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Carcassonne

spectre

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,382
Mini-review:
In my opinion, it's one of the best board games to play with "regular" people. Friends, family, girlfriends, boyfriends.
The basic rules are very easy to pick up.

For those who haven't had the pleasure, the game is about picking up a random tile and use it to build a map consisting of cities, fields, roads, abbeys, etc. The end result looks similar to this, only less tidy:
carcassonne.jpg

You have a limited number of followers or "dudes" which you place on the tiles as you lay them to claim certain map features as your own. Say, you lay a tile with a road, you place your dude on it and claim the road as your own.
Then, you add additional tiles to your road until it has a proper end and beginning. Once it's done, you get points depending on how long a road you built and you get your "dude" back so that he can be reused.

The game's strength is in its customizability. There's a shitload of add-ons for it (more than 10 I think), and each adds new tiles, new "dudes", new features and new rules. Some are very simple and easy to learn (for example, they only add a few more tiles to lay), others are fairly complex (like the dragon which literally wreaks havoc to the board).

The game is meant for 2 to 5 players. Personally, it's more fun with 2-3 people. With 5 players, it's really difficult to get any long term construction done, although it depends of which add-ons you choose. Some work well for two players, others are good for 5. You can actually make the game as simple or as complex as you like. You can easily control the length of the game by adjusting the number of tiles. Or, you can introduce the more specialized follower types to increase the number of choices for each player each turn.

Basically, the game is about choosing a random tile and deciding where to place it, and where to invest your limited pool of followers for maxiumum score. Since the board is totally random, no two games are ever the same. The add-ons introduce many new rules to screw other players over.

Overall, I am impressed with the way the game is designed. It's elegant, convenient and simple to learn and has the right mix of stuff to please almost everyone. Some guys will dig the map-building aspect of the game, others will enjoy screwing other players' plans, others will enjoy dicking about with the catapult.

All in all, a must-have for any board game fan. You can get a big box (base game + 5 add-ons) edition for as low as 60$, which is really good bang for yoru buck. Got mine a year agon and I'm still not bored with it. Heck, I haven't played with all the add-ons yet.
 

Phelot

Arcane
Joined
Mar 28, 2009
Messages
17,908
Yes, that was a fun game to play. Lots of twists and turns and it was easy to come back if you were in the hole.
 

spectre

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,382
A'ight, since Carcassone thrives on the add-ons, I'll list the ones I have with a short description, in case anyone's interested or is pondering which ones to buy. I own five and will probably buy a few more somewhere in the future.
Feel free to contribute if you have something new. As you will see, the add-ons are pretty neat, in that even if you dislike some of the new features it's easy to ignore them and just use, say, the new landscape tiles.

Inns and Cathedrals
A very solid add-on, once you get it, there's little reason NOT to use it.
It adds a new follower, which works just like the ordinary dude, but is bigger (and it counts for two guys if you'd like to take over the other player's stuff).
The main part of the add-on is the introduction of cathedrals and inns, they allow you to get more points out of your roads and cities, but at the risk of getting none if you don't complete the feature.
It's also a nice way of screwing other players over. On top of that, you also get 18 new landscape tiles.

Traders and Builders
A mixed bag. It introduces two new followers, trade goods and 24 new landscape tiles.
The new follower type - builder - allows you to take additional turns and the pig gives you more points for your farms. The builder may be a it hard to grasp for new players, and it's sometimes easy to forget to use him.
The trade goods feel slightly superficial and we often play without it, because it's hard to keep track of all them tokens.
Overall, we mostly use the new tiles and the builder.

The Princess and the Dragon
This add-on is mostly about the dragon which semi-randomly sweeps the board clean of all followers it comes into contact with. First, a player has to play the volcano tile to spawn the dragon, and then wait for the "dragon attack!" tile to show for a neat clusterfuck - players take turns moving the dragon around the board until he moves 6 steps, removing all followers along the way.
It adds a sense of random destruction to the game and can be loads of fun in games with any players. Less so if you play in smaller groups.
The add-on also adds the fairy which is mostly used to protect your followers from the dragon. There are also tiles with a magic portal, allowing you to repopulate the areas recently visited by the dragon.
Princesses allow you to expel followers from cities, which is mostly useful as a dick-move when a player tries to complete a big-ass town.
A nice add-on overall, both the princess and the dragon add a bit of unpredictability to the game which some players will undoubtedly like (others may see their friendships and marriages ruined, so use with caution).
It also comes with a whooping 30 new tiles, although they are mostly used in conjunction with the new rules.

