This section allows you to view all posts made by this member. Note that you can only see posts made in areas you currently have access to.
Messages - Whaleyland
Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 ... 100
46
« on: May 08, 2022, 12:06:13 AM »
I love the Castle, but it only works with 2 people so it fills a slightly different niche than base Carcassonne. I could only bring one with me to New Zealand, so the Castle remained in the US. But I am finally going to get ZAMEK hopefully, so that'll finally be fixed.
I am also OCD and I actually like the Castle because the wall around the tiles really works for me. The only thing that bugs me (although it has to be a case for gameplay reasons) are the holes in the landscape at the end of the game. The tiles themselves actually work with the roofs of all the buildings just mashing together. It's relatively accurate for a walled city that different roofs would do that, and the roads still have to be continuous, so there's some order still. It does take a brain shift, though, to suddenly not have to worry as much about mismatched tiles.
47
« on: May 08, 2022, 12:01:50 AM »
It doesn't have as many expansions as Carcassonne, but they tend to be more expensive.
As a former Catan collector myself (I haven't played the game in probably a decade now), I disagree. For every one promo Carcassonne releases, Catan has at least three! It also has nearly as many spin-offs and is quickly catching up on the number of full expansions to the base game it has, although they aren't as cross-compatible as Carcassonne's are. Rivals for Catan alone has two full-sized expansions and at least 10 single-card promos, not counting at least one cut-out promo. Catan also has many more gameplay accessories.
48
« on: May 06, 2022, 06:51:40 PM »
Guillotine or 7 Wonders+Leaders+Cities. Guillotine is my favorite game just because it is so straight-forward yet has so much back-stabbing, plus I love the theme since I'm a French historian. But 7 Wonders I think is the best for a larger group and it is also very straight forward yet has a lot of strategy, especially once the Leaders and Cities expansions are added.
49
« on: May 06, 2022, 03:34:53 AM »
I look forward to your message. And woof! That is one long explanation for why things are taking so long to arrive from DHL. I wonder if that was the case for the Advent event on Cundco. I think it took about 60 days to arrive, IIRC. I love how international media is making things seem so dire for New Zealand. It's annoying and things are certainly more expensive than usual, but it's not so bad and we are finally opening up again. Our national daily Covid cases have been sitting around 8500, which isn't awful although much worse than it was a year ago (0 except at the border).
50
« on: May 05, 2022, 08:31:52 PM »
Good find. Cheaper prices and shipping. However, I can't seem to find the base game of Zamek on their store. Do they not carry it? I need both—my copy of The Castle is in long-term storage and I prefer the new art anyway.
Did you ever find somewhere you were able to order these from? I'm kind of interested here in Australia, but so far had the same sort of luck as you. Wondering if you had any kind of success yet?
No, none at all. And I’d love to still get them.
51
« on: April 25, 2022, 12:27:38 PM »
I would buy The Festival again if the expansion finally had a proper watermark, but alas it does not, so I see no reason to own it. After all this time, I still don't understand why The Festival doesn't have a watermark. Expansion elements don't stop other expansion tiles from having them.
52
« on: April 25, 2022, 03:19:56 AM »
Some comments (repeated the first one here - you didn't see my previous update):
2) Monastery control: Majority in a monastery can also be affected by a flier, but this requires a certain amount of luck as well... 
3) Typos to fix: Check words marked in red.
Once you places a Monk on a Monastery, it is yours unless some Dragon, Tower, or Plague comes along and boots you off
But with those caveats aside, it is a great addition to any Carcassonne game. Even the two cars not discussed above—Cash Out and Take 2—are useful. Thanks! Corrections made. Not sure why so many snuck into this review. I'll have to fire my quality control editor.  Concerning The Flier, I think there are a few others that could hypothetically impact Monasteries in various ways, but yes, The Flier does let you full on grab one, which is unusual.
53
« on: April 25, 2022, 12:22:22 AM »
Great post!
+1 merit from me.
