimg.cc/qRSB8mVC/IMG-20221004-094542496-HDR.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/9RPj2YfW)

Of course we will use some house rules (i.e. more cathedrals/inns in the same city/road will score you more points if you close them, but you will lose points if you don't, a different score method for goods, more meeples involved...). The game will be split into two parts: the first one is just the preparation (setting all the game elements up, placing the starting tiles and placing the rivers) and will likely happen lately today, while the game itself will require an entire weekend fully dedicated to it.

If you're interested - for any reason - on how it goes... stay tuned! We'll update the thread accordingly  :green-meeple: :pink-meeple:
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: DIN0 on October 04, 2022, 03:17:03 AM
If you like keeping track of yor games, perhaps you would be interested in Carcassonne Game Notation
https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=5644.0

Currently it supports base game only, but if you care for a quick highly competitive game (tournament style), then you recording your games would help you improve your play  :(y)

An expanded notation for all the expansions is in the works as well.
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: kothmann on October 04, 2022, 05:35:28 AM
+1 merit just for the spreadsheet!  Wow!

This looks like a lot of fun.  Please share photos, not just of the final landscape but also of exciting moments / lucky draws, etc!
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: Decar on October 04, 2022, 05:52:15 AM
Wonderful post Sir Lose-a-Farm - I can't wait to see the photographs of the game!

Thanks for sharing!  Good luck!
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: carca82 on October 04, 2022, 02:17:51 PM
All the tiles were shuffled up into 4 different bags, and we completed the preparation: starting tiles and rivers are now in place! Let's go!

(https://i.postimg.cc/9MYzNg5M/IMG-20221004-165111229-HDR.jpg) (https://postimages.org/) (https://i.postimg.cc/mkZhx3BS/IMG-20221004-172337126-HDR.jpg) (https://postimages.org/)
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: Bumsakalaka on October 05, 2022, 02:53:54 AM
I like that start setup.
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: kothmann on October 06, 2022, 05:39:03 AM
Let's go!

Still playing?    ;D
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: carca82 on October 06, 2022, 07:05:34 AM
Still playing?    ;D
We have to even start yet  :)
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: carca82 on October 08, 2022, 12:06:27 AM
We finally started playing  O0 After a couple hours the table looked like this:

(https://i.postimg.cc/PfZCrBbP/IMG-20221008-010909997-HDR.jpg)

Some things we noticed:
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: Bumsakalaka on October 08, 2022, 12:52:58 AM
Welcome in Mage-Carcassonne players family.


Some expansions in mega carcassonne as loosing it's power or are useless when you have a lot of meeples.


Some of destructive expansions like Tower / Dragon help you to save meeples, so then you have more meeple as you thought, because some of blocked meeples can be rescued.


It is good to play a lot of combinations in Mega Carcassonne and you find your "golden selection" which will be fine for both of you.


I see, you are playing C1, so try to play German Monasteries eventualy Dutch monasteries. Very powerfull in Mega Carcassonne, and then you will not have enough meeples :D


Keep playing and enjoy game
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: carca82 on October 08, 2022, 01:58:25 AM
try to play German Monasteries eventualy Dutch monasteries. Very powerfull in Mega Carcassonne, and then you will not have enough meeples :D
Very good idea, German + Dutch + Japanese could easily decimate even the biggest supply  >:D
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: kothmann on October 08, 2022, 01:25:47 PM
Great photo!

I’m interested in farm tactics: are both players trying to play farmer + pig and then join then Green barn (for 12 points as it now has 6 cities)?  Pink has two great farms (both have 7 cities): are they racing to lock those down?  Only 1 other Green farmer?

Any other interesting tactics?

Looking forward to more photos…

Have fun!
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: carca82 on October 08, 2022, 04:59:29 PM
I’m interested in farm tactics: are both players trying to play farmer + pig and then join then Green barn (for 12 points as it now has 6 cities)?  Pink has two great farms (both have 7 cities): are they racing to lock those down?  Only 1 other Green farmer?

Thank you for the interested question! Alas, my only answer will be... we made a huge mess  :) Suddenly we realized we both connected one more field to the green barned field without noticing, and panic ensued:

(https://i.postimg.cc/V6wpRLwp/IMG-20221008-183059858-HDR.jpg)

We were able to almost pinpoint the moments when both of our mistakes happened and we reached a settlement. Regretfully, any chance of tactics died that very moment  O:-)

Tomorrow I will post more photos, curiosities, oddities... and questions, of course
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: Scott on October 08, 2022, 11:16:53 PM
An only 50-points scoreboard is a pain in the a** in a game of Mega-Carcassonne

This is why 100-point score tracks have been made. Replace the scoring meeples with regular d10 and  you can track up to 999 points. Add percentile d10 and you can track up to 9999.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: carca82 on October 09, 2022, 02:24:46 AM
I take back what I said about having added too many meeples to the players' stashes. When the game peaked, the extra figures felt right. Should I repeat the experience I just woudln't add the second big meeple. Also, we used all the tiles! A grandtotal of ~530 tiles on the table. Good job, table! Some curiosities:

One of the biggiest cities I've ever seen:
(https://i.postimg.cc/7ZLvwJzV/IMG-20221008-135659136-HDR.jpg)
24 tiles, 6 shields, 2 cathedrals and a total of 120 points for pink :pink-meeple: under house rules (every cathedral adds +1 to every tile and shield of a completed city). I was baffled. But then...