Abey and Mayor
A very nice add-on. Apart from the 12 new tiles (which are mostly about making oddball connections), it allows the player to place an abbey, which is perfect for plugging holes in the map and completing features you would otherwise be unable to finish.
It also comes with three new follower types, the mayor, the wagon and the barn. The barn is useful in connection with farmers, allowing you to get points from them early (normally, farmers stay on the board until the end of the game) and get even more points from them.
The mayor acts as one follower on a town for each pennant (little shield) on it. Which means he's perfect for holding large towns against other player's shenanigans, or when you attempt to take over such a town yourself. Unfortunately, like most of the specialized followers, he doesn't see too much action and you often forget to play him.
Finally, there is a wagon, which.... I can't really tell you what it does because the rules are so obscure we conceded we can't really be arsed to figure it out.

In our group, this add-on is mostly useful for the tiles. The added followers not so much. The mayor is generally liked by people who want to sneak-steal big-ass towns and, as you may imagine, the barn is loved by people who tend to build big ass farms.

Finally comes Bridges, Castles and Bazaars
In my opinion, this is the weakest of the bunch, although I can't say it's bad. I can imagine some players will like it.
It adds 12 new tiles, 8 of which are bazaars, the remaining 4 are "oddball" tiles (like a monastery in the city), which don't come with any new rules.
The bazaars themselves allow players to "auction" for new tiles - players take turns choosing a random tile and making a bid from their current score to place that tile, as though they took an additional turn.
This allows for some nice player interaction, because
Another new feature are castles, which allow you to share points from other players for completed features in their vicinity. Nice dick move if another player just happens to have a big ass city with a cathedral nearby.
Finally, there's bridges, which allow you to place tiles which would otherwise be illegal because of the road connection - the bridge allows you to treat tiles as though there were a road on them.
 

Berekän

A life wasted
Patron
Joined
Sep 2, 2009
Messages
3,097
I bought it a few weeks ago and everyone in my family's delighted with it. It's one of those games which are simple to learn and hard to master, where there aren't obvious set strategies.
 

Castanova

Prophet
Joined
Jan 11, 2006
Messages
2,949
Location
The White Visitation
I like that game a lot but I find that casual gamers have a lot of trouble grasping the whole farmer concept. Every time I play with random people, I easily win just buy placing one farmer and then collecting like 20+ points during the scoring phase while they all give me the skeptical eye, as if I just cheated.
 

Tripicus

Augur
Joined
Oct 22, 2011
Messages
161
I find I can't really enjoy Carcassone without the Tower expansion. Towers allow you to capture other player meeples as hostages, which are ransomed for victory points or exchanged for your own meeples back.
 

Andnjord

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2012
Messages
3,027
Location
The Eye of Terror
Time for a little necro.

My wife's uncle recently let us borrow the base game of Carcassonne, and quite miraculously my wife actually enjoyed it a lot (she's no gamer at all). So I've decided to fork out some money to buy the game and one (only one) expansion. Which one would you recommend me to buy? From doing some research I'm thinking I should just get Inns and Cathedrals, but I decided to ask the prestigious magazine for advice first.
 

Gord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
Inns and Cathedrals is a good choice, but it's probably the expansion that is closest to the base game.
I.e. it adds some new tiles, a few new and easy-to-pick-up rules, doesn't change the basic gameflow all that much.
It mostly adds a little bit more risk to some of your endeavours.
So if you want something that has a bigger impact on gameplay you might want to choose another one.
Nevertheless, as Spectre said - once you have it, there's little reason not to use it.
 

Andnjord

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2012
Messages
3,027
Location
The Eye of Terror
Thanks, you're confirming why I'm leaning towards I&C; to keep it closer to the base game. It's hard enough to find a game my wife likes, I don't want to risk changing it too much straight away.
 

spectre

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,382
Yeah, just go with the I&C, it's pretty much what you want - a bit more tile variety, a bit longer game with little to no changes to the rules.

