Carcassonne Central

I'd like to know what everyone's favourite house rules are so that a section can be added to the CAR. Here's a couple of suggestions:

- Take your next tile at the end of your turn, to give you time to think about placement and avoid analysis paralysis.

- Place the river first, then fit the city of Carcassonne first to it so that the most tiles are touched.

- Ban all river U-turns to prevent problems with subsequent placement.

- Rather than discarding the second fork (from The River II and Count, King and Consorts), mix it in with the other river tiles and place it normally when it is drawn.

Any other suggestions?

The players decide who starts the game by any method they choose (currently this is decided by rolling three meeples. The person who has one upstanding first, decides who plays first)

We play the fork of the river first, and lay the spring last. The lakes being mixed in with the other river tiles.

Once the River is complete, we are permitted to move it to the 'centre' of the playing area.

With King and Robber Baron, each holder of these cards at the end of the game gets a straight 10 points for each card (matching the Trade points system of scoring, and avoiding the problem of counting finished roads).

We do not score for the pig herds... herds... can I use the plural? :) ;l7

In addition to some of those mentioned:

 - We play both rivers backwards starting with the city/lake. This is more realistic becasue we then get two springs producing rivers that join and flow "down" to a lake. We discard two lakes - the plain one from Rivers I and the volcano. (If playing P&D we just let the dragon appear at the first volcano land tile.) To set up we place the lake tile, put one spring tile aside as a final ending tile, and then split the balance of the river tiles into two stacks. The junction tile is shuffled into the stack 1 and the other spring into stack 2. Then the stack 1 is placed on stack 2 - so that the junction will be pulled sometime before the spring. If playing with the Count, we place the city/lake so that it completes one of the small cities around Carcassonne.

 - We have drawn "fences" on the spring tiles from the centre to the NE corner (river flowing South). This fence divides the farm on the spring tile.

 - We play with all tiles regardless of the expansions in use because we like long games.

 - We play with a bag for the tiles and therefore allow the original starting tile to be put in the bag as well as replacing unplayable tiles into the bag. we also throw dragon tiles back into the bag and redraw right away if there is no dragon in play yet.

 - We allow players to claim a fairy point until handing the bag to the next player, but then tough if you forgot!

Edit; forgot one - we only allow wagons to be used in cloisters (and I suppose shrines) if the tile also contains a road. This means that the wagon can't be used in an abbey.

 - We play 100% HiG rules and are taking a course in defenestration techniques in order to deal with RGG based disagreements . .  ;D

Some different ways of playing the river have already been mentioned; here is what I think is a complete list of all the techniques I've heard of: http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?topic=195.0 (http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?topic=195.0)

Trees (bushes) on roads do not end the road, only houses do (when the road forks). We always play with this, and it makes the road building a lot more dynamic.

Interesting.
When (and if) you play the tower, there are three tiles where tower foundations sit on roads. Do you have these roads end at the tower or not?

If the road ends in the tower, yeah (I don't remember how they look just now). The rule was simply a missunderstanding from the beginning, we didn't consider bushes enough of a blockade to end a road, it never really came up. It wasn't until I came here that I understood that everything was meant to end roads. But we didn't change it since, well, our rule is better :)

One of my favourite house rules is allowing players to keep drawing additional tiles as long as they extend their city/road where their builders is deployed.

We play the King and Baron differently.  The player that completes the first road, gets the Baron and keeps it until another player completes a longer road.  While the Baron is in your possession, you get 1 pt for every completed road.  Same goes for the King and cities.  We like using this method, as the scoring is done throughout the game, instead of having to count the roads and cities at the end.  Some games one player has the King or Baron the entire game, other games they change hands many times.

my house rule is if someone steals a city/road to other player he MUST pay a beer to the player, if the player does NOT drinks alchool, he MUST gave it to me. if the dumbhead steals MY city/road, he must pay to my 3 beers.

p.s. i am the game owner!

Seriously, the only house rule that we sometimes is "buying tiles". i.e. when a tiles is the ONLY tile(in the moment) to close a structure, we can offer points, trades counter, abbey, etc... pretty cool sometimes!

we also sometimes, play in team, this is a hardcore way to pump up cities to over 120pts!!!

hope to not duplicate!!

Our favorite house rule is that we only play moves "against" each other for which a piece actually exists. We don't, however, keep track of whether or not those tiles are still in play.

Tip: the other thing we do is we lay the meeples down on the farms (as opposed to standing upright); that way, in case the board gets jolted, as sometimes happens, we can tell whether or not a meeple was a farmer or on a road or city.

Yup, that's what the rules say.  It makes for quick identification who is a farmer and who is not.

kc wanted his post to be attached to the Fav CAR house rules thread, so I merged them fyi.

As your 'touch wood' move, The Wagon can move to the next complete, or uncontested incomplete, feature. One feature (road feature per turn). This lets it roll across the board to uncontested features.

The Tower cannot cature over empty tiles.

The stand-alone pig herd tile counts as an extra pig herd.

