Carcassonne Central

I have just about all of the expansions, but I always play a selection of expansions, never all of them together, so today a friend of mine, who is also a carcassonne addict, came over and we had our first game of mega-carc. As well as the base game, we had:

Large Expansions
Inns and Cathedrals
Traders and Builders
Princess and Dragon
Tower
Abbey and Mayor
Catapult

Mini Expansions
River
River 2
GQ11
Cult, seige and creativity
King and Scout
The Count

Fan Made expansions/ variants
Dual Dragon
Jousting tournament
Archery tournament
King and Scout variant (my own, not one listed)

When the game started, he was quickly ahead and continued to climb, until a huge city came in handy and made me begin to catch up. Dual dragon was handy as it made us much more wary of the dragon. We each brought our own bag from T&B and so we didn't have to keep passing the bag. The Catapult varied the game a lot; I generally was better at catch, while he often went with Knock out (and kept removing a farmer in the same field, but I always put it back the next turn). Jousting tournament was interesting, I started off as the champion, but soon he connect several more into the city and he became the champion. With the aid of a few  connecting tiles and a princess, I was the champion when the city was finally closed. The archery tournament I put into the field who's farmer kept getting removed by the catapult so if it got removed I would still own it at the end of the game. We each had a few farmers eaten by one of the dragons but one of mine that got eaten was in a closed field, which I later managed to re-inhabit with the aid of the Count at the end of the game.
Despite his quick start, I won 518 to 403 :W. The game had taken almost two and a half hours, but I was pleased I won after all that effort. I still haven't packed up yet (*groan* there are times I'm glad there are watermarks!)

Not bad, for the first mega-carc.

What, no Apothecary and Tithes???  :o

I have also just played a game of MegaC - with the same set up as yours - plus Cathars and Cult, minus any home made expansion. In other words: A "clean" MegaC. We play this now and then since, well, that is my opinion of how expansions are supposed to be used: all of them in. That is also why I think that they should not release any more expansion - it will take to long time to play soon (and the need for a bigger table is apparant).

What I found interesting was that farms are more important than ever; roads hardly count.

My friend hadn't played catapult, king, tournaments or the tower before, so I thought that would be enough. Also the tiles I made with cardboard look a bit dodgy and so when we divided the tiles into two piles it would have been unfair, I only made tournaments because of the two blank tiles in CS&C. When I get Count, King, and Cult I'll use the tiles from the already existing mini-expansions... I'm planning A&T, wells, order of chivalry and outposts: 48 tiles, but I'll only have 36 spare tiles... so maybe I'll skip a few well tiles (3-way roundabout can go, due to A&M), and maybe I'll use the 'original' 12 from A&T, not the second 12...

They sell German expansions there?  Wow.  Do remember that river 2 in GK&K will have black backs...

No... my friend is buying it on our school's german exchange... and I downloaded the proper tile backs from the accessory section of the downloads page...

I would like to play a Mega Carc game soon as well with all official expansions and some fan-made (I have about 10 printed on blank tiles).
That would make about 400 tiles, the only problem is that I don't have anyone to play with.
No one wants to play that long.

The tile backs weren't as good quality as I thought they would be (maybe just my computer?). I have a better pic from BGG.

Since that game I think twice about playing with too many expansions because of the time taken...

Good morning!

Yesterday we tried to play a mega game too  8)

Very (!) difficulty to play with much expansions as possible. We shuffled about 1000 tiles and after nearly 4 hours we stopped (maybe we used 20% of the tiles). The big problem was (especially in the first 20 minutes) to find a place to place a tile, very often a tile did not fit at all...


(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/mega_ccs_1.jpg)
Preparing the game...



(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/mega_ccs_2.jpg)
Shuffeling 1000 tiles  ;D ;D



(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/mega_ccs_3.jpg)
Placing the start tile...



(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/mega_ccs_12.jpg)
Let the show begin...



(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/mega_ccs_4.jpg)
Very nice...



(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/mega_ccs_5.jpg)
Game after 4 hours...




(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/mega_ccs_6.jpg)
Game after 4 hours...



(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/mega_ccs_7.jpg)
Game after 4 hours...



(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/mega_ccs_8.jpg)
Game after 4 hours...



(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/mega_ccs_9.jpg)
Game after 4 hours...



(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/mega_ccs_11.jpg)
Game after 4 hours...



(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/mega_ccs_14.jpg)
Game after 4 hours...



(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/mega_ccs_13.jpg)
Final scoring... Hmm, middlefield :D :D



Greetings...


