UK Carcassonne Championship 2014

[danisthirty]

Is anybody else planning on going to the UK Games Expo in Birmingham at the end of next month? The UK Carcassonne Championships are being held on Sunday 1st June from 10am to 2pm. I've booked my place but there are still plenty of places available!

It sounds like the tournament will be based on 4-player games using just the basic 72 tiles, and the overall winner will be crowned UK Carcassonne champion and be given 150 pounds towards the cost of representing the UK at the world championships (this seems a little cheap but I guess it's representative of its fan base in the UK).

Realistically I don't expect to win or even do particularly well but it'll be a great experience I'm sure and I'm looking forward to seeing what else is there too.

UK Games Expo: http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/
UK Carcassonne Championship 2014: http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/game.php?id=BOR697

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=716.0

[Carcking]

That sounds awesome. I really enjoyed playing in the tournament at GenCon last year and will be doing it again this year.

England is a bit far though and a bit out of my budget.

I wish you luck!



"Getting my large follower with baggy trousers trapped in a city is a knightmayor..."  Excellent work! 

[asparagus]

Is anybody else planning on going to the UK Games Expo in Birmingham at the end of next month? The UK Carcassonne Championships are being held on Sunday 1st June from 10am to 2pm. I've booked my place but there are still plenty of places available!

It sounds like the tournament will be based on 4-player games using just the basic 72 tiles, and the overall winner will be crowned UK Carcassonne champion and be given 150 pounds towards the cost of representing the UK at the world championships (this seems a little cheap but I guess it's representative of its fan base in the UK).

Realistically I don't expect to win or even do particularly well but it'll be a great experience I'm sure and I'm looking forward to seeing what else is there too.

UK Games Expo: http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/
UK Carcassonne Championship 2014: http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/game.php?id=BOR697

I and my daughter will be there. She is a better player than me but would love to know if there will be any other teenagers there.

[danisthirty]

Excellent. Look forward to seeing you there asparagus! I hope you and your daughter have a blast. Have you attended any similar competitions before?

[danisthirty]

Yesterday I took part in the UK Carcassonne championship at the UK Games Expo. It was an early start and a longish drive to get there but the family and I arrived in good time and I felt sufficiently prepared when everything got underway even though I'd never previously taken part in any kind of competitive gaming tournament, and so didn't really know what to expect either of the occasion or from my fellow competitors.

The tournament was structured such that everyone played three 4-player games and championship points were awarded according to finishing place (4 points for a win, 2 for second, 1 for third). The final rankings were determined by ordering all players firstly by championship points and then by combined score across all three of their games. The top four players then played a series of head-to-head games to determine who the overall winner was.

The first game was fairly roady for me, and as it was the first game of the tournament everyone took it very seriously. I did my best to keep my score ticking over with plenty of roads and a couple of small cities, but got a boost when another player closed a medium-sized city that we shared between us. But, the other players had placed farmers early on and the farm spread out such that I struggled to get anyone onto it. This was to be my undoing in this game as the main farm ended up serving seven cities and was won with two farmers by a single player who (unsurprisingly) went on to win the game. I was in a fairly solid second but when a second farm (which I didn't have a share in either) was evaluated, I ended up sharing joint-second with another player with 68 points (ish) each.

The second game was by far my best because, simply put, the tiles were on my side (mostly)! As another player put it after the game had finished, I seemed to have a finger in every pie and was involved in the scoring of the majority of cities as well as a couple of long roads and a cloister (the only one I drew in four games). As the game began to draw to a close, all four of us had a single meeple in a large city and three of us had also placed second meeples outside it waiting to join in and take all the points for it. With three tiles left to be placed everything was looking very favourable for me until another player got a second farmer onto a farm that we'd been sharing and robbed me of 15 points in the process. In addition to this, the last tile of the game saw another player win the mega-city which cost me another 15 points. Fortunately neither of these were enough to break my lead and I went on to win the game with a score of about 80.

The third game was another tough one. Things didn't get off to a very good start for me in terms of the tiles I drew and a very large city quickly began to develop which everyone else had a single meeple in. If it had been completed it would have been worth around 30 points to everyone but me which would have pushed me out of the game completely. Since my attempts to get a piece of the action were thwarted at every corner I did the next best thing by making it impossible to incomplete. This move wasn't very well received by one player in particular (Purple) as I had also trapped someone else's cloister at the same time but this was fine with me as it kept me in the game! Purple and I then battled for control over a farm which ended up being tied for two farmers each, and in the final scoring I came joint-second again with Purple coming last by just one point! I was happy to take another second place, which brought my final total up to 8 championship points and a combined score across all three games of just over 200.

I hadn't really been keeping track of how all the other games were going but a first and two seconds seemed quite good to me and I was optimistic that it might even have been enough to have won me a place on the top table. As such, it wasn't. And it wasn't even good enough to win me a place on the second table either! Although I'm not sure, I think I was ranked either ninth or tenth which won me the opportunity to compete in a friendly against the guy who had won the UK championship for the past two years in a row and two other players (one of whom had come last in one of our earlier games after drawing almost entirely road tiles - I felt his pain!) Needless to say, the ex-UK champion won this game and I came third but since it didn't count towards anything it was a much more relaxed game and I took it as an opportunity to learn from everyone else.