We avoid the "Fairy Track", it's too annoying to keep track of. Instead he has the Dragon Protection, and 5 points for a protected Meeple completing a feature.

King and Robber Baron we have as finished roads and cities. At game end we use a LOT of dice, place them on the board as we look for finished features, and count as we collect them up.

The Mayor cannot be captured by the Tower (toughens him up nicely).

The Wagon cannot be eaten by the Dragon or captured by the Tower (the Meeple hides in the hay as it flys over).

We permit the Wagon use in non-roaded features. It can move from the Abbey to a touching city or road (one move, one turn) but it cannot do so from a Cloister that touches only farm (it's not a 4x4 jeep!).

We stand Meeples up on Cities and Roads, lay them on the side farming (shoulder ploughing a field) or flat down (praying).

BEAUTY BONUS, our biggest change. If you place a tile that touches something on all 4 adjacent sides, you get another turn. This helps motivate people to finish the board even if you don't get advantage from the placement. (Does not apply to Abbey tile).

Following on from that, we lay the Mayor flat (same as farmers). This way we can tell at a glance which cities contain Mayors as we found that we had to double-take when using the big meeple and Mayor. :)

Instead of starting with the spring and setting aside the lake we put all of the river pieces in the bag. That way river can be any size and there is usually more then one option for placing a river piece.

We play with a three tile hand. The Abbey counts as part of your hand. You play your turn including the builder, and then draw back up to three tiles. It adds a lot of strategy to the game. People tend to hold onto city splitters and farm joiners, or if there is a long road in play that can get the baron they hold onto a road completer.

Some of these have already been mentioned before.  :)

As mentioned by some other people, we also shuffle the lakes that end the river into the pack so that the river can be any size (stops players predicting when the river will end so they can place a farmer that will loop around the end of the lake surrounded by a farm).

As mentioned by Joff, the player who holds the king and robber baron tiles gets a flat 10 points. It is consistent with trade goods, saves counting everything and also stops certain people from creating a lot of little castles and roads to get extra points.  ;)

We use unused pieces (or some other objects) to represent the size of the biggest city and the longest road on the score board when playing with the king and robber baron so that we don't have to remember how big the previous feature was (and don't have to go searching on the board if we have forgotten).

We mix the original starting tile (without a river) in with the river tiles. If it is drawn then it acts like a 'bonus' tile that can be placed anywhere as obviously it continue the river.

To raise the stakes of a challenge between shrines and cloisters and to make it more worthwhile to risk the chance of getting no points we say that the winning challenger gets the points for BOTH structures (9 + 9 = 18 points) and the loser gets nothing.

I mentioned in another thread many moons ago that I had my brother make me replicas of a city piece and a road piece from Settlers of Catan. (Don't have Catan, not going to buy it for two pieces, wouldn't desecrate another board game like that anyway.) With some brown paint, they stand out nicely as being neutral figures.

Alternatively, the two keeps from Carc: The Castle would also work.

Excellent idea. I'm going to present that one to the gang this week.

Thanks.

Very clever. We had the same problem and I was going to make up stickers (showing a pennant) to afix to the Mayors but this is a much better idea.

Thanks.

Very interesting way of using the King and Baron!

In our group we use the basic tiles from CAR, I&C, T&B, King&Scout, The River and the GQ expansion (roughly 140 tiles). We've discussed alternative ways of using the King and Baron. Our latest idea was that it should be awarded to the person who scores the largest city/longest road, resulting in 10 bonus points at the end of the game. We don't like the fuzz of counting everything in the end. But now I think I'll ask the other players if we shouldn't use your house rules instead :-)

Some house rules we use.

To determine the first player; each player draws a tile from the bag, the player that drew the tile with the most roads (0 to 4) plays first, if there is a tie for most roads, a draw-off takes place, this is repeated until someone wins. (We have this rule because I am the oldest and I said so! ;D  )

Starting with the first player, we draw one tile at a time while building the river;
then continuing with the next player we each draw three tiles placing them face up before us; we then continue normally drawing a replacement tile every time we play one; the only exception is when we use our abbey wildtile.

We use all the expansion tiles even when we don't play a particular expansion.

I have just read through the postings (some nice ideas there) and I will suggest that our house try some of the house rules mentioned.

While I was reading the postings about the king & robber baron expansion a thought crossed my mind; to place one or more D12s or D20s (dice used in role playing games) on the largest road and city to identify them and their size.

We do not score the points for any uncompleted features at the end of the game.  Games with my  husband easily take 3 plus hours because he takes FOREVER to take a turn, so we are generally sick of it all by the end of the game, so we don't score as we should for incomplete cities, etc. 

In our house, you are not permitted to lay down any meeples until the entire river is down.

We score a flat 10 points at the end for the barron and king. 

We score points for the pig herd titles and the pig if they end up in the same field.

We do not allow anyone to try to build things off the end of the table. 

Games between my husband and I usually end up being pretty close according to points, so we are generally happy with our rules even though they aren't quite right...

That's an official rule actually.

Where is it stated in the rules?

It was in one of the FAQ answers.

Was it an official HiG FAQ answer?  Is it in the CAR?  I can't seem to find it.

