Klawchat at 1 pm EDT today. Tentatively scheduled to be on the FAN 590 in Toronto at 6:05 pm.
I’ve been promising this writeup for months but there always seems to be a book or a trip in the way, which is a shame, since Carcassonne
Carcassonne’s concept is very simple, generally a hallmark of good boardgames. All players build the board as you go, using a collection of square tiles that depict various pieces of roads, cities, and pastures. You keep no hand tiles, drawing one piece per turn and placing it immediately next to one or more pieces already on the table. You must make sure that the edges match – if a tile has a city on one edge, that edge can’t be placed next to a road or a pasture – which limits your options. Along the way, you place your followers, known as “meeples” to hardcore Carcassonne players, on cities, roads, or farms that you build to try to earn points, with bonus points awarded for completing cities, using city tiles with pennants, and for certain tiles available in the many expansions to the core game.
It’s an easy game to pick up but the changing board and the fact that your opponents are simultaneously building, often nearby, make gameplay different every time. You can play a solitary game, especially if you’re just playing one other person, but you can also play in a way that tries to steal points from your opponents by merging one of your cities with one of theirs, since the points for a completed (“closed”) city go to the player with the most meeples occupying tiles in that city.
The trickiest part of the game is the use of farms, which can be more valuable than cities if played properly. When you play a meeple on a city or road, you get the meeple back to redeploy once that city is closed or that road is completed. When you play a meeple on a farm, however, he’s there for the rest of the game. When the game ends, a player gets points for each closed city that his farm abuts, but a player often doesn’t have much control over how his farm grows, and a player can end up with nothing for one of his meeples if farms merge as the board develops and he’s outnumber on that farm when the game ends. As a result, when and where to place meeples is the main strategic decision for Carcassonne players, since you have no control over what tiles you draw but have complete control over meeple placement.
We’ve played with two to four players; four players can take a while, but two player games run under a half hour for us, especially since my wife and I tend to play apart from each other on the board. I’ve played online a few times, including two games against players who spent all of their time trying to glom on to my cities (by creating a new nearby city and attempting to merge the two), and not only was the strategy annoying, it didn’t seem to work – you can keep the game close that way, but you can’t get ahead without building some cities and farms of your own, so I never pursue this strategy myself.
We’ve used two Carcassonne expansions. The game currently comes with the first River expansion, twelve tiles that you use to start the game; it provides some structure and helps break up farms, but it doesn’t substantially change gameplay. The second, Traders and Builders
I’ll do one more game post in the next few weeks, updating the top ten and reposting the comments lost from the original thread last fall.
Ha, we love Carcassone.
If you’re still in DC, check out Jose Andres stuff. He’s the guy who supposedly brought Tapas to the US. True or not, I like his restaurants.
Jaleo is the big moneymaker (Spanish Tapas)
Oyamel is amazing, really incredible (Mexican Tapas)
Zatinya is the trendy place (Mezze)
MiniBar I think is the hoity toity super expensive place, but I haven’t been there or Zatinya.
Those two expansions are great.
We made additional tiles using templates posted online. We printed them on full-sheet label paper and stuck those to chipboard. They turned out surprisingly similar to the official tiles and it’s often difficult to tell them apart. There are even fan-made expansion packs that come complete with their own rules.
Anyway, great game. I’ll recommend Power Grid again if you haven’t tried it. Expect to devote some time the first time you play. I know you mentioned that you have a preference for two player games, and you can play power grid w/just 2 players.
I love Carcassonne (I tend to just call it carcass for short though). You’re right about farms being the trickiest. Battling over them is the worst. Once you engage in a battle over who has more meeps on a farm, you and whoever you’re battling with both pretty much lose while everyone else is busy doing productive things.
KLaw-
Saw in the chat you were in DC. Are you going to do a food review? I live here now (MontGoCo, technically) but would love to see your reviews on some spots, especially que.
Keith,
If you’re looking for a place with great beer selection, check out Little Miss Whiskey’s at 11th and H st NE. It’s a hole in the wall but they have incredible selection. Drank a Dragon’s Milk there last night.
I think the photos on the amazon website selling carcassonne are funny. The two photos of people playing the game are of hot girls.
Contrast it with the user submitted photos of people playing the game – overweight, unshaven dudes.
Keith,
You’re missing out on the utility of stealing a city. Especially when it is one that has several shields in it, that the other player has invested time in. Sneaking a corner piece nearby and splitting a 20 point city that has had ninety percent of the investment coming from the other player is vitual to neutralizing their play. Another very useful tactic is to start a fight over the city, getting them to invest a couple of meeple in it, and then spike it so it is unfinishable intentionally. If you can maroon a couple of your opponent’s meeples, especially early in the match, the strategic advantage is all but unbeatable.
At the higher levels, farming becomes the difference between winning and losing. By dominating an area, and then manipulating roads to expand it into other areas, you can easily farm 21-36 points, or the size of a major city, all at the end of the game.When you have a strong farm advantage, you also solely focus on making small fast cities, as each represents 4 points for the city, and then 3 points for the farm; 7 points for two tiles.