Carcassonne Central

Well, finally I played forests, fishermen, whispering woods, winter 2008 and mathguy 2008 fan-made expansions with the usual suspects. I haven't made all the tiles yet but we played with these expansions and the base tiles, GQ11, River I and two sets of River II. I had about 80 tiles from the forests, about 50 from fishermen and only a few from the other fan-made. It made a lot of success in spite of playing it at Christmas Eve just after gift distribution. That is we played it from 3:00 am till 6:00 am. Yes, we have a big family. There were something between 250 and 300 tiles to play. We were all very sleepy but also excited. From this first game I concluded:
1) Forests are the easy elements to be completed because there are so many tiles.
2) Big cities are harder to complete because there are a lot of elements and because of the random play.
3) Board holes are a little easier to fill because there are a lot more tile configurations.
4) Rivers are the funniest elements to play. It's awesome the fact of having several rivers on the board.
5) River tunnels are the most popular features in these expansions.
6) Everyone adored the 4-sided 4-town mathguy tile. It's a pity it just came out near the finish.
7) Playing with these expansions takes a long time to play and there are no special or complicated rules because there are only base elements on the board.
8 ) Sometimes we need a very large table to play Carcassonne. :)

I can hardly wait to have another play with fan-made expansions, but I'll have to make some new tiles and order some more blank tiles from HiG.
You got to try it, guys. It's fantastic! I LOVE THIS GAME!

Where are the pictures?

I'm glad at least one person enjoy the fan-made expansions.

I find it really cool to be mentioned in a session report - or at least my tile requests.  Big thanks to Novelty for making the actual tiles for that, and a decent amount of the other fan-made expansions.

Novelty, I'm sorry but we were rather sleepy and it was from 3:00 am till 6:00 am.  Perhaps next time. Or I'll post a pic of base tiles with fan-made tiles.
And yes, I am a fan-made expansions fan. :) I'm the crazy guy who ordered 240 blank tiles from HiG. And I'm ordering lots more soon. :)

No worries about the photos.  There's always a next time.  And I don't think 240 blank tiles will be enough... Forests and it's "children" has almost that many tiles.

Let's see

Forests: 150
Green Dragon: 60
Merry Men: 11 (+1)
Timber!: 12
Evergreen Forest: 45
Apple a Day: 6
Total: 284 (+1) tiles!

And that excludes Whispering Woods with 60 tiles :o

That's why I'm buying some more.

The good news is I'm planning on making some more too :)  I just noticed that I need to make Rivers with P&D icons, so maybe next year... Another 240 may not be enough.

Well, my friend, I'm afraid to ask more blank tiles in one order. Like this perhaps they can feel that I'm a faithful client... :)
But that's good news. The more tiles, the better. Now I'm struggling to get the better way to keep them.

As long as they don't think you are trying to sell tiles on E-bay or something...

As for better way of keeping them, why not look for those plastic boxes (http://www.alltackle.com/plano_tackle_box.htm) that fishermen use to keep hooks and things as suggested (http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?topic=579.0) by kjamma4?

I'll consider it or get hermetic bags. You know I also collect euro coins and buy them from the net and I get some those bags. I'll see what I can do.

I got my second play with fan-made expansions. This time we had base set, River I, River II x 2, Forests, fisherman, Whispering Woods, Winter 2008, Mathguy 2008, I&C, T&B, Cult and Siege. Again we played it late at night so it didn't went too well in the end. We had to abort the game about 60+ tiles from the end because everyone was going to work today and we were very tired. But we enjoyed the game. I got some more conclusions:
1 ) Using T&B makes player build bigger cities and roads. It's a pity about forests and rivers.
2 ) Rivers are really popular.
3 ) With so many tiles to play, farms and pigs are almost forgotten.
4 ) There are many holes in the board but sooner or later they can be filled.
5 ) When playing with 300+ tiles never start to play after dinner. Smiley

Novelty, this time I took a picture from the final layout. It's missing same parts but only a few tiles are not shown.
If any of you had some fan-made experiences, tell us about it.

koolkat, when you printed the tiles, did you have any troubles with it?  Can you describe how you print the tiles?  Thanks.

With regards to the upload folder, only Gantry (or Matt!) can fix that.  What I do is delete my old pictures (in the old posts, by editing the post) and then put in new ones.  I'll delete some of mine for you, but I have no idea how big your pictures are going to be.

Novelty, thanks God I had no troubled on printing the tiles. I just scaled the pdf files images to 100% and printed them on normal paper sheets, cut them and glued them with paper glue so I could fix their position on the tile and that's it. A few tiles are starting to get unglued but i just have glued them again. The printer is a normal HP multifunction and I used normal printing configuration. I mean, I didn't use perfect printing in order not to spend too much ink. The tiles seem ok, don't they? I'm real proud of my new tiles. My game mate are asking me to make some for them too. Good sign.

I removed my other attachments and now I attached the latest fan-made expansions game pic. Thanks again for your support.

Can you take a close-up picture of a mathguy2008 or winter2008 tile (or one each from both of those expansions) and email it to me please?  I wanna see if you are getting the same problems that wicke is describing.

