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Messages - Just a Bill
361
« on: April 29, 2017, 01:12:10 PM »
my biggest concern is that the shipper is i-Parcel
Well, things are looking positive. UPS ( real UPS) has my package now, it's in New Jersey, and the delivery date was updated to next Wednesday (ahead of schedule). It looks like maybe the initial "delivery" date they list is the date they expect to receive the handoff from i-Parcel. Then, whenever that happens, they update everything. That would make some sense to software developers and route planners, but unfortunately it is not good information for the customer interface. They should label it differently if it isn't really a delivery date. Of course you never know what will happen when UPS hands off to USPS, but for now things appear to be on track.
362
« on: April 28, 2017, 01:33:41 PM »
I live in the U.S. (Virginia), and last week I ordered the German editions of Hills & Sheep and Bridges, Castles, & Bazaars from amazon.de. At the last minute I added a copy of Count, King, & Robber; I could see it would not further increase the shipping cost, so another 11.59 Euro seemed like a reasonably economical way to get more specialty tiles and another River II (I've kind of always wanted a second river fork). If you have Amazon Prime (US), unfortunately it won't help you on other countries' amazon sites. On the plus side, the prices will be lower than what you see because they will subtract the VAT once they know you're in the U.S. In related news, FWIW, I tried every way I could think of to order one of the Big Boxes (I desperately need the larger box, as well as some of the components that are only feasible to get that way) but none of the reasonably-priced shippers will ship to U.S. addresses. The ones that charge over $100 for a BB, of course, will.  I tried a bunch of other amazons as well — Italy, Spain, Portugal, UK, Canada, Australia, Mexico, can't remember how many others — and they all either (a) didn't have it, (b) wouldn't ship it to the U.S., or (c) wanted me to sell a kidney so I could afford it. Anyway ... my biggest concern is that the shipper is i-Parcel  . Since ordering, I've read tons of horror stories about this shipping "service" and now I'm waiting to see if my package will be lost, damaged, or just cavalierly sent back to amazon.de for no good reason (something I've read about a lot). Already the package sat without moving for three days and then my history got the mysterious update, "Problem resolved and parcel is in transit." Great. From what I've read, tracking information is rubbish and my experience bears that out. I have tracking codes with UPS, i-Parcel (which is UPS but sounds like they think they are separate), and the US Postal Service. USPS has no information yet, of course. i-Parcel says the package is due on May 9. UPS says it will be delivered today (April 28), which is flat-out wrong and flat-out stupid. So I'm not trying to scare you away from ordering (hey, I took the plunge!) but maybe you won't have to be surprised like I was that the shipping process is dominated by chaos, bogus information, poor service, and multiple hand-offs. I'll try to post updates on how well or not-so-well it all goes.
363
« on: April 28, 2017, 10:05:18 AM »
A little confused here ... did I do something wrong? Your last sentence has me wondering whether "links of what's produced" means links to the images the Russian publisher produced, or links to other things that fans have made using the publisher's artwork. (I already know the latter is not allowed or even advisable; it's the former I'm uncertain about now.)
365
« on: April 27, 2017, 09:22:39 AM »
Yes, +1 merit from me as well.
I am getting back into Carcassonne after some years away, and have missed a lot of good stuff. (My oh my, the heartache of the 2015 artwork change!) So I really appreciate all efforts to help older stuff become available again.
366
« on: April 27, 2017, 09:10:43 AM »
The road network associated with the labyrinth is all one feature. (You can only add thieves to it while the whole thing is unfinished, it all completes at the same time, it all scores at the same time, etc.) The phantom, by its own rules, must deploy to a second (i.e. different) feature, and the labyrinth rules do not override that in any way. Furthermore, the CAR version 7.4 emphasizes in footnote 441 that phantoms must deploy to unoccupied features. Now, the labyrinth does have a couple of special rules allowing certain kinds of "occupation overrides": - When deploying your thief to the labyrinth tile, you can ignore thieves on the branches (but not on the labyrinth tile itself).
- When adding a new tile to a particular branch and deploying the first thief to that branch, you can ignore thieves on other branches and the labyrinth tile.
Neither of those special cases says you can ignore the thief on the labyrinth tile in order to deploy another thief on the labyrinth tile, so I'd have to say that neither the labyrinth rules nor the phantom rules allow this. (Could be a fun house rule, though.)
367
« on: April 27, 2017, 04:15:50 AM »
As long as the four surrounding orthogonal tiles are in place (creating a hole), you can place the abbey.
If I'm not mistaken, the only time you can't place an abbey into a 'hole' is when it would touch two or more shrines (orthogonally and/or diagonally).
368
« on: April 21, 2017, 12:16:02 PM »
My Hills & Sheep and BC&B are finally en route from amazon.de. I realize the post above was over a year ago, but since it was not answered ... However, this brings me back to my original question in a different way: Why asymmetrical?