...pink did it again, like, only a couple of hours later:
(https://i.postimg.cc/mkNQXD2z/IMG-20221008-161057833-HDR.jpg)
30 tiles, 4 shields, 2 cathedral for a total of 136 points :pink-meeple: under the same house rule.

For reference, here's the only case where the equivalent house rule was applied on a road:
(https://i.postimg.cc/ZnrZgWgS/IMG-20221008-145840245-HDR.jpg)
This road was worth 9 points :pink-meeple: because every inn adds +1 to every tile forming a road.

Counting the king & robber points was really interesting. We used meeples of another color to mark elements on the map and these were the result (~85 completed cities and ~110 completed roads):
(https://i.postimg.cc/JzmXnJc9/IMG-20221008-213858617-HDR.jpg)[/url]

Final score:
Green :green-meeple:Pink :pink-meeple:
Points9091005
Goods80-
Gold4012
Roads (including Robber points)1135
Cities (including King points)887
Monasteries824
Fields200119
TOTAL13581252

Pink got those two giant cities but in the end they were voided by the giant barned green field. Also, green won all three products and those alone were worth 80 points under house rules (owner of the majority of a good type wins 15 points + 1 point for every good they own):
(https://i.postimg.cc/13ntWmS5/IMG-20221008-205203444-HDR.jpg)

In the end it was a lot of fun and my biggest fear (losing too much time trying to figure out inter-expansion rules) didn't translate into an actual thing. We had to pause the game sometimes to search for a solution (and we made a little bit of a mess with fields  O:-) ) but it was a smooth ride. A smooth, fun, 13 hours-long ride ;D
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: Bumsakalaka on October 09, 2022, 10:36:01 AM
For reference, here's the only case where the equivalent house rule was applied on a road:
(https://i.postimg.cc/ZnrZgWgS/IMG-20221008-145840245-HDR.jpg)
This road was worth 9 points :pink-meeple: because every inn adds +1 to every tile forming a road.

Anyway, this is fanny, Because by C1 rules T junction with Inn is Inn counted only to right road. Left and bottom roads are without Inn.
In C2 rules cas changed, that Inn belings to both left and right road. And in C3 was also changed image of inn, there inn is on center of junction, so 50% of lake and inn are situated on left road on other 50% on right road.
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: carca82 on October 09, 2022, 11:46:08 AM
Anyway, this is fanny, Because by C1 rules T junction with Inn is Inn counted only to right road. Left and bottom roads are without Inn.
In C2 rules cas changed, that Inn belings to both left and right road. And in C3 was also changed image of inn, there inn is on center of junction, so 50% of lake and inn are situated on left road on other 50% on right road.
We don't change the rules according to the C version, C1 C2 or C3 we use always the same rules
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: Bumsakalaka on October 09, 2022, 02:08:26 PM
Anyway, this is fanny, Because by C1 rules T junction with Inn is Inn counted only to right road. Left and bottom roads are without Inn.
In C2 rules cas changed, that Inn belings to both left and right road. And in C3 was also changed image of inn, there inn is on center of junction, so 50% of lake and inn are situated on left road on other 50% on right road.
We don't change the rules according to the C version, C1 C2 or C3 we use always the same rules

And what rules are you playing when you have C1 tiles?
Title: Re: First game of (kinda) Mega Carcassonne
Post by: kothmann on October 10, 2022, 09:30:37 AM
Amazing report! Thanks so much for sharing!

One of the biggiest cities I've ever seen:
...I was baffled. But then...
did it again, like, only a couple of hours later:
So in both cases, it looks like the Cathedral at the bottom of the city was played in defense (trying to prevent pink from closing the city), because the surrounding tiles are otherwise disconnected from the landscape.  Or was pink just greedy?  Did Green go all-out to block it?

Looking over the final landscape, it looks like I see 3 Abbeys near the center of the board: were they already used up by the time these monster cities happened?  Are your games "mean" (lots of blocking / trapping)?

Quote
...the only case where the equivalent house rule was applied on a road:
This road was worth 9 points
as @Bumsakalaka pointed out, that Inn doesn't technically apply to the 3-tile road, but in general not surprising that monster roads are less likely.  Particularly with lots of T&B tiles.

Quote
Pink got those two giant cities but in the end they were voided by the giant barned green field.
Did Pink not place their barn?!  What happened?  I'm curious about the distribution of farm sizes?  Smart to use only 6 bridges in a game with 500+ tiles: we sometimes use 12 bridges in a game with only 150 tiles, and the fields tend to be...large.

Quote
In the end it was a lot of fun
Sure looks like it!  Another +1 merit from me!