One would think that this is a limitation imposed by the law of gravity...

I would think it would be too, and yet my husband insists on trying to hold up the tiles with his hand throughout the rest of the game.   ::)

We just shift the whole game on the table to allow for placement at what was formerly the edge.  I don't think there's a rule that says you can't do it...

We played our first game of mega carc today and this came up.  One of the large cities went to the edge of the table and having thought I saw it somewhere on here, I said that it could not be finished.  This meant that my wife's city of 13+/- tiles went unfinished.  Perhaps I was a little hasty.  The last time we played, I insisted on moving all the tiles so that we could build in that direction.  I hope someone can find out if that is a rule soon.  I also forgot to tell her she could flee the besieged city (which had three cloisters adjacent) and only allowed her 1 point per tile on a city that was besieged twice (it had a cathedral).  I guess I made a lot of errors...  I won by almost 50 points, but I don't think I should tell her.   {no

Yes, it is an official rule for "a" Carcassonne game.  The answer is: Carcassonne Hunter & Gathers.

From the RGG version of the rules that are currently online:

Drawing and placing land tiles
As his first action, the player must draw a land tile from one of the face-down land tile stacks. He shows the tile
to all the players (so they can offer their “advice” on placement) and then places the tile face-up on the table in
the playing area. When placing a land tile, a player must use the following rules:
• The player must place the new land tile (with red borders in the examples) with one or more of its sides
adjacent to a previously placed land tile. He may not place the land tile so it touches previously placed tiles
only corner to corner. The edge of the table limits the playing area. Thus, a player may not place a tile past the
edge of the table or move the playing area to place a tile that would have been past the edge of the table.

And yes, I use this rule across all versions of Carcassonne.  And for fun we sometimes start closer to one edge of the table to force growth in a particular direction.

Ah, the rule is not valid for normal Carc then.  I think we shall play as we always have - moving the whole "map" so that there's space to play "beyond the edge" if there's a need to.

Are not the rules: "The starting tile is placed in the middle of the table."?

Therefore, the edge of the table would be the boundary line and you would not be able to play 'over the edge'. Should you move the layout once the game is started then the starting tile is no longer in the centre of the table, but then I suppose that one could argue that there must be a rule that says that the starting tile could not be moved from this starting position after it has been placed!

However, when we play The River/II we allow the finished river to be placed into a position that is roughly central. All players must agree on the rivers final position. Play then commences proper, the edge of the table becoming the boundary which must not (cannot) be crossed.

What if the game were being played on a mat that could be moved?  Obviously this would fall under the heading of a "house rule," but would you allow the mat to be moved to allow completion of an incomplete feature after play began?

[/quote]

Yes, it is an official rule for "a" Carcassonne game.  The answer is: Carcassonne Hunter & Gathers.

From the RGG version of the rules that are currently online:

Drawing and placing land tiles
As his first action, the player must draw a land tile from one of the face-down land tile stacks. He shows the tile
to all the players (so they can offer their “advice” on placement) and then places the tile face-up on the table in
the playing area. When placing a land tile, a player must use the following rules:
• The player must place the new land tile (with red borders in the examples) with one or more of its sides
adjacent to a previously placed land tile. He may not place the land tile so it touches previously placed tiles
only corner to corner. The edge of the table limits the playing area. Thus, a player may not place a tile past the
edge of the table or move the playing area to place a tile that would have been past the edge of the table.

And yes, I use this rule across all versions of Carcassonne.  And for fun we sometimes start closer to one edge of the table to force growth in a particular direction.
[/quote]

For the rare occasions where I actually allow the game to be recentered during play (200+ stating tiles), I use a table cloth that has about 2 foot of over hang in every direction.  That way we simply slide the table cloth and keep playing.

Personally, I think the H&G rule should be apply to all the Carcassonne versions.  It has a tendency to keep the game dense with lots of farms to work with.  Makes for a very interesting end game in my opinion.

We are using the Basic game, River 1 & II, I&C, T&B, K&S, GQ11 and A&M as a regular playing set and have set the other expansions aside for now. Our regular house rules are:

Place the three way fork from River II as the starting tile. The lake/city tile (River II) and the Spring with a road (GQ11) are placed in the starting river mix. We also include the original starting tile (without a river) in this mix. The only tile kept aside is the lake (River I) which is played as the last tile of the river placement. The placed tiles are now centred on the table by mutual agreement. This has allowed for three separate river branches of variable lengths, with the first two random river endings breaking the farming circle of the river. This has created a good start for farmers.

The King and Robber tiles are given to the player who completes the first city or road. After scoring each turn, the holder of these tiles gets a point for every city or road that was completed in that turn, if they held the King or Robber tile for that entire turn. At the end of the game these tiles score 10 points each, in the same way that trade goods do. Saves a lot of counting at the end and now makes completing roads, as well as cities, of benefit if you do not score directly off the completed feature.

