Carcassonne Central

I've been working on an idea - taken from the solazy proto tiles. I call it Stone Walls.
It is different than the Barriers and City Walls expansion developed by Gwommy, but can be complimentary. I addressed the possible combination in the rules.

There are stone wall features on the tiles which can meander across the countryside. They divide up farms and can connect cities. Roads can pass through them without dividing the wall feature. I introduce the Stone Mason (someone please tell me if this has been taken, I couldn't find it in any of the expansions). The Stone Mason can earn points for completed walls, much like the Thief on roads. I made the wall tiles worth 5 points each for a few reasons. First, there may not be that many tiles relative to the lot you are playing with, they could be scarce. Second, the cities could break them up quite well. Third, to promote the building (linking) of stone wall tiles.

I believe this could be a quite natural way to limit the size of farms.

Anyway, take a look and let me know what you think. I would love to hear some feedback and rules suggestions.

You can get to the rules through my Mediafire page.
http://www.mediafire.com/?rfsh5y45i2eii

I like the way it breaks farms.

here is a question

you have a wall like D in example "a" in the rules, and you have just completed it and scored 10 points and retrieved your stone mason. the next turn someone places a similar tile making wall D now a Y shape lets say it conveniently terminates at another city so a mason can be deployed and retrieved in the same turn for 15 points, and the next tile could be another making wall D now be an X shape and that mason could earn 20 points.

is this a possible sequence of events?

it isnt as if it would be the first time a tile feature had multiple scoring opportunities, "barns" for instance.

I've been thinking about this one and I like it: it adds a new feature and meeple without a bunch of new rules, with the added bonus of splitting farms.

Some thoughts on the write-up:

Deploying the Mason: not sure what the standard is, but should it be reiterated that a follower can't be placed on a wall that already has one? You do cover that by saying "normal placement rules", but extra clarity never hurts. Along that same line, should you spell out that wagons can be Masons, but not builders, pigs, etc?

Scoring: "Note that a complete or incomplete city section will terminate a wall, however, a cloister “building” terminates a wall even if the nine-tile feature is not completed." (italics mine)
I don't think this is a "however" situation, since in either case the wall is completed despite the terminating feature being incomplete. I had to read the sentence a couple of times because the "however" was throwing me.
Suggested rewording: Note that city sections and cloisters will terminate a wall, even if the city or cloister is still incomplete.

Graphics: Admittedly, I haven't used the tiles in a game yet, but looking at the examples and the Tile Layout page -- things get a little busy around cities. Consider making the stone wall rooftops a different color so they stand out -- yellow or blue?

Most of the tile graphics seem way too dark.

Thanks for presenting this excellent mini-expansion, Carcking, I'm looking forward to the end result.

This is a good question Dave. It's a scenario I had not considered but I like it.

I'm inclined to give the player who owns the stone mason the option of scoring the wall D for 10 points or, because the wall is still expandable, giving the player the option of maintaining the stone mason on the wall and defer scoring until it is later completed and perhaps extended. But yes, if he decides to take the points and retrieve his follower, and leave the wall "open", the wall may be claimed again later only if added to.

I like the idea of multiple scoring opportunities. It needs play testing before it can be finalized. I'm actually making up the tiles so I can do that.

Keep the ideas coming!

Thanks for the feedback Cappy. This good stuff.


I did mentally cover this in the "normal placement rules" statement, but it won't hurt to fit it in  the text.


The wagon is a follower, so can be placed anywhere a follower can be placed. It is spelled out more clearly in the paragraph #4 on Scoring. The builder and pig are not followers, but I did mention the use of the builder in the Notes section.


I agree that the "however" is awkward. I like the wording on your suggested sentence. Thanks for this.


This is interesting - I hadn't considered different colors. We need to play test it to really get a feel for it.


I haven't put up the tiles on mediafire yet. I can brighten them before I do though.

Nice work on this expansion.  I imagine you've already tried this, but is there any way to bridge the roads over the wall, or have the wall arch over the road, to strengthen the point that the road does not break up the wall?  

You know what I'd like to see, is a couple of your tiles with one of Gwommy's City Walls along one edge, then a Stone Wall going off diagonal. Just a thought.