One detail:
The Gifts is composed of 25 small playing cards that are awarded to a player randomly whenever they add on to another player’s City or Monastery.
You receive a gift when extending an opponent's city or road.... Monasteries are not in the equation... 
Oops! Fixed. Thanks for that.
54
« on: April 24, 2022, 06:40:14 PM »
As a last hurrah in celebration of Carcassonne’s 20th (sic 21st) anniversary in 2021, Hans im Glück released yet another promotional expansion: The Gifts. Unique among all other Carcassonne expansions, The Gifts is composed of 25 small playing cards that are awarded to a player randomly whenever they add on to another player’s City or Road. The concept implies altruism but, in reality, this is one of the most brutal, cutthroat expansions released to date. These gifts are laced with arsenic.
A Spoonful of Poison
* Unhelpfully Helpful – Great strategy often hinges on a single tile, and when all of your opponents are trying to complete your low-value Roads and Cities to win themselves a Gift, it’s quite frustrating. Gone are the days when nice, mid-sized Roads and Cities are possible. With this expansion, the only ones you will get are small features—because an opponent “helped” you complete it—and large features—because your opponents still want to try and steal them from you.
* Monks Against Synods! – With exceptions for The Count of Carcassonne and The Shrines, Monasteries have been one of the few inviolable features in Carcassonne. Once you place a Monk on a Monastery, it is yours unless some Dragon, Tower, or Plague comes along and boots you off. You could always be assured that the points would come to you eventually, and you never had to worry about some other player raining on your parade. But no longer! Now, with a simple play of the Synod card, a player can add their Monk to your Monastery and share the points with you, or add a second later and even steal your Monastery. I will be writing the pope on this matter forthwith.
* Two Is The Loneliest Number – Say what you will about Carcassonne, but it is a great 2-player game. The competition between features, the ability to neutralize your opponent by sharing the feature, the sheer number of tiles each player gets to draw (36 each if playing with a 72nd draw tile). It’s nearly perfect, even if there are benefits to playing with more people. But this expansion is not so great with 2 players. Whereas in a larger game, people can help each build Roads and Cities in order to take down another player, in 2-player games, it’s just the two of you. There’s no informal alliances to make Gifts worthwhile. So the only reason to get a Gift is to screw over your opponent. So everything becomes a race to the bottom: How many Farmers can you get in a Field? Can you complete the City or Road fast enough? Are they going to share your Monastery? The entire game becomes something different, and not necessarily for the best since the cards are all randomized and any Gift could change everything.
Backhanded Negotiations
* The Enemy of Your Enemy is My Enemy – The Gifts is a game-changer, which is startling for a two-decade-old game. Never before has so little changed so much in Carcassonne. These cards destroy traditional strategies, make meeple placement far more strategic in the long term, and create far more opportunities for conflict. While many players enjoy the relatively peaceful nature of Carcassonne, it is undeniable that the game has a lot of untapped potential for conflict. This expansion, in reality, does a lot of what The Count of Carcassonne should have done, but didn’t. It makes stealing features, repurposing meeples, and tile placement itself a meta-game, and that’s not a bad thing at all.
* Lounge Rats – Ever miss that opportunity to take a Field by one turn or one bad tile draw? Well now you can just steal it later. The idea that a meeple could be repurposed from an adjacent feature and turned into a Farmer is surprisingly novel and remarkably effective. Now, low-value adjacent features can serve a double purpose, so long as you draw the right card. Large Fields especially are a risk since more tiles means more opportunities to move Meeples onto it. Now the other features themselves could be sources of new Farmers. And if, for some reason, a player overcommits, they can use the card in reverse to claim an adjacent incomplete Road, City, or Monastery, sweeping in for the steal. It’s frankly genius.