I know it's a bit contradictory, but I agree with you on both counts.  I thought of using a table cloth too.  I really like that idea.  It always hurts my feelings to disrupt the flow of the board because you run out of space.  (You don't have that problem when playing on the computer.)  However, I also agree that the same rule should apply to all versions, even if it means that you can't move the tiles. 

I like both of these rules - particularly the River one - would make a much more balanced start in general.

I like both of these rules - particularly the King and Robber Baron one. 

We are using the Basic game, River I & II, I&C, T&B, K&S, P&D, TT, GQ11, A&M, TC, and now recently added: CS&C ...as our regular playing set.  The only other expansion that my group of family and friends has set aside (or more like: banished) is the Count of Carc.  One of my friends used the Big-Guy Meeple in The City as her advisor to the Count and thoroughly gave everyone else a lesson in assertive behavior.

We always begin our games with a Spring River Tile and then the first person to go (not always the youngest - sometimes we each put a meeple in a cup and randomly pick one, or we draw from a standard 52-card deck, or we roll a twenty sided die) ...has to play the river fork - naturally they always place a farmer on it, since there are no other features to choose from. We use the River (I+II) as a sort of warm up time to get ready to seriously play.  It also serves as an introductory period to explain the basic rules to any New-bees at the table. 

But I would like to try something different once in a while and starting with the Lake Tile makes sense as a neat idea, which I will be suggesting the next time we play.  Also, I always try to gage the mood of my opponents during this phase to prepare myself mentally for the Meta-Game that lies ahead.  &obtw: adjusting the completed River Tiles or the table cloth to re-center the game to the table is just a given, every time.

We still score the King and Robber Baron tiles according to the RGG rules that came with them, and what a PITA it is when you're using all of the expansions (minus one).  Since I do most of the score keeping, I am most thankful for the Tower expansion because in the End Game Final Scoring Phase -- each of those neutral colored blocks goes onto a city as we add up the Farmer Points; the blocks stay on the board as the Farmer meeples come off. 

Then it is easy to count the total number of cities for the King's Bonus (usually between 20 and 30 points).  The last thing we do is count the total number of roads for the Baron's Bonus by sliding the Tower block onto the finished roads and adding a few (any color) meeples since there are now none others remaining on the board.  The Baron's points usually run between 25 and 35 (always a little more than the King's points).  Frequently during our games the scores are very close, running neck and neck, with everyone fighting - not to build, but to FINISH - the largest city and/or longest road, because ultimate victory hinges on possession of at least one of these. 

Once a city or road exceeds 10-12 tiles, it is extremely difficult to get the King or Baron away from the person who currently has it.  Therefore I would like to de-emphasize their importance (since my wife is better than I am at eye-balling or mentally visualizing the largest / longest features and holding onto the K&B). So I will suggest this alternate method to my group and see what happens.

Other house rules that we always use, which I did not see previously mentioned are these: 

1. DISCARD THAT AWFUL RACETRACK SCORING DEVICE.  I still don't know why every Euro Game I've ever played has one, usually around the border of the board.  We used it in the beginning, but it got jostled one too many times, so I threw it out the window in favor of good old fashioned paper and pencil method AND then realized that, "WOW... we now each had an extra follower meeple!"  It was an epiphany and we've played with eight normal followers (plus Big-Guy, plus Builder, plus Piggy, plus Mayor, plus Wagon, plus Barn = 14) ever since. 

2. DISCARD THE CATAPULT AND ALL OF THOSE CARDBOARD MISSILES.  We tried it and laughed out loud, but I feel it's the stupidest thing ever added to a board game since Crossbows and Catapults. Maybe I'm biased because I seem to be the clumbsiest one in the group and could never get the chit to land where I wanted it to, BUT the easiest solution I thought of is to simply award five (5) points imediately to any player who draws a Circus Tent Tile out of the bag and plays a meeple on it instead of utilizing one of the other features...with the understanding that it must be one of the normal followers -- it can NOT be a Big-Guy Meeple, Mayor Meeple, or Wagon Meeple.

3. DISCARD THE TOWER STACKING DEVICE.  I never liked this either and I doubt that HiG is going to come out with a taller one to hold ALL the tiles from ALL of the expansions.  Besides, it can get knocked over or the tiles will fall out when you try to pass it around the table. Some people claim that they can see the one edge of the tiles that are facing outward giving them an advantage. Other people don't want to be limited to choosing only from the top two tiles (left stack or right stack). It's just better (imho) to use a cloth bag. And if your Carcassonne bag gets stretched toward bursting its seams, like our's did... then the perfect solution is the purple velvet pouch that comes with a liter bottle of Royal Crown Canadian Whisky. In addition to an attractive, sturdy, plush bag for the tiles, you've also got an adult beverage to make your stratagems seem more profound.

Happy Trails and Happy Gaming... John G.

There's a plethora of STICKERS on the market in every Department, Toy, Hobby, or Craft store.  For about one dollar (USD $1) you can find something that's suitable to your taste.  For example: I finally found sheets of very small shapes, so now all of our Big-Guy Meeples have a "Smiley Face" on both sides of them (it makes them some how less threatening) ...and all of our Mayor Meeples have a "Star" across their belly on both sides from and back.  It's not fancy, but it is functional to distinguish between them.