How's this?

Exactly! People can use this tile without knowing about Gwommy's expansion -- they'll just see it as a stone wall.

And the addition of the gate where a road passes through a wall, looks great.

Agreed.  Nicely done.

just a small encouragement post: i really like where this is going, looking forward to completion!  {up

I will have it up very soon...

Notice: I am working on a re-write for this expansion before we finalize it.

More to come...

I have finalized REV 0_3 and loaded it to MediaFire.

We have play tested this several times with various size groups and it works. Check out some of the play sessions I posted on the Sessions portion of the forum. We really enjoy playing it. It is a new scoring feature and couples with cities, roads, cloisters and farms.

I consider it a major expansion. I've included 36 tiles borrowed with permission from Solazy and Gwommy. You could reprint as many as you like and make your own as well. I recommend that you monitor the number of city walls that you include in your set in order to maintain scoring balance.

The basic concept of the mechanic is a collaborative effort from the forum. There is a borrowed concept from the Barn in that there is opportunity to score a stone wall multiple times but I believe it is properly balanced as the number of city wall tiles is limited.

Anyway I would love for you to take a look at this and give me your feedback. I can't wait to get it up on the download section but I would like to have it vetted here first.

Thanks! Happy Carcking!

http://www.mediafire.com/?i4hyyhjw99r4vbl (http://www.mediafire.com/?i4hyyhjw99r4vbl)

Here are the tile sheets:

Sheet A:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?4vzq4ox56h95xdu (http://www.mediafire.com/i/?4vzq4ox56h95xdu)

Sheet B:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?938yj4stat9vda9 (http://www.mediafire.com/i/?938yj4stat9vda9)

Sheet C:
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?ekxi0ya1i2ij3fd (http://www.mediafire.com/i/?ekxi0ya1i2ij3fd)

I put the rules up on the download section but I do not know how to also add the tile sheets. Can someone help me with that?

Thanks.
Carcking

You should combine all four file into one ZIP file. If the resulting ZIP file is too large, let me know and I can work my magic.

Hi Scott - I did zip the file. Can you check to see if it is too large? I don't have the tiles in a PDF - wasn't sure how to do that.

I'll try to look into this tomorrow.

Working on this right now and thought it might be helpful to explain how I'm tackling it. For the rules PDF, I'm using the PDF Optimizer feature in Adobe Acrobat Professional, though it didn't have much of an impact this time around because the rules PDF was already quite small.

I downloaded your tile images and I see that they are in JPG format. This is a pain in the backside for printing purposes because it might come out at the wrong size. It is best to convert the JPG to PDF, and the easiest way to do that AND make sure it will print the correct size is to import the tile images into Microsoft Word and create a PDF from there. Microsoft Word has the ability to size images to specific print sizes.

Ideally, all the tile images should be imported into Microsoft Word separately. You've got several tile images in one image, with white space in between. Although the white space appears to be "empty", it still contributes towards the overall size of the image; fortunately not as much as the colored parts of the image though. I'm not going to slice them apart because that's too much work for me, but I will need to slice one of the tile images for math purposes. By extracting one of the tiles from the overall image, I can size it to 1.75" and I see that the scale is 32% of the original size. Now I know to resize your original group images to 32% of their original size and the tiles will print at 1.75" wide by 1.75" tall.

I'd like to briefly point out that if each tile was a separate image, there is opportunity to fit more than 12 per page. Right now there is three pages of 12 tiles each, but if it is possible to get it down to two pages that would save an entire sheet of label paper.

Here's the finished ZIP file, weighing in at a svelte 1.54 MB:
http://carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=168 (http://carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=168)

This is brilliant Scott. Thank you. I am really enjoying learning this.  {nw  :D

I just wanted to write a quick post saying that I really, really love the concept and am definitely going to print a copy and play a game with them. My only problem is that I'm seriously OCD about visuals and the colours on the tiles are a little inconsistent, as well as some of the tiles being a bit visually cluttered with bushes, little houses, farms, horses, etc. Everything else looks amazing to me - especially the way the roads run under the wall gates and the nice little dirt path leading down from the cloister.

Thanks for endorsement! I'd really like to hear your review and comments after you play a few times.  :)