* Streamlining Traffic – Did you accidentally place a meeple on a dud Road? Are you sharing a high-value Road with an opponent? Have you unintentionally combined two of your Roads into one? Worry no more! With the Road Sweeper 3000, you can take all the Robbers off of any Road on the board for the low, low cost of one Gift. So take those Robbers, sweep them up, and rake in all those sweet, sweet points.* (*Disclaimer: Points are awarded to the player with the majority Robbers; players with fewer Robbers do not receive points; current player may place new tile in such a way that it continues the feature just scored.)
Inconclusion
The Gifts is one of those rare expansions that changes up everything, generally for the good. Is it conflict heavy? Yes. Does it play well with 2 players? No. But with those caveats aside, it is a great addition to any Carcassonne game. Even the two cards not discussed above—Cash Out and Take 2—are useful. The former allows players to cash out meeples stranded on low-value features, while the latter lets players choose their tile from two tiles. At the end of the game, all unused Gifts are worth 2 points. The Gifts is a vicious expansion, moreso than almost any other one except perhaps The Plague. But the randomness of the expansion is all in the cards, which may be its greatest weakness. Although the cards are balanced between the five types, it would possibly be better for each player to only have access to one of each and be able to activate them whenever they help build another player’s feature. That would fix the obvious imbalance caused by a player, say, grabbing several ‘Change on the lie’ cards. But fan variants don’t belong here. This expansion is a wonderful addition to Carcassonne and it will definitely change your gameplay experience if you feel the game has become stale over the past twenty(-one) years.
Playability: A-
Affordability: A
Compatibility (with other expansions): A
Aesthetics: A-
Learning Curve: B
FINAL GRADE: A-
55
« on: April 21, 2022, 01:18:18 AM »
Can someone tell me the way to Carcassonne? No? Okay, well is there a sign somewhere? Oh my... there are signs EVERYWHERE! Or so it seems with The Signposts, yet another annual promotional expansion available exclusively from Hans im Glück. I suppose in a game where road-building is one of the major mechanics, it was inevitable that road signs would appear. But have they really appeared? And who is marring my beautiful landscape with these unsightly arrows?! Darn, I've begun my review already...
Corn Circles III
* Aliens Have Invaded Again – At first it was strange shapes in corn fields – now it is strange arrows beside Roads. When will these strange occurrences end? Carcassonne has long abandoned some of its more visually pleasing elements in favor of blunt gameplay features, but The Signposts are definitely near the top in obviousness. Large arrows sit beside every road of this 12-tile expansion, and they are as ugly as they are easy to read. They less resemble Signposts (which, by definition, require both a sign and a post) than garish painting on an otherwise green lawn. They might as well have called this expansion "The Arrows" and just admit that's what they are.
* Math is Hard – If the arrows don't bother you, the sheer amount of math involved with this expansion may. You see, to make the most of your Signposts, you need to collect multiple ones – one of each type, in fact. But these must be valid Signposts for them to count, so if you have a tile with a Road that goes in the wrong direction or that dead-ends, then that won't work. Confused yet? And don't get me started on the tile with the two curving Roads, or the roundabout Road. Keeping track of what's a valid Road or not on a long Road can produce headaches. Tylenol is recommended.
* Now now, Stop Fighting, Children! – By this expansion – at last count number 761 – there have been a few Road-focused expansions released. You have the Wagon, the Inns, the Robber Baron, The Ferries, The School, German Castles, Bridges, Labyrinth, The Tollroads, etc. Some of these multiply Road points, some redirect the Roads, some give bonuses. And now this expansion encourages you to do some urban planning (in a "luck-of-the-draw"-based game, no less). Indeed, it could directly contradict some of the cards in the more recent The Gifts expansion. And in usual Hans im Glück fashion, the rules instruct you to simply only play this expansion with the base game – any other combination is at your own peril. Woe to ye who tries to play with several Road-based expansions at once!