L.O.L. ~ I thought you were talking about my wife when I read this; - )  We normally use a felt pad to play on which leaves a few inches around the sides for our Reserve Meeple Pools /Piles, drinks, snacks, etc.  But invaribly someone and usually my lovely, delightful, charming wife INSISTS on wedging tiles into each other or proping them up with a napkin, because HER feature has run off the edge and onto the table and she will keep going with two or three more additions... *Aaaaargh!*

So I guess that's another Rouse rule that we ALLOW, but don't encourage or condone.

And let's hope for your sake that she doesn't eventually become a CC member and read here your true confession... hehehehe; - D

A couple of plague variants we like:

1. Draw a skull and crossbones on a city tile w/a road going into it (preferably a double-city tile). This tile kills the city it's placed on (followers returned to owners, 0 points scored), plus the plague travels down the road and kills any followers on roads, cities, etc. that are connected. Farmers don't get any points for dead cities, but the farmers don't die and can still get points for other cities. The plague stays in effect throughout the game, so it can continue to devastate as roads join things up. It's kind of a "nuclear" rule like the dragon can be, but because it travels along roads it can be equal opportunity.

2. When a city with 5 or more tiles is completed, randomly determine (roll a die, meeples, etc - 1 in 6 odds works pretty well) if it gets hit by plague and dies, scoring 0 points, or if you prefer score it as if it were under siege. This plague doesn't travel down roads or affect farmers.

This variant is also fun in conjunction with a large city bonus of +1 per tile/pennant, so that if you complete a large city there's a chance you'll get more points but a chance you'll get fewer. Up the odds of plague in this case to 1 in 3 or so, and treat it as a -1 per tile/pennant instead of wiping out the city, or use a combo: a roll of 1 wipes it out, 2 or 3 counts as a siege and 4-6 gets the bonus. To me finishing large cities is the most satisfying part of the game, and having the extra uncertainty thrown in can make things interesting.

Eric

Too late...  ::)

He's lucky I'm a forgiving wifey... And I'm lucky he's a forgiving hubby (I just lost our one and only van key last night   :-\)

Our house rule is that any incomplete cloister or road gets only half the points you'd normally get, rounded down (more like the vibe of end game city scoring).

Basically it came from the game being new in our group, and pretty much everyone found it hard to swallow that people would still get big 8 point "hey don't worry you almost finished it" scores for a cloister that wasn't even complete. It just seemed to have no consequences for not completing anything....it was a bit to 'pat on the back-ish'... Sure you got the meeple back, but that wasn't enough for us.  ;D

Now it's a lot more tense and you think twice before just grabbing for the easy points for a cloister.

point limit, due to the game with more than 1,200 tiles!!!

see post

What post?

Comparing the Mayor with a regular follower:
(+) the Mayor sometimes counts as a large follower or multiple followers, however, in our games this advantaged only occurs occasionally (I may say even "rarely");
(-) the Mayor can be placed ONLY in cities (while regular followers could be placed "anywhere")
(-) the Mayor sometimes (although rarely) counts as nothing.

It seems to us that the Mayor unnecessarily increases rule complexity with no significant return (with rare exceptions). I mean, if replaced by another regular follower, few implications on the gameplay would result. We usually place the Mayor on game only to keep regular followers (which can be placed anywhere). So we feel the Mayor a dispensable character (what a pity!) and some of us have proposed considering it a second "large follower". To avoid this, we adopted the following rule:

When scoring, the Mayor adds 1 point to each pennant in the city.

Using this rule, we found the Mayor became a more valuable figure (compensating the fact it can be deployed on cities only) and allowing a more strategic placement (since it should be placed on cities with many pennants ...)

Concerning the Mayor, when I play, the Mayor usually is worth <1 Knight and may be placed only on a city. If no pennants appear in the city, the Mayor stills scores for it unless another player's Knight is in the city. In that case, the Knight wins. If a player has a Mayor and a Knight in the city, versus just an opponent's Knight, the player with both wins (since the Mayor is worth <1 but not 0). This way, the Mayor can always still score in a city, regardless of if there are any pennants.

Still the Mayor:
Whaleyland, your rule seems to be even more complicated... furthermore, it makes the Mayor even more similar to regular followers since it can score like them... (Am I wrong?)

In very tight games, sometimes a player wins the game playing the final tile and his direct opponent  complains about the disadvantage of having taken one less turn than the winner. Indeed, players who act first often have the advantage of playing one more turn than any other(s) player(s).
To avoid this, we stated that at the end of the game, all players shall have played equal number of turns..

