Carcassonne

[Damian_Blackclaw]

There was a thread for Settlers of Catan . . . so I thought maybe somebody else out there also enjoys Carcassonne.

Anybody?

Does anyone use the expansions?

Damian the Black

[Ragnarok]

Love that game, play it every night with my family. I almost always win. I don't use expansions, because we like the game as it is. That's really all there is to say for me, unless you want to talk tactics.

[Damian_Blackclaw]

Sure talk tactics all you like. I've only played a dozen times. Probably 11 times with my wife, and once with another friend.

So I've only ever played it as a two player game.

If find that it is very important to place at least one piece in a field early on, but to be conservative in placing pieces so that you can capitalize on the monastery if it appears.

I'd love to play more often and with multiple opponents.

Damian

[Ragnarok]

I usually play with three people. Me, my dad, and my sister. We've played almost 200 games now, we keep track of every one. I've won 132 of those.

Hmmm... strategy.

I utilize the road/field system, using road to boost my points while I build a killer field with enough power to steal others.

[valadil]

Carcassonne is quality.

As far as I can tell most, victory comes from winning the farms without overcommitting. I usually like to drop two farmers early on, and then a third much later to sneak his way into the mandatory big farm. If you go for three farmers right away, you just don't have enough man pieces to go around the rest of the board.

The other thing thats important is sniping your way into someone else's big city. If the city is big enough (and therefore worth a lot of points) they can't really keep you out.

[Ragnarok]

The other thing thats important is sniping your way into someone else's big city. *If the city is big enough (and therefore worth a lot of points) they can't really keep you out.
Oh... memories... I did this once, my sister build on a city for nearly the entire game... then I broke in and stole it. Oh, it's still funny.

[GreyRat]

Carcassonne is solid, man.
I too prefer the basic game rules, although I like using the extra tiles from the expansion to make the game last longer, and provide more funky city pieces. My husband and I play it often, and he always seems to get all the monestaries. I usually pick one up as my next-to-last tile, and end up getting about 3 points from it. :P

Have you tried Hunters and Gatherers? Same gameplay, although they added some funky rules I wasn't too keen on. But, it's worth a play if you like the original.

[El Jaspero, the Pirate King]

We're also a Carcassone household; we have the Dragon expansion, and also the one with the princess. Good, good fun.

[caw]

my gaming group plays this occasionally. we usually just stick with the base game, but tried the river expansion last week. didn't seem to change the game much, but gives a broader starting area.

very good game.

[Ecteon]

I have all the expansions but the Princess and the Dragon one, couldn't say I found that interesting. However, have not yet played w/ Traders and Builders, just not enough time post-Christmas.

As for Cathedrals and Inns expansion, it changes the gameplay enough to make mention of it. After all, say your opponent has a great city going, but is just having trouble finishing it. The game is winding down, and it looks like they're at least going to get all the base points from it at the end of the game scoring. Then you draw a Cathedral. Bam, they don't get anything. Same thing for the road if you add an inn. And the extra-big player piece that allows you to have more power than just an average small one makes a difference as well. The river cards make it more challenging and easier to screw your friend's city up. In fact, I even set it up in our house rules that if you can complete a river, you get a point per section. However, this is one expansion that could use a few more cards in it to make it worthwhile, however that's not likely to happen any time soon. If you want to buy it, buy two. Shoot, buy 2 sets of Carcassonne as well. More cards, more fun. I actually saw a picture online one time (can't find it now, of course) where there must have been at least 6 boxes of Carcassonne inovolved, and no expansions. Amazing.

There is a new expansion called The River II which looks interesting, but I do not, as of yet, own it. Should be interesting.

[Edtharan]

I also love carcassonne but don't play it near as much as I'd like (not enough time :(.

Traders and builders I think is a good expansion because of the builder. The builder can change the game play a bit as if you extend a feature that it is on (road or city) then you can get a second (but not third) turn. This allows you to spring some suptrise moves on people (in one game there was 2 tiles left in the bag and I had nearly conected my snipe to a massive city that the other player ownd adn I pulled a city tile and conected it to the my snipe city - which had the builder on it - and the next tile was also a city tile and allowed me to finally conect the snipe to the big city).