Tobi

Wow!  Some random comments:

* I like how the rivers match with guido's lake tiles join together.  I think it matches very well with the rivers and hester's waterfalls!
* Those two winter 2008 tiles really look weird, but they do stand out!
* There is a yellow meeple on the 2nd "Game after 4 hours..." picture near the top and slightly to the left, on a river with 2 waterfalls that seems complete.  I have no idea what rules you are playing with for the waterfalls though.  Same thing with the blue meeple on the river near the jeans-cladded knees in the 4th "Game after 4 hours..." picture.  If you were playing with the Fishermen rules, the river ends at the T-junction.
* Oooh, at least 3 gold mines.  I don't think you were playing with the Gold Mines rules because whoever gets those can score very easily :)
* I think there are too few railroad tiles there which is mostly incomplete... you would probably need a bit more of those.

Thanks for the pictures!!! These are great!

Is that an AIRPORT I see? Since when did the vales of Carcassonne dote an Airport in the Middle Ages?

I believe they were key to the Norman invasion of England in 1066, and later spread to France. Other inventions such as the steam sword and flying catapult were tragic failures.

What I'm more interested in is where you got the airport images from? Even if it's completely anacronistic, I know my son would love it! ::)

Thanks for the pictures, looks like you had a lot of fun! And after seeing them in a large setup like that, I might even get back to the waterfalls myself and give them another try. ;)

I think the tile placement difficulties are due to having way too many expansions in play at one time. :o

The problem was that we only played 20% of all the tiles, the railroad has 60 tiles but fe found only a few... Yes there are some finished and not counted things, the concentration was lost after some hours :D

We played NO special rules, it was difficulty enough, so we played "every building counts", town 2, lake 3, river 2, wood 2...



It is just for fun ;) The 4 tiles were a present for somebody moving from germany to vienna to start as co pilot on an austrian airline, i made them by myself. So if anyobody needs the high resolution psp with layers... just ask me...

(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/britta/bea1.jpg)



Yes, this was a big problem, next time we'll take only some of them.

I just hope that co-pilot isn't playing carcassonne at 20,000 ft or determining where to place that yellow meeple as he's coming into land. :D

Or another thought is this a new airline navigation system???/ ;D

Not the amount of expansions per se, but rather the amount of player made tiles. It is much harder to fit forest tiles (for example) into the mix, since one, or more, sides of the tile will be locked.

Playing with 1000 tiles in it self is not a problem - nor is it to play with player made tiles where the sides match the game. (Lousy explanation but you get what I mean).

wow I have to give props to anyone that even attempts this many expansions together, for myself though any more than 5 expansions, and I cannot keep my head around the rules, and some of the complications of which rule comes into play first.

You can always play with the tiles from the expansions without using the special rules.  That's handy when playing with the P&D tiles, for example, but not with the fairy or the dragon to simplify the game.

Hi all,

here are some more pictures from sessions,

the problem - also if using only one expansion - is always that new tiles are not matching on all sides and the game gets holes...

(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/session1.JPG)

(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/session2.JPG)

(http://tobi12321.to.ohost.de/ccs/session3.JPG)

I think there are too few Lake tiles... I should add some more :)

Am I the only one that first looks to see what people are drinking?  :D

I noticed some of the forest tiles are much darker than Novelty's usual ones.  Is that a different set?

Yes - you can see a it better here in the first picture:

http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?topic=728.msg8889#msg8889 (http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?topic=728.msg8889#msg8889)


Here are some informations about it..

Is there any way I could get ahold of that scoring program that you have.  I think it would make scoring so much easier!  Did you make it or get it from somewhere else.  I'd love to get it! 

Also, how many tiles can you fit in that tower of yours?

I played my first game of Mega-Carc today!  It was great fun, probably because I won!  Blue does it again!   {up  We played with all the sets in my Big Box 2 (Base, I&C, T&B, P&D, A&M, King, Count, Cult, River 2) plus the original River, Catapult, GQ11, Cult & Siege (haven't done anything with Creativity yet).  Incidentally, I had an extra tile included in the first Count set I bought in a tuck box.  It was the river tile from River 2 with the pig farm on it.  Not sure why it was in there, but I use it.  The color on it is quite different on it though.  You can see it in this picture right after the split.  I forgot to take a picture while the wood was still on the board. 
(http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2676/86/99/55705953/n55705953_36487992_799983.jpg) 
We were all very surprised at how few holes there were.  As far as true holes, there were only three and they were filled with Abbey tiles at the end. 

Was it a 4 player game?  What's the max score?  Also, there's an illegal placement of 2 cloisters next to a shrine to the right of the City of Carcassonne.

It's not illegal if one cloister was completed first. In that case, the shrine lost the battle and the meeple was removed, thereby allowing a second cloister to be placed next to it. Although, there are at least three instances of this same thing happening. Hmm...

I don't think that is correct.  The rules state:

"A player may not place a cult place adjacent to several cloisters, nor may a player place a cloister adjacent to several cult places."