To accomplish this, we use the following rule:
At the beginning of the game, a number of tiles equal to the double of the number of players are randomly chosen and placed aside (players are not allowed to watch the tile faces) - this tiles comprise the "extra tile reserve". Players must not pick up tiles from the "extra tile reserve" while any tile is available in the normal reserve. Once the normal tile reserve is vacant, the game will end at the end of the next turn of the player on the right of the starting player.
(double turns are considered one turn for this purpose)

Ex: 4-player game with 120 tiles; 8 tiles are transferred to the extra tile reserve (so the normal reserve comprises 112 tiles); player A plays first, then B, then C, then D ... say the 112th tile is played by player B; player C take his turn picking up a tile from the extra reserve and player D too. The game ends now.
(If the 112th tile were played by player D, one more "round" takes place)
Note that the 8 extra tiles (in the example) guarantees all players could play identical number of turns even if all of them play a double turn (benefiting from the builders)

They are slightly more complicated-sounding but in reality, they are much easier and the Mayor becomes much more functional. As the rules work right now, the Mayor is basically worthless in all circumstances except where a pennant is present. I usually play two-player games so we don't usually need to fight over specific features except to cancel each-other out. Allowing the Mayor to act as a regular Knight when no opposing Knight is present makes it a much more useful, albeit slightly redundant, piece. I feel it's still closer to the original intent of the figure than adding a point per pennant. In 2-player games, we already have enough points.

Is this document still being worked on? The link on this page gives me an error, file not found.

Besides the tower variant that I already posted in this forum, I also used those home rules/ variants:

- Basics:To add an extra layer of strategy, each player draws 3 tiles (instead of 1), so that each player will have always 3 tiles in their hands (till the tiles start finishing). The 3 tiles must be visible to all.
This is effective only after completing all the tiles of the river.

- Farmers:The tile with the pig farm design does not count like a tile with a pig meeple.

- Cult scoring variant: To give reward to the player who is taking a risk.

This variant substitutes all the rules for cult extension.
 
When putting a new tile with Abbey/ Cloister/ Shrine, an heretic on a Shrine might choose to challenge a monk on an Abbey/ Cloister, the same way a Monk on an Abbey/ Cloister might choose to challenge an heretic on a Shrine.

A challlenge happens anytime a Shrine tile with an heretic is in adjacent (diagonally, orthogonally) to an Abbey/ Cloister tile with a monk.

An heretic can be in adjacent with one monk and one monk only, and vice versa.

If there is no challenge, monk and heretic on Abbey/ Cloister/ Shrine behaves like normal Abbey, scoring for all the tiles surrounding.

When there is a challenge, the challenger (the player challenging the  other) put its meeple (monk or heretic) on its side heading toward of the challenged Abbey/ Cloister/ Shrine.

If the challenger wins by completing first its 8 tiles surrounding its Abbey/ Cloister/ Shrine, he wins the 9 points plus all the points of the Abbey, Cloister or Shrine it challenged.The player challenged loses and scores nothing. So, that the maximum points a challenger can win is 17 points (9 points for its cult plus 8 points for the challenged cult).

If the challenger looses, the challenger scores nothing and the player challenged just score its regular 9 points.

In both cases, when the challenge is over, both meeples monk and heretic are returned to the supply.

If the challenge ends up with a tie, they both scores 9 points.

If the game is over before the challenge can be completed, both opponents scores normally.


- Traders: To balance better the game when playing with all the extensions

Same rules for trading products but with a different scoring, taking into account the number of cities
involved in the trading.

At the end of the games, the player who wins the monopoly of a product receive 4 points per completed cities with this product, regardless of whom completed the cities.

Example: A player wins the monopoly of wine with 4 wine products (the other players have respectively 3 and 2),  there are 6 completed cities with wine product at the end of the game.
 the player wins 6 x 4 = 30 points.


- Wagon variant - "Trading routes": To add more strategy and find a better use of wagon

To create a trading route, place the trading wagon ups side down on a road, it will stay there until the end of the game and cannot be moved (like a farmer).

When placing a wagon like this, no points can be scored for the road, the scoring will be done based on the trading route only at the end of the game.

A trading route is constituted by a network of cult places and completed cities interconnected by roads.

The road with the trading wagon leads to cult places and completed cities, from those cult places and completed cities, some other roads might lead to other cult places and completed cities. The full network
of interconnected elements constitutes the trading route. The trading route continues through completed cities, uncompleted cities stop the expansion of trading routes.

A trading wagon cannot be placed on a road where there is already another follower and cannot be placed on a route connecting to another trading wagon.

If by posing a new tile, a route with a trading wagon connects with another route with a trading wagon, both players will score the trading route points.
 
Architect can be put on a road with a trading wagon. The Robber Baron can still steal the longest road by completing the last tile of the longest road regardless if there is a trading wagon or not on the
road.

In the end of the game, the trading wagon gets 2 points for each completed city which is connected to the "trading route", and 1 points per cult place connected by road.

I like your Trader's variant a lot for better scaling.  More tiles means its more likely the goods will be spread out in more separate cities.  

I also like your challenge idea of scoring the partial points for the challenged cult place or cloister, but I think for simplicity sake i would simply make that the scoring rule and leave the rest of the cult rules as is.  Which is the great thing about variants.  They are varied! and let you fit your style.

I m glad you liked them. You might check also the tower variant if you are interested:
http://carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?topic=1380.0

I agree at the end the cult variant just affects the scoring.
But please take note that in this system you still need to keep track of whom is challenging, this is the reason for putting second meeple on its side.

