Hey guys,
Some of you mentioned, that the love to see pictures of Carcassonne games, so I thought you would like to have look onto my last game on JCZ.
We added quite a bunch of expansions (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and several minis = 220 tiles) and it took us three hours to play the game. Quite exhausting since our standard games only take one and a half or two hours.
Enjoy:
First we started developing the cities on the left side (the one with the cathedral and the ones with the crop cycle enclosed) and thus created quite a big hole surrounded by the river. Very fast I realised that this hole would have a big potential for two enormous meadows (together with the one on the other side of the river), so I always focused on extending them.
The plan was to create one big mega meadow, but in the second half of the game my plans where completely interrupted by my friend, who placed his barn and stole one of the meadows. And the worst thing of it was that he didn't even do it intentionally! He only placed his barn down right because JCZ "suggested" him the possibility of placing a barn, without even knowing that he'd steal a meadow worth 50 points. Lucky him.
Meanwhile, I've already started building the district down left, with the big, odd looking 23 tile city (and thanks to my castle gained astonishing 108 points) and charly30 realised, that he wouldn't have any chance to win the game if he didn't get the King and the Robber Baron, so he started constructing the road in the corner down right (unfortunately for him I could manage to put the last tile, so no Robber Baron for him) and the two snake shaped cities top right.
Speaking in points I was 200 points ahead, so leaned back a bit and focused on filling up some of the many many holes that we had created (don't ask my why, but I really hate holes when playing Carcassonne and always have the urge to fill one up if the tile fits good there, even if it doesn't serve me that way) and tried to enlarge my meadow along the city district down in the middle (the other one was already robbed). But I only went on until I realised, that all this would only be worth another two cities, so I stopped half way through. The result is the hole down in the middle.
After that I also started building a bigger city again, the one in the middle on the far right side. I was very lucky, since I could manage to complete the city in one of my last turns, what gave me astonishing 80 points (again I cleverly placed a castle). Lucky, because during the game Charly30 could place 5 very valuable abbots (unfortunately one of them was gulped by the dragon while investigating the giant bridge that was built over his monastery some turns earlier and stole him all the sun shine that he needed for his garden) and therefore caught up really well. Finishing that big city, along with finishing charly30's longest road (and thus not loosing the Robber Baron) made me win the game. Else I would have "lost" about 130 points and he would have gained 50, what would have made him win. So in the end it were only two tiles that made me win that game.
Highlights of the game:
a really beautiful river that loops through the center of the table.
a huge (blue) meadow, that builds a big upside down U.
a monastery that has it's own medieval racecourse (down right).