The design intent was that when placing the two tiles as show below on the left, the four segments would join to form a single city. If the tile had not been asymmetrical (meaning if the "V" had occurred right in the middle), then there would have been two separate cities instead of one joined one. This can be simulated visually by right-left flipping one of the tiles, as shown below on the right.  It took me a little while to understand that the tile above is designed to make it easier to add your presence to an occupied city, just as the one below helps you horn in on an occupied farm: 
369
« on: April 05, 2017, 09:45:57 PM »
Have:- 70-point original score track from RGG 2000 base game, excellent condition, played but still beautiful
- Cult, Siege & Creativity, new in box
- Mini 1: The Flier / The Flying Machines
- Mini Expansion (Games Quarterly #11), new, on frame, in the large ziplock it originally came in
- Halflings I, new/sealed
- Labyrinth tiles, new (both art styles)
- The River I (2001 edition), gently played
- Actual 2000 RGG Carcassonne, original medium-green tiles, unpunched/unplayed
Want:Willing to consider partial sets if you have part but not all of something. Have tons of good-trader references on eBay, BGG, and Heroscapers.com, and even a few here now, too. Thanks for looking! Revision history: - had
King & Scout, new in box (English or German edition, I believe I have one of each) - had
The Count of Carcassonne, new in box - had
Mini 2: The Messengers - had
Mini 6: The Robbers - had
All components of Carcassonne II base game except abbots, unpunched - wanted
The River I (2014 edition) a.k.a. River III - wanted
an early Big Box, if the tiles are not in the newer, yellower color - wanted
Die Belagerer / The Besiegers - wanted
Traders & Builders tiles with watermark - wanted
The School with black or purple Teacher - wanted
Russian Promos (all 4 if possible)
370
« on: March 31, 2017, 01:31:07 PM »
Rereading though some of the posts for the "Element of the Week" series, including this one, and I was wondering Whaleyland, if you're ever planning on making posts for the German Cathedrals, Labyrinth, Watchtowers, and the newest Russian promo if and when it becomes more widely available. I'd love to keep the discussion going, and want to thank you for all your hard work on this series of posts!
I second all of this. As a "prodigal meeple" who has returned to Carcassonne after a long period of not playing it, I'm finding the Element of the Week a tremendously helpful way to quickly get caught up on all the stuff I've missed, and would enjoy seeing the later items get added to the list and discussed. Turns out the last set I collected was the Catapult, so until a couple days ago I was ignorant of everything that followed. On the one hand that was probably a good point to go on sabbatical, as the catapult seems to be a low point is for many and it was followed by a lot of unremarkable stuff. But on the other hand I've clearly missed a lot of great new content! After learning about cundco and finding their shipping to the US to be amazingly reasonable, yesterday I ordered German Castles, both Halflings sets, two sheets of blanks, and a couple more colors of meeple sets. Then I nabbed the Phantoms on eBay for about ten bucks shipped. Today, though, I was miffed to see that I had somehow overlooked the German Cathedrals on cundco, which I would have loved to have added to that order. (Anyone know if their latest batch has corrected the color problem?)Next I'll probably be begging for advice here on which of the larger/more expensive sets are most worth tracking down. Bridges, Castles, & Bazaars and Hills & Sheep seem like no-brainers, but other temptations like tracking down The Besiegers when I already have CS&C need some forethought.
371
« on: March 31, 2017, 07:20:02 AM »
What if a dragon is in between the flier tile and destination tile? 
So that question was probably tongue-in-cheek, and I realize I'm necroing here, but nevertheless I'm going to respond anyway. It seems the general question here would be, is there any reason why a flier cannot fly over any and every kind of space it could not actually land on? If it's okay to fly over a field  or a completed feature  or a space without a tile,  then I would think one could fly over a volcano  or even the dragon.  CAR 7.4 states (emphasis mine) that "At no point may followers occupy the same tile as the dragon." Seems to me that a flier does not actually occupy the spaces flown over; otherwise none of the scenarios above would work. (And I would expect the rules to have said something if this were the design intent.) Also the dragon is not actually defined as immediately and constantly eating everything that shares its airspace; it specifically eats when it moves into a new space. It's noteworthy that it does not actually eat other things that move into its space; rather, other things are not allowed to enter its space. The dragon eats when hunting, and then everything avoids it at all other times. (Many thanks to the amazing CAR for its tireless collection and presentation of the rules, as well as all the image resources I needed to indulge myself in Photoshop today.)
372
« on: March 30, 2017, 11:39:14 AM »
Regarding the infrequency of getting to move the mage and witch, has anyone tried letting other special features (vaguely magic-related) also count as a proxies? Obvious thematic possibilities might include magic portals (6), volcanoes (6), shrines (5/6), and crop circles (6/12).
I haven't thought through the gameplay implications of two different effects triggering, but obviously you'd probably want to work out a sequence for the two that prevented or minimized any abusive combinations. Or, just use the tiles from the other mechanic(s) without including their gameplay.
373
« on: March 30, 2017, 08:29:19 AM »
My first post to the forums and it's a necro. (Sheesh. Freakin' noob.) Just a thought, building on what others have said about wanting to limit the number of monasteries a particular player might luck onto drawing. What about this? - Leave the cloisters in the game.
- Give each player one monastery tile, to be held (much like an abbey or a German castle.)
- When you draw a cloister,
- you may play it normally, or
- you may return it to the supply and play your monastery instead. If you deploy a follower to the monastery, you still have the option to place it as an abbot or a monk.*
* Using your monastery in simple "cloister mode" may seem to waste your special tile, but since the features around the two tiles may differ, in urgent circumstances you may find that the monastery "fits the hole" while the cloister does not. However, I would imagine that this would be rare. If that turns out to be true, then a side benefit of this variant is that monks are distinguished from abbots not only by the orientation of the wood, but also by the cloister/monastery artwork. If this distinction is valued (hey, at least I like it) then you could adopt a rule that a follower deployed to a monastery is always an abbot, and thus they no longer have to stand on their heads. Note that playing your monastery tile actually slightly helps other players to play their own unused monasteries, due to the mechanism of returning the drawn cloister tile to the bag. (Or, you can rule that the unused cloister is removed from the game rather than recycled.)
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