If I understand your challenge method correctly, if the cult place and cloister are adjacent orthagonally, than the highest number of unique tiles required to complete both is 12 (3x4, the same pattern as the city of Carcassonne).  If one of them remains incomplete, than the bonus tiles to the other feature are only 2.  

If they are diagonally adjacent, then they only have 4 tiles in common rather than 6 and the largest bonus, assuming it is incomplete, would be 4.

I've thought about using this method, but it doesn't seem to make that much of a difference.  Unless you're suggesting that they second, incomplete feature give up all their points, including the ones that already count for the complete one, that might be a little better.

Good thing your comment as it highlighted that my initial description was probably not clear enough.

For more clarification:

Abbey/ cloister and cult challenge each other whenever they are adjacent (orthogonal and diagonal)

The points you win are not the tiles in common, they are the 9 points of your cult place + the points for all the tiles surrounding the challenged cult place
so you can win a maximum of (9+8) 17 points

I ll modify my initial description.

This adjusted scoring for cloister/shrine challenges would add some draw to actually challenging.  I find that rarely if ever ends up happening.  Though we have a reasonably passive group who I usually play with.  So that could be part of it too.

That's the way we play also...17 point max score. But we allow either player who completes their feature up to the max. score...not just the challenger. Sometimes there is little incentive as it is to deploy a monk or heretic, we don't want to compound it with a chance of scoring no points for a lost challenge and no potential bonus for winning the challenge. A lone monk or heretic becomes a sitting duck so to speak, not very attractive.

"we allow either player who completes their feature up to the max. score...not just the challenger"
-> The reason why we just reward the challenger, it is because it is the challenger who is taking the initial risk, he is the one who needs an incentive to challenge instead of putting his cult place somewhere else where he would just score his regular 9 points.

I sort of agree with the challenger being the only one who gets rewarded. I've only used the Cult pieces a couple of times (using JCloisterZone) and every time, it was the challenged player who finished first; this makes sense, since between the tile that the challenged feature is attached to and the challenger's tile, the challenged feature has at least a one tile lead (and usually more).

I'm not sure I'd go way up to 17 points, but I've considered giving a smaller, flat bonus. Although, giving more points really does increase the incentive to challenge... maybe that's the way to go.

I need to clarify is that since I am playing with a lot of expansions, 17 points is not so much in the big picture.

Besides in most of the cases, the challenger would not win all the 17 points, the average being more around 14.

Great thread. Great forum, I'm glad I found this.

- We don't play with the Faery rules. Instead, whoever completed the LAST Abbey (not cult) gets to place/move the "Templar" piece (we could use the faery, but instead have a little pewter D&D guy with a cross on his shield). The Templar prevents the dragon from eating whatever piece is on that tile, but the dragon can still move on it.

- Blank tiles: We call these "coyote" tiles, grass on all 4 sides, and they remove the city bonus of a farm by 1 point per city and do not stack.

- Like others have said, river tiles begin with spring and fork, ending tiles are placed at the bottom of the stack.

- Magic "teleporter" tiles can be used to remove a meeple from the board, great for "trapped" features.

I am new to Carc (I bought the game only six months ago), but I do have a few house rules for the Tower:

(1) No ransom for captured meeple. (I'll call this the "Eye for an Eye" rule…)

(2) A single-storied tower can only capture meeple on the tile the tower has been built upon. A two-storied tower can capture meeple on an adjacent tile, a three-storied tower can capture followers on two adjacent tiles, and so on. (I'll call this the "No Surprises" rule.)

I don't think it the stock rule makes sense: why does a single story tower have so much range? It shouldn't be as risky to place a follower on a tile next to a tower base as it is to play a follower on tower base itself. That's too much power, too much threat. Lowering the threat seems like it would encourage long-term strategy, power struggles, etc. I'll test it out and see how it works.

(3) The 8th (scoring) meeple is used for the normal game. (…the "More is Merrier" rule.)

(4) Towers cannot capture across holes. (The "Undiscovered Country" rule—Klingon peace treaty not included.)

Any thoughts on these rules? Do they sound like they'd throw the game off-balance?

In our group, first of all:

-We throw a dice (we got tired of throwing meeples for minutes) to decide who starts the game. That players also decides how's River is gonna be played (one big River, two Rivers at start, or two rivers, but the starting tile of one of them is mixed with the rest of the tiles)

- U-turns in river are not forbidden, as long as the next tile is another turn that can be placed, (for that, the "U-turn" player says "if it can be placed, this goes this way") or the river is ending and the missing tiles can be place for sure. We also know all the river tiles that are missing, so this move is only allowed when we know for sure that river can be ended.

- Starting river tiles and ending ones (except the one of river2 that ends in a city) are not playable: they are automatic placed.

- King and Baron grant 15 points each. Owing both at the end of the game gives 40 points to the player.

- Table borders COMPLETE features as an abbey would. This makes some interesting gameplays.