My wife's a non-gamer as well, but I've had some success with Settlers of Catan, Pandemic, Splendor, Dixit and Terraforming Mars,
especially Spendor was a surprise hit, it has a pleasant, relaxing aesthetics, it also scales well for two players.
 

Andnjord

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2012
Messages
3,027
Location
The Eye of Terror
Thanks, Settlers of Catan was on my list already, Pandemic might be a bit too dark for her though (she's a softie at heart). I'll look into the others, never heard of them! Can't say I have any real experience with card games myself (except Pokemon as a kid) regarding Splendor.
 

Andnjord

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2012
Messages
3,027
Location
The Eye of Terror
Ok, so what defines Euro Games, and as opposed to what? I'm guessing American Games, right?

Keep in mind that I only played board games as a kid and a teenager, so pre-internet day when all we had were the usual suspects of Cluedo and Monopoly (and a few obscure French games that now that I think about them had probably some terrible rulesets). I'm only now starting to realize how much good stuff there is out there that was made since then.
 

Lazing Dirk

Arcane
Joined
Dec 12, 2016
Messages
1,865,452
Location
Shooting up your ride
We tend to use Carcassonne as our go-to game when introducing people to more interesting board games than the previous crap they've probably played (like Monopoly). Generally when we play it ourselves we use the inns, cathedrals, builder, and abbey, though we'll keep some of the extra tiles in regardless.

After that we usually try Scythe, or possibly Viticulture (with the added seasons but no extra buildings/cheese/etc to start with). Lords of Waterdeep is also good fun, and relatively easy to pick up even with the Skullport expansion, though we take out the expansion lords before we get them to pick theirs to make things simpler. I think generally Carcassonne is the best one to start off with though.
 

Matalarata

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 8, 2013
Messages
2,646
Location
The threshold line
Eurogames usually have all their nuts and bolts exposed, the setting and "flavour" take a secondary role and usually appear forced on top of the mechanics, their advantages is that they are tight-er and tend to have a greater internal consistency see this, it's basically a puzzle game disguised as an adventure game. Also this, I remember codexian level of butthurt on BGG when it first came out and everyone was either loving or hating it. I usually find them boring, to really enjoy them you must play with other "solid" players, if half your table is lazy or math-deficient they tend to play like shit.
There are exceptions though, I never played Carcassonne but many players I trust swear by it, also this is one of my favourite games ever, and it's an Euro one. Basically a very well done MoO meets Boardgame (oh, my God it's heavan)

Ameritrash games are flavour and settings first, (kewl) mechanics later. There are exceptions of course but usually they are less Sawyered balanced. For example, if multiple characters are present some will clearly be OP (Descent). If itemization is a thing, American games usually have multiple broken ones, or alternatively broken combinations of class and or items. All things considered, they're usually funny-er imho. Mainly because I'm a realist, 80% of the gamers around won't be able to differentiate between a bonus in accuracy (+5%) or a bonus in damage (+5%) and they'll take the damage bonus even if clearly the accuracy one is mathematically superior. You usually end up having more fun if randomgamercousin#12 and IswearImanerdygirl#23 can dick around with some uber card or awesome token while yukyuk-ing towards end game. Especially true if you prefer co-op games over competitive ones.

Examples, from shit to gud:

Shit


Slightly less Shit

Descent Decent

Better

Gud

Arkham/Eldritch Horror
 

Azalin

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 16, 2011
Messages
7,305
Carcassonne is a nice simple game that is also very good with just 2 people,definitely a good introductory game.King of Tokyo is my other favourite simple game if more people are involved.
Pandemic and Lords of Waterdeep are good and just a bit more complicated
 

Lazing Dirk

Arcane
Joined
Dec 12, 2016
Messages
1,865,452
Location
Shooting up your ride

My friend has that one but we've yet to try it. I vaguely remember looking at the rules once whilst inebriated and thinking, "What the fuck is this?", then we probably played Scythe instead - since we already know it inside out - to avoid taxing our poor brains. Might have to put that on the list of things to try when we're sober the next time I visit.
 

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