Without knowing his problem: is he making sure that "fit to page" is off?

I have no idea.  I hope so.  That could be the source of his problems, or it could be his printer, or it could be because the tiles *are* too small.  I should really get that second of Towers soon to make tiles and black tower pieces!

Well, as I said he must resize to 100% and not set the fit to page option.
Novelty, I'll email you as soon as possible. I had a bug on my system and I had to reinstall Windows and almost all software. As soon as I fix things up, I'll do that. Sorry.

Can you do me a favour and print out the new Avignon tiles (see the Avignon thread) and tell me if those are too big please?  Thanks.

I will, ASAP.

No hurry on this.  I was just curious.  I know you are probably busy playing with the new toys that you got during the holidays :)

Well, yes and no. I've been playing lots of boardgames but unfortunately my wife's grandma had a stroke and we've been giving her a hand. So I've not been that much at home.

Yesterday I played again with base carc, fishermen, rivers, mathguy* , winter2008 and GQ11 with the usual suspects.
Some of them concluded that fishermen and forests makes Carc more difficult to master because there are more base elements so features are nore difficult to finish. Nevertheless everyone intends to play a Mega-Carc game if you manage to have one full day free. We played with lots of roundabouts and conclued that they are a bit hard to manage when they're a lot.
It was a bit disappointing but I LOVE THIS GAME!...

That's why the Forest was designed with a 150 tile base.  It needs at least 100 tiles to make it "easy" to complete a forest.

The Fishermen base only has 60 tiles, but added together with the 24 from the 2 river expansions and the odd ones here and there, it might come up to about 100, which I thought would make it sufficient to complete rivers.

Whispering Woods is really a must if playing with both Forests and Rivers, all 60 tiles in that fan-made expansion.

Novelty, those expansions are my favourites. The problem is that some of the folks I play with seem to be basic creatures and feel better with basic game play. I almost consider fisherman and forests to be part of the basic set! I like to have lots of little rivers on the board and forests are neat too. I'm sorry the other guys don't like to come out of the basic "shell". As you know I'm gonna try to have and play (almost) all expansions I can get my hand on. And the ones you made are awesome. I think I gave you a merit point for that! The Forum Variant Section is one of my favourite! Keep up your good work!

I like to think that I contributed in some way.

Heh, lots of people have contributed to the variants section.  It's not just myself alone.

koolkat, if those playing the game with you don't like forests and fishermen, then I think it is better not to force them to play it.  Maybe they need to get "comfortable" with the basic game first and then after that they might consider playing with forests and fishermen.  It is easier to learn and develop strategies with fewer things first and then slowly to add on other elements.

Yes Novelty, That's what I intend to do. My thanking is to all that contributed to the expansions development, including myself. :)

I'm just curious, how many Forest tiles did you make?  Did you make all the 150 tiles from forests?  Besides Whispering Woods, did you make any others from the Forest series (e.g. Evergreen Forest, etc.)?

Up to now I made 83 tiles from the forests and 10 from whispering woods. Next week I intend to make some more of these and other expansions. And I expect to get my second tile package frrom HiG.

That's about 100 tiles.  You should be able to complete most forests with that.  How many Fishermen tiles?

All except the ones with other expansion elements, like tower foundations and cult places, for example...

How many is that? ;D  I count 53.

Yes, that's it. Tomorrow, I'll have the second pack of blank tiles. I'll start making some more tiles from these and other expansions.

Today I tested H&G alone. I mean I played for 5 people. I think it's a good idea to try it with my folks because they'll get used to build lots of rivers during a game. Perhaps that way they'll change opinion about the fishermen. :)

The rivers in H&G is scored differently from fishermen though.  I don't play H&G, but the rivers there are scored for the number of fish in the lakes at the end or something like that right?  Well, maybe it is easier to play with rivers in H&G.

One point per tile, and one additional point for each fish at the ends of the river.

Yes, that's the way the rivers score. And there are the huts. who score for all the river systems. I'm reviewing all stand alone Carcs. Soon I'll post some conclusions...

I think the way fishermen is written, with trade goods (fish) and pennants (guild icons) and double move icons (oysters), it is closer to Carcassonne's cities than to H&G's rivers.

Maybe, I haven't read all "river" expansions rules...

You should.  They will really (or is supposed to) make Rivers and Forests a lot more fun than just the "base" expansion.

I read the fishermen but the other fan-made with rivers.

I think your statement is missing something.  Anyways, when you get the time, I strongly recommend you to read the rest of the Forests and Fishermen expansions.

Ups! Sorry! What I meant was: I read rules from: Forests, Fishermen and Whispering Woods. I'll read them again and read the others concearning Forests and rivers. I got them all printed.

Well, you have 15 x 12 blank tiles right? I'd like to see river huts, for example, or oyster icons! :o

You got it! ASAP! I still have some blank tiles from the previous packet!...

Sorry. Didn't quite understand your last phrase.

Take pictures to show off and stuff.  I would like to play the "notice the mistakes game" :)