Escaping a besieged city (Flight)

[PapaGeek]

The oldbonz post and tile work for the C2 Attackers has generated a huge level of interest with our neighborhood group of 4 players, we can’t wait to play our first game with the new C2 tiles, but we do have one question about the escaping follower.

The rules are clear that you can’t escape a follower from a besieged city and then place that same follower back on the board.  The escape happens and the very end of your turn.

The rules are not clear about placing one of your followers onto the tile you just played, then in the same turn, escape one of your followers from a besieged city, through an adjacent Monastery.

Can you place and then escape in the same turn?

Modified for clarification:

This question is being asked because of the rules for the Abbot.  The rules clearly say that:

“On your turn, if you do not place a meeple during the 2. Placing a meeple phase, you may instead return your already-placed abbot to your supply. If you do so, you score immediately as many points as the garden or monastery your abbot occupied is worth at that time”

The rules for the besieged cities seem to indicate that you can remove your follower even if you did place a meeple, and, even if the rules did not say it, I assume that the escaping follower does NOT score any points!




Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=6116.0

[Meepledrone]

Escaping a city is an optional action that may happen at the very end of your turn. It has no dependency on any previous action during your turn or scoring (you may have placed a meeple or not, or you may have removed and scored an abbot, or completed and scored another feature, or maybe performed any other action taking place during a normal turn).

The idea is that you may remove a knight placed in a  besieged city and return it to your supply without scoring anything. How can this be useful? Well, it allows you to recover an idle meeple that may be trapped in that city or won't be able to reach the majority.


So addressing your comments...

The rules are clear that you can’t escape a follower from a besieged city and then place that same follower back on the board.  The escape happens and the very end of your turn.

Correct.

The rules are not clear about placing one of your followers onto the tile you just played, then in the same turn, escape one of your followers from a besieged city, through an adjacent Monastery.

The meeple placement may happen as usual on the tile just placed. At the end of your turn you have this additional option to remove one of your meeples meeple from any of the uncompleted besieged cities on the board.

Can you place and then escape in the same turn?

Yes, escaping is an action not influenced by any previous action during your turn.

Modified for clarification:

This question is being asked because of the rules for the Abbot.  The rules clearly say that:

“On your turn, if you do not place a meeple during the 2. Placing a meeple phase, you may instead return your already-placed abbot to your supply. If you do so, you score immediately as many points as the garden or monastery your abbot occupied is worth at that time”

The rules for the besieged cities seem to indicate that you can remove your follower even if you did place a meeple, and, even if the rules did not say it, I assume that the escaping follower does NOT score any points!

Correct. You recover one meeple and score no points for it. It has nothing to do with the abbot.
- You may remove and score an abbot as an alternative to placing a meeple (This is a special type of scoring).
- You may remove a meeple in a besieged city at the end of your turn via a monastery adjacent to the Besiegers tile (This is a way to recover idle meeples from a city)

Let me know if you need any further clarification.


Note: If you are interested in expansions allowing you to remove meeples, please also check The Festival:
https://wikicarpedia.com/index.php/The_Festival

[PapaGeek]

Thank you for your confirmation of my concerns.  The only issue that I want to expand on deals with Wiki page for Besiegers Cathars Siege (1st edition)

https://wikicarpedia.com/index.php/Besiegers_Cathars_Siege_(1st_edition)

Footnote 5 at the bottom of the page says:

Note that in The Besiegers and The Cathars, a cloister must be placed directly adjacent to a Besieger/Cathars tile to allow a knight to escape. However, RGG's rules for Siege state that a cloister allowing escape can be placed adjacent to any tile of a besieged city (even diagonally). For the sake of consistency, at the beginning of the game it would be useful to select only one of these rules when combining tiles from these sets. Purists can choose the Besiegers/Cathars rule, as it’s the German original, although the RGG Siege rule makes escape much more viable.

Looks like this one can be a house rule.

[Meepledrone]

Cathars and Besiegers were released by HiG and have more strict rules: the monastery should be adjacent to the siege tile for  meeples to be able to escape.

The Siege was released  by RGG and has more relaxed rules in this regard: the monastery may be adjacent to any tile of the besiged city. Was this change on purpose? We don't know.

The release order was Cathars (HiG) - The Siege (RGG) - Besiegers (HiG). HiG didn't change their rules even if The Siege was released earlier. So, in the end, you may decide to use any of both options, although the former is the official one. It will all rely on your taste and the difficulty level you want to implement in your games.