My basic strategy is to snipe wherever posable and to complete the feature with the snipe.

Another strategy that has won me the game is to alwayse keep at least 1 meeple (i think that is the technical term for the people in the game) free. I use this to gain points from competing features, like small roads and cities, as this allows me to return the meeple back to me at the end of the turn. the number of points you can gain like this can be quite large and will usually tip the balance in your favour if it is going to be a close game. If you can't place a city tile so that it will give you a definite advantage, alwayse place it so as to get a 2 section city or road (or complete a small city or road) so that you at least get some point each round (think how many turns you get ina game of carcassonne and multiply by 2. That is roughly howment points you can gain by this method - though it usually works out a little less as you will need to build normally too).

Another is to "play the fields". Make sure that you control the points that are awarded by farms. this does not alwayse meen having the most farms (I blitzed a game by owning just 1 farm but it connected to lots of cities). This is the key, connections. To make the farms work for you I have found a good understanding of topology helps. Topology is sometimes called rubber sheet geometry.

I try not to place the first farmer unless the game is more than about 1/3 of the way through or a good field is available (and by good I mean it is at least connected to at least 6 cities).

ANother way to increase the value of farms is to create lots of small (2-3 section) cities. Using the spare piece that I always keep, I can claim the points for a small city in a field that I control and gain the points at the end of the game for the field. Plus a small city is easy to encase in further fields, and so blocking off the chance that your opponents can get a farm on the other side.

With the cloister, I try to group mine together next to eachother. This way a single tile can be used by more than 1 cloister so that instead of ginving you 1 point on its compleation you can get 2 or 3 (or more) points for that single tile.

[Dr._Weird]

Um, could somebody tell me what Carcassonne is? It sounds like the kind of thing I'd like, and I'd love to try it out with my family.

[Edtharan]

Um, could somebody tell me what Carcassonne is?
Carcassonne is a tile laying board game where you attempt to gain points for controling (haning more pieces on the feature) various features of those tiles (Cities, Roads, Feilds and Cloisters).

You have a limited number of pieces you can place on the board at any one time, so management of these is esential to a winning strategy. When a feature is complete (a city is compleatly enclosed, a road has two finished ends, etc) you gain the points for that feature and get your piece back to use in further placements. The field features are not complete untill all tiles are used (end of the game) so pieces used to control them are not available for the rest of the game.

The most important limit on piece placement is that you can't place a piece on a feature that is currently connected to a feature that already has a piece on it (but you can place it where the features are not connected and then connect them later - a key strategy).

The scoreing is fairly simple (except for the fields, and is the one irritation that I have with the game).

During the game:
Cities are worth 2 points per tile in the completed city, with an extra 2 points for special city tiles that have a small shield/banner on them. However a city with just 2 segments in it is only worth 2 points.

Roads are worth 1 point per tile segment.

Cloisters are worth 9 points if completed (1 point for the cloister tile and 8 points total for the surounding tiles).

At the end of the game:
Cities are worth 1 points per tile in the completed city, with an extra 1 points for special city tiles that have a small shield/banner on them. This means that incomplete cities at the end of the game are worth less points. So you need to complete the cities before the end of the game to get the most points.

Roads are worth 1 point per tile segment. The same as they are in the main part of the game.

Cloisters are worth 1 point for each tile in the surounding spaces pluss 1 point for the centre tile.

Fields are the tricky part. For each completed city you check to see how many pieces each player controls that has a field that touches the city. The players with the most number of pieces get 4 points. You do this for each completed city and don't remove the pieces untill all cities are counted (so pieces can contribute controll to multiple cities).

Both in game and at the end game if two or more players have equal number of pieces in control of a feature then all of the players with the most pieces get the full number of points.

That is a quick overview of the game and it's rules. Hopw that helps.