I've listed my overall highlights and lowlights below:

Highlights:
- Meeting fellow forumite Asparagus. Whilst I didn't get to play against him, I did play against his daughter and it was an extraordinarily tight game between all four of us; she was an excellent player.

- Learning a couple of different ways of deciding who should go first without using a dice. My favourite involved someone taking one of each meeple and shaking them up in their hands. Another player then closes their eyes and picks a meeple and that player goes first.

- Not leaving with any feelings of "if only I'd placed this tile in that game differently..." and feeling that I'd generally played to the best of my ability. I can't deny that I felt more than a little hard done-by in the game where I lost 30 points in the final three tiles but I still went on to win the game which softened the blow somewhat.

- My wife letting me buy Cardcassonne and Ticket to Ride from the main exhibition hall after the tournament.

Lowlights:
- Although I appreciate the practical difficulties, it was a shame that the tournament couldn't have been based on 2-player games rather than 4-player games. I think some of the skill is diluted by luck when there are four players (or more), and as such I think it's a lot easier for lesser skilled players (such as myself in this case) to prevail since it's so much more difficult for the more skilled players to control the game.

- I didn't enjoy the second half of my first game when it became obvious to one player in particular that she wasn't going to win. It had become obvious quite early on who the eventual winner would be, but whilst two of us carried on regardless, the other player started complaining about a young guy who was sitting next to me because he wasn't playing in accordance with her own personal etiquette. To be fair, he did accidentally hint at what tile he'd pre-drawn before I'd placed mine (he was immediately after me) but this didn't affect my placement in any case. And on another occasion she berated him for stating how many tiles were left in the bag even though this didn't provide anyone with any kind of advantage. She left the table soon after coming joint-second with me, and the winner and I gave the younger guy a bit of a pep talk to reassure him that she was just thrashing out because she was a bad loser.

In summary, I loved it! I'll definitely be there again next year if I can make it, and wholeheartedly recommend that anyone who has the opportunity to take part in a similar competition should do so!

[jungleboy]

I hope you can recover from the stress of the tournament in time to be in top form for our match tomorrow night in the Carcassonne League

On a more serious note, thanks for the write-up and top 10 in the UK is not bad at all!

[danisthirty]

Thanks jungleboy. It was certainly quite an experience, but I was very happy to finish in the top 10 (just about).

It'll be a bit weird switching back to playing 2-player after such an intense series of 4-player games but I'll try not to use this as an excuse

[quevy]

Congratulations Dan, very good result.
Great report.

[asparagus]

- Meeting fellow forumite Asparagus. Whilst I didn't get to play against him, I did play against his daughter and it was an extraordinarily tight game between all four of us; she was an excellent player.

Yes it was great to meet you.

My first game was also very intense. My modest little city ended up as some massive uncompleteable mess that everyone had a stake in. The game ended with the last guy deciding not to play the CCCC tile where it would give him a few more points, in case it meant that my lonely meeple joined with his mansion and I ended up overtaking him. I had managed to get sole control of the core central field despite fierce competition but the end result was that I ended up in third place.

The next two games were a lot more relaxed but the ironic thing was that I was player 3 sitting at table 3 and over 3 games I came 3rd each time. After three rounds I was listed 28th out of about 35.

In the fourth round (which they did not count) they ranked the players by score and I easily came first. So overall my judgement over how the competition was exactly fulfilled: I was some way off the bottom and my daughter was strides above me (17th).

It was most refreshing to actually play more than one person who is better than me. I would certainly like to do more of that and I look forward to next year.

[kettlefish]

danisthirty,
thanks for the great review.

[danisthirty]

Thanks kettlefish, but I guess Essen is out of the question for me now. Maybe next year!

@asparagus - I think luck is far more significant in 4-player games as you have so little control over the game compared to 2-player games. This said, I hope your daughter wasn't too annoyed with herself after what she did with her final tile in our game (cloister with road) as I think this would have put her in second rather than fourth and I would have finished in last!

[asparagus]

@asparagus - I think luck is far more significant in 4-player games as you have so little control over the game compared to 2-player games. This said, I hope your daughter wasn't too annoyed with herself after what she did with her final tile in our game (cloister with road) as I think this would have put her in second rather than fourth and I would have finished in last!

I am quite okay with the luck element. And my daughter really enjoyed the whole convention so we've got no complaints.

[danisthirty]

They finally published the results!

http://www.halesowenboardgamers.org.uk/expotournaments/2014/carcassonne.htm

I almost played a game against the guy who eventually came 2nd but after he and another guy came and sat down at the same table as me, one of the organisers came and said they were at the wrong table so they both moved to another table. I would have loved to have seen how that turned out!

[kettlefish]

Are there some photos of the UK Championship?

[asparagus]

Are there some photos of the UK Championship?

http://boardgamegeek.com/image/2048696/carcassonne