Carcassonne Central

I ordered the 10th Anniversary mainly to get The Festival/Celebration expansion and the translucent meeples.  I was planning on replacing my slightly worn base game tiles (71 tiles excluding the starting tile) with the crisp ones from the 10th Anniversary set.  I keep the base game tiles in a tuckbox I created/modified.

When attempting to place the same 71 tiles from the 10th Anniversary set into the tuckbox, I noticed that the new tiles have less depth/thickness than the set I had been using, leaving a space (probably equivalent to 5 tiles) in the tuckbox.  I checked and rechecked, thinking I had to be missing tiles, but both stacks had 71 tiles in them.

Has anyone else noticed this issue?  I'm wondering if Rio Grande had to reduce the thickness of the tiles to be able to fit all of the tiles in the meeple-shaped box.

I have not had a reason to compare the tiles but now that you've drawn my attention to it I definitely will. I had plans to use those tiles for some expansions. It will be disappointing if it is noticible in the bag or on the board. You've got my curiosty peaked now.

Please let me know if you notice the same thing...hopefully I'm wrong, or maybe received a bad batch.  It's a fairly small difference across 71 tiles, so it may not be too noticeable on a tile-by-tile basis if you use them for expansions.

I took a few pictures of the difference in thickness in the tiles.  Unfortunately I keep getting error messages when trying to post even one picture of less than 128KB, so I suppose I will try to explain it a little further.  It looks like I would need about 6 more of the new tiles to equal the height of the old tiles.  I also noticed the new tiles seem to feel lighter and cheaper than the previous set (and all of my other tiles).  I'm curious if anyone else has noticed this.  Not surprisingly, the 10 Festival/Celebration tiles also are of the same poor construction as these new base game tiles.

I will need to check when i get home.

From the picture of my set below, something does seem different about the 10th aniversary set(upper left in box). Ill let you know.


(http://jcardwell3rdpics.weebly.com/uploads/6/0/1/2/6012299/6574888.jpg?902)

Thanks.  You can see in your picture how the edges look different than all previously released tiles.

There are 4 stacks of 70 tiles.
The one all the way to the right is the 10th anniversary set.
It does appear to be a bit short.
The one next to it is wheel of fate, It appears 1 tile short.
The tiles may fluff a bit as they are used I think.

The other picture shows a difference in the tile surface.

Overall I don't see it a such a big deal. So they appear to be about 6 tiles shorter then the two base sets to the right.

(http://jcardwell3rdpics.weebly.com/uploads/6/0/1/2/6012299/5700211.jpg?876)
(http://jcardwell3rdpics.weebly.com/uploads/6/0/1/2/6012299/5366596.jpg?872)

I hope this helps ;-)

two sets to left are base sets, sorry, it wont let me edit.

I guess I should be glad I only nabbed the expansion tiles then raffled off the rest as a "complete Carcassonne set". Other Carc sets have varied slightly in thickness too. Spielbox tiles are regularly thicker than normal tiles. Still, thinner rather sucks.

Do you thing you could pick out the thin or thick ones from a mixed stack or pile on the table?

I doubt I could pick out the difference based on the tile height, but maybe you can also tell by the coating or overall feel of the new tiles.  Based on your pictures, as is also the case with my tiles, the 10th Anniversary tiles appear to have detachment remnants on the edges, which in theory could be used by an unscrupulous player to possibly gain a slight advantage. 

I agree it isn't a big deal, but I know that many in our community want only the best in their collections, so I wanted to point this out to the group.  I believe they would still be sufficient for conversion to a fan-made expansion.

Thanks for posting the pics BTW.  Your pics are much better than the ones I couldn't load.

Just got this set and yes they are definitely  thinner. Still playable with older tiles however.

I have my own homemade tuckbox for the original and when I received my 10th anniversary set i was excited to replace it, but was also very confused at first and almost thought i lost a 4square of tiles.  After realizing it wasn't any of my doing and the tiles are thinner I went and edited my tuck and now have 3 full games in their own tuck (Original, WoF, 10th) and all 3 are a dif length since i added a lil cubby for the pig in the WoF tuck...lol. 

I just wish they had put a 10th water mark like they did for WoF for when I play with all 3 sets (and for the simple fact I'm a completist and like to know which is which).  I had to trade a round until I obtained all the other major expansions with their water marks...lol.

I just mark my tiles, as you can see in pictures. We play in huge games sometimes so I am going to have to mark my wof and other expansions too.

I don't have the 10th Anniversary set yet, though I'm seriously thinking about stopping by my FLGS today, however I can never resist an opportunity to use my digital caliper. ;D

The tiles in the original 2001 game are 2.09mm thick, while the tiles in Wheel of Fortune are 2.01mm thick. For curiosity's sake, I checked the tiles from the most recent additions to my Carc collection: the City 2.0 tiles are 2.10mm thick (same as 2001 game because my caliper has a tolerance of ±0.01mm. Bridges, Castles, and Bazaars tiles are 2.22mm thick!?!

I was always under the impression that the tiles came from the same supplier (all the tiles I just tested are from RGG), but the above data seems to indicate that either there are multiple suppliers, or the tolerance is not very strict. It's interesting that all my numbers are above 2mm, though it looks like the 10th Anniversary tiles may be slightly under. I would expect that the specified thickness is 2.00mm, and the actual thickness should fall around that in an even distribution. A value like 2.22mm should be way outside of specification. If it were up to me, I would want a tolerance of ±0.05mm, but I would guess the actual tolerance is ±0.10mm or ±0.20mm.

I have both the original and the 10th anniversary. To the naked eye the 10th anniversary looks to be about 1/10th thinner. Stacks of 10 tiles side by side show that the 10th tile stack is about 1 tile shorter than the base set.

According to my measurements, the 10th Anniversary tiles are 0.16mm thinner than the original game.