Roads Get Around
* Expanding Out to the Suburbs – Carcassonne has always had a tile balance problem. While the base game had a fairly safe ratio of Road-City–Monastery, most of the expansions have thrown this some to increase the benefits of its own features. Inns & Cathedrals included a lot of tiles that made large Cities and longer Roads. Traders & Builders was all about City-building. Princess & Dragon was more about sheer volume of tiles so that the Dragon could spread out its wings. This expansion is all about Roads, and the designers smartly realized that more Roads were needed to optimize it, so all 12 tiles have at least one Road, and there are some real gems, including a Roundabout and a Road-over-City. There are also balance-correcting tiles such as a new Monastery and Garden, and half the tiles feature City segments. In other words, this expansion is great for someone who wants a whole lot more tiles without imbalancing their feature ratio.
* Clarity Can Be A Blessing – Say what you want about the terrible visual look of the arrows, but at least they are very clear, which is more than can be said about other expansion features (looking at you, 20th Anniversary expansion!). And the different colors help differentiate the directions of the arrows, which is very useful for calculating the multipliers.
* More and More and More – Math is terrible, yes, but multipliers can really be awesome once you overcome the challenges. Carcassonne has never included a proper multiplier feature before, so it is certainly a novel development. If a player scores a Road with one type of valid arrow, they get 1 extra point per valid arrow. If they score a Road with two different valid arrows, each valid arrow get 2 extra points. And if they have all three different valid arrows, they get 3 extra points per arrow. The points can really add up if you make a long enough Road with several valid arrows on it!
Inconclusion
The Signposts is really a mixed bag expansion. The vast number of well-balanced tiles is a wonderful addition to a Carcassonne collection, but the arrows are ugly at best. The rules are also very fiddly, although the potential return in points can make it worth figuring out. Perhaps the price of this expansion is its saving grace: it's quite affordable from Cundco.de and can be added to an order without usually increasing the cost of shipping. So while I can't strongly recommend this expansion, there's no reason to avoid it either.
Playability: B
Affordability: A
Compatibility (with other expansions): C+
Aesthetics: C+
Learning Curve: B-
FINAL GRADE: B-
56
« on: April 15, 2022, 06:38:33 AM »
Good find. Cheaper prices and shipping. However, I can't seem to find the base game of Zamek on their store. Do they not carry it? I need both—my copy of The Castle is in long-term storage and I prefer the new art anyway.
57
« on: April 15, 2022, 03:39:28 AM »
You can try here the 27th and it is cheaper
https://www.taniaksiazka.pl/gra-sokol-zamek-dodatek-do-gry-nasza-ksiegarnia-p-1640774.html
Thanks for the link but they unfortunately don't ship to New Zealand.  I had them cancel both orders and will try one more time tonight to make an order with them, but I'm not hopeful. I could order it from the above site and have it sent to the US for my mom to bring with her here in June, but I already want her to bring other games, so I'd prefer not to add this in addition to those.
58
« on: April 14, 2022, 06:11:37 AM »
Annoyingly, my credit card declined the first attempt to pay. I verified that I wanted to purchase the product with my credit card, which put a clearance on the account. Then I went back and redid my order only for it to get rejected again! WTF?! I'm not sure what my next option is since PayPal doesn't actually seem too be an option despite the system suggesting it is and this is my only international credit card.
59
« on: April 14, 2022, 02:26:51 AM »
Sorry, I was meaning the price for both the base game and the expansion.
Also, 69 NZD is cheaper than buying the base game of Carcassonne in New Zealand, which means apparently The Castle, The Falcon, and shipping is cheaper than buying something here...which is pretty on brand for NZ these days. I bought Dune: Imperium – Rise of Ix and Dune: Choam & Richese plus shipping from the US for less than Rise of Ix alone costs in NZ.
60
« on: April 14, 2022, 01:45:42 AM »
In the first block that includes the library card descriptions, at the top.
"Buy the game here" or "Tu kupisz grę"
Thanks for that. It says that it only costs 202.80 PLN, which apparently is 69 NZD. Granted, that's for land shipment, which will probably take months, but still! That's a freaking bargain. Am I missing something? Does the shipment somehow weigh more than 3kg?
Pages: 1 2 3 [4] 5 6 ... 100
|
Show Posts