- Phantom is played as an "extra follower", thus you can use it with a princess tile to claim a city after removing a kight, or use it to get into Carcassonne (Count expansion) 2 followers in the same turn (a normal one and the phantom).

It's been a while since anyone posted to this topic, but I read through them all and thought I'd chip in. Some of my comments are prompted by (and echoes of) previous comments.

- We like the score track vs. pencil & paper, but the pencil & paper gives a history (particularly convenient when "that darn cat" jumps on the table and sends the pieces flying).

- We use the River II in my set and the River in my brother's (he turned me on to the game). For River II, the branch is the first tile, and the Spring for the River.

- The Spring tile has two Field segments split at the northeast corner when the river flows south.

- The first person to play gets the start piece and can play a Farmer if they want to. The rest of the river is played with typical placement rules.

- Once the whole river is played we may reposition it, but after that the edge of table is basically the edge of the world and gravity rules. We've made some exceptions for completing a feature. (After all, playing a game is supposed to be about having fun. Points are just a technicality.)

- If we pull a Dragon tile, but no Volcano yet (so no Dragon), it's played like a normal tile. Throwing it back in the bag is too much trouble (and we all sigh in relief that none of our meeples will be devoured). This is a non-issue for River II.

- If the Dragon devours a player's last Knight or Thief, the Builder goes too. When using the Queen, this is specificly stated in the rules, but doesn't seem to be for the Dragon. There may be a clarification somewhere in all the commentary.

- If the Queen is used to kill a Knight, the Fairy can't be taken (like the Volcano). But if the Queen is used without killing a Knight and no meeple played, the Fairy can be taken.

- The Fairy protects the tile, and so all meeples on it, but only the player who claimed it gets the point(s).

- If a meeple moves to a tile (Wagon or Magic Portal) with an abandoned Fairy (due to a different completed feature), the player can claim the Fairy and get the point(s) on their next turn. (The fun factor takes precendence over strict rules about the Fairy being associated with a feature.)

- If a Wagon has a Fairy, then completes the feature and moves, it can't take the Fairy with it. The Fairy stays with the tile and the Wagon moves alone. (Nephews can be so annoying sometimes (endless argument even after we voted).) If there's a commentary somewhere to the contrary, I'd be interested in knowing.

- We put a bid limit on the Bazaar. There are many ways to set a limit, but we settled on 10 points per lap on the score track (so 10 points to start, then 20 after any player gets a 50 tile, etc). This came up when someone realized that the Dragon was going to eat their meeples in a city they'd been building for most of the game, so they bid a billion points (the whole "points are a technicality" issue), then the next player bid a google points, then a google to the google, then a google to the google plus one, then we threw the tiles back in the bag and set a bid limit. Most of the time it's a non-issue, other times someone will straight out buy an unclaimed tile for 10 points to complete a feature or stop another player from dashing their dreams.

- We've been debating a Bazaar option that allows the player who drew the tiles to cancel the bidding and claim the first one. Otherwise the next player plays auctioneer per the rules.

- When we added the Barns, the rules were clear that Pigs get driven off the Field. Then we added Castles and found the rules a little confusing. We decided Barns still drive off the Pigs, then the River II showed up with a Pig Herd that can't be driven off, so we decided it still adds a point to Cities and Castles for Barns and Farmers. If there's a commentary somewhere to the contrary, I'd be interested in knowing.

- We're thinking about getting the King & Scout. The comments about the owner of the King or Baron tile getting a point when the feature is completed sounds like a better method than waiting until the end of the game. It spreads the points around, vs. giving all the joy to the player who might already be winning in the end.

- We're also thinking about getting the Tower, but haven't read all the commentaries about how it interacts with Dragons and Castles. Seems like it wouldn't, but that's dull. I like the idea of a Dragon destroying a Tower, or a Tower destroying an incomplete Castle.

Anyway, ttfn.

We play River 1 as normal and then put the spring for River 2 in the bag. When it is drawn we pause regular play to lay the second river.

The tiles with pig farms on them are only normal farm tiles, unless we are playing the Traders and Builders expansion and in that case they are a pig farm.

I like it.


The builder can never stand alone. Any time his associated knight or thief is removed, the builder must be removed as well, whether by princess, dragon, tower, etc.


I would have expected this is how it works anyway; somebody correct me if I'm mistaken.


Are you playing with this guy?

(http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/sciencenotfiction/files/2010/11/dr-evil.jpg)

I noticed recently that the rules for Bazaar (at least, the ones from RGG) state that you can do away with the whole bidding thing and just have each person pick a tile for free.


Pigs and pig herds are two different things (in retrospect, they probably should have called the pig herds something else). The pig herd tile(s) still increase the point of the farm even with the barn.


I missed this earlier. I like it very much. I think it would encourage more attempts to steal the King or Baron tile rather than lying in wait and swooping in at the end.

Actually, there's an official clarification that the pig herd tile does not increase the value of a farm with a barn (see current CAR (v. 5.0B9) p. 48, note 119). However, we always play with the house rule that the pig herd tile DOES increase the barn value.

Thanks for that. Been so long since I played Carcassonne I'm losing touch with the footnotes.