It doesn't say anything about either being occupied or in a challenge or anything.

I concur with Novelty, we just had that condition come up yesterday.  My coworker and I read the original rules, CAR and BB2 rules (shutter) and they all basically boiled down to "You can not place one near two of the other".

Well that makes things rather restrictive, especially if you are playing with multiple sets of Shrines. I guess it will just have to be a house rule then that battle-completed shrines and cloisters can have other shrines and cloisters placed next to them. Still, it seems odd that that isn't in the rules...I thought it was...or was that just my imagination taking over again?

Interesting.  I didn't know about that rule and don't recall reading about that.  I'll have to pay more attention.  I think the high score was somewhere around 250.  It's been a while, so I can't remember exactly.  It was a four player game, but for two players it was their first time playing anything other than the base set.  My wife and I played with the dragon and count a couple times.  I played I&C and T&B on AsoBrain a bunch, but it was my first time with A&M, Cult, Siege, and River 2. 

Just found this thread due to the recent posts and I thought I would talk about what we do when we play - I'm not sure if it qualifies as Mega-Carc - I had always presumed that this was the way most people played until I read the posts and realise its not.

I have the base set (72 tiles), River 1 & 2 (24), Count (12), King and Scout(5), Tower (18), I&C (18), T&B (24), P&D (30), GQ11 x 2 (24), Cult, Seige, Creativity (10). None except the Cult/Seige have watermarks, but that doesn't matter because we always play with all tiles (in fact I like them un-watermarked). We will often leave out the City of Carcassonne itself, preferring to start with rivers and no city. Because I am nearly always playing with people who are not regular board gamers, we don't play the count, princess, fairy or dragon rules (but we do play magic portal) and we generally don't play with towers. We do play everything else. We don't currently play with any fan-expansions, though I am keen to try the missionary out soon, and we have just stared including an extra turn for "beauty bonus" for filling in a hole. By the time we remove an excess spring and lake, and leave the city of carc out, we have about 225 tiles in play if my maths is right.

Generally we play until all tiles are gone - usually about 2 - 2.5 hours and usually we have 4 to 6 players, with most players scoring between 180 and 250 points, and the board is usually fairly complete with few holes. Sometimes we will set a time - i.e. play until agreed time, then play an agreed amount of tiles each after that (usually 3 each once the time is reached).

I have my own rules document to summarise everything, and one page rules and scoring summaries for 1. our usual inclusions, 2. a very base game if we have absolute first timers who we think need a basic version (drop from our normal portals, cathedrals, and seige if I recall correctly, and play shrines same as cloisters without challenges), and 3. all rules including tower, count, princess, fairy, dragon. For new comers the big meeple is the hardest to come to grips with, so sometimes we will drop it as well.

We draw a new piece (from the T&B bag which is now essentially full) as soon as we place the old - gives a whole round of turns to work out where to put it - this tends to keep the movement going alright. If a builder extra turn comes up they just draw another then and there - it doesn't bother us that others have drawn "out of sequence".

I can't ever think of an occasion where I would remove pieces from the bag and not play with them. Anyway - that is what we do. I intend adding a few more home rules over time based on postings from the forum, but we are quite happy with our standard all expansions in but not all rules in way of playing. As you can see, the punitive / aggressive bits are what we tend to leave out, which I can understand many gamers not liking, but for the after dinner game with non-gamer friends, this makes for a happy and pleasant night without anyone getting upset at someone else who ate them with a dragon or took them prisoner etc. I will add Abbey and Mayor soon, but don't think I'll bother with the Catapult (despite generally being one that collects "the lot") because I can't see us actually using the new rules. I am thinking about buying another base set for the extra tiles or perhaps another Traders & Builders so more cities have goods in them.

Here is a recent session of Mega-Carc with my first attempt at the Tower (brutal!) and a play test for the Missionary.  It went pretty well.  You can see the missionary on the board in the lower left-hand corner sitting on an abbey.  It is currently blue and still needs to be painted.

There are a few other noteworthy features like the long road containing the four-way round about in the upper left.  Also, you'll note that an illegal u-turn was made with the river after the juction, but it was the last piece laid before placing the lake tiles so we allowed it because it looked nice.  ;D  Notice also only two holes.

It's hard to see from this photo, but can you find any mistakes?  I lost 395-285 on a critical farm/barn error.  Oh well...

(http://photos-e.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v4605/86/99/55705953/n55705953_36861468_1257074.jpg)

Did you play with a river rule variant?  I haven't played the River rules in a while, since I made the fishermen tiles... but I thought the branch/fork is supposed to be the tile next to the source as per the normal River rules?

Honestly, I never read the rules for River 2 and didn't know that.  I think I vaguely remember reading that somewhere at some point, but I've never played that way.  Not sure what difference it makes, but maybe I should start playing that way.

I always just shuffle the branch with the rest of the tiles. It just makes it more random. Forcing a branch at the beginning seems unnecessary.

I concur. Mixing the fork in with the rest of the tile (setting aside a lake) gives a more dynamic game. But, yeah, the rules says to place the fork next to the spring.

I do it the way the rules say... it prevents farm domination at the beginning of the game... a bit... (but seeing as I have GQ11 that isn't an issue)... it means there's always a choice of which river branch you place your tile on (until one gets capped).

I have always shuffled the river branch and I always use the spring with the road from GQ11 too.  I like not knowing where the branch is going to end up and it doesn't really affect the outcome.

What did you think of the catapult?

Honestly, I don't mind it at all.  I don't think it detracts from the game any.  It is seldom a game changer and when I play with children, they love it.  It always has the potential to help, and occasionally hurt.  The one thing I did learn from the Catapult... put a lid on your coffee...  ::)  {cf

 ;D

When I play, I refrain from using KO or seduction tokens... I find the risk is too big...

we always play COMPLETE CARC here, with OFFICIALS expansions(once) and a couple Novently tiles... this is really the real deal!

a note, use a "roll-a-puzzle" to lay the tiles, this will preserve the tiles ans the accessories.

Which one of my tiles do you use?  I thought you didn't like custom tiles?

Good idea!

What's a roll-a-puzzle?  And since this is a new page there's also this question for Deatheux:

I think it's a thin rubber/plastic mat that you typically use to build a puzzle on and can roll it up loosely to transport it.  Something to that effect.  I think a table cloth might work nearly as well. 

exactly, CK! really useful for puzzles and board games!

So Deatheux, which one of the fan-made tiles do you use?  I thought you didn't like the fan-made tiles?

yes of course, i'am not a fan of the fan made expansions...(i'll pass my opinions on this, due to the fact that i don't ant to be banned from this communauty!!! ;-)) but i use many tiles from Novelty like the 4-way river branch, plus a couple river tiles with special config. also some "regular tiles" like the road around the well, the RFRF with open farms between the roads. and a couple others too. and of course, the 100 pts board!!!

nice job Nov!

I can see how it would keep the tiles in place, but how do you roll it up with the meeples in it????????? ???

I think the idea is just to keep the tiles in good shape.  I don't think it's meant for transporting the game.

thank you!!

also, it is easier to move the roll-a-puzzle layed on the table to gain more playable aera than move ALL the tiles one by one to gain this space.

I hosted a Mega-Carcassonne game this past weekend at Wintercon in Detroit using the following expansions: Base Game, River 1&2, Inns&Cathedrals, Traders&Builders, Princess&Dragon, Abbey&Mayor, King&Scout, Cult,Siege&Creativity, Wheel of Fortune, and the Count. Everyone agreed not to play the Catapult because of how hard it is to fire it anywhere but straight up.  There was around 300 tiles. The game lasted about 4.5 hours and we were the last game to finish at the convention. The highest scoring player got 350 points, 95 of those points were for black's barn which is in the back left corner and the farm expanded to the City of Carcasssonne, and even to the back right of the Wheel.
(http://hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net/hs055.snc3/14267_1314119693525_1246653959_30929094_8258055_n.jpg)

All the players had fun.  General consensus was that they didn't like the Count, but everything else seemed cool.  I tried to take advantage of the Count as much as I could, but still didn't get enough points to win the game, or even get 2nd place. One guy was an older guy and he said that he was happy enough just playing the base game with the river.  There was a couple that played with us that had some interesting names for the figures.  They called the builder Satan, and the Mayor was Mr. Happy Pants.  I don't think I should repeat what they called the Fairy, and they had another name for the Princess that was so bad that they wouldn't even mention what it was.

Another thing that I found interesting was that the biggest city (33pts) scored less than the biggest road completed (36pts). The longest road also had both tunnel pieces(from P&D and A&M) right in a row, so it escaped and continued to grow after I thought it was trapped.

The cheat sheets I made were helpful, although there are a couple errors on it, and it doesn't mention scoring of the farmers.  I'll get it updated here at some point and upload it to BGG and here, if you'd like.

Nice picture!  Oh and I know who's playing purple!  Did you paint your own A&M meeples purple?

Yeah, I painted all of my yellow pieces purple (except for the ones from Wheel of Fortune).

When you make the new help sheet, can you put the info for Catapult and Tunnels on it so it is complete? I know you may not always play with it, but having a complete cheat sheet with all the expansions would be nice. Thanks!

P.S. With the Wheel, the City, and the two Rivers, that was one massive starting "tile".

That looks like a lot of fun.  Gotta love the purple meeples!