8. expasion with dragon and towers?

[Gio_Carc]

Hi everybody,

I am happy that the forum is up and running again (and: all the best to Gantry and his family!)

So, after some "dormient" time (Carc spealing) I could grab a copy of the German version of the 8th expansion. I still have to fully understand the strategic potential of it, however some doubt about rules have emerged. In short:

1) When a meeple is sitting (standing?) on a burg, which lies on top of two small city tiles, what happens if a dragon passes by? On which tile is the meeple eatable? Or is he/she actually safe? No explicit mention is made in the official rules.

2) The same applies to towers.

Any help/suggestion are welcome 
Bye!

gio_carc

PS. Bridges are somehow ugly to see, but definitely nasty when it comes to joining previously separated fields...

[Gwommy]

I've yet to play with the newest expansion.  Is it out in the US yet?  I haven't been paying much attention to this game since the forums been down.

[Ekrates]

Hello there!

We have also played the newest expansion and come up with similar issues. We have not yet reached a final decision, but there are a few possibilities:

About Burgs or Forts [Linna (=Castle) in Finnish translation]:

1) No extra protection for a meeple in the Fort. This means that it must be decided in which half of the original city the meeple is. This may be decided when a Fort is played, and it cannot be changed afterwards. The dragon and tower take the meeple when they reach the tile where the meeple is. This rule may be made even harder if the meeple is eaten whenever a dragon enters either of the tiles a Fort lies on. And the same for Towers. :

2) It would be nice to get some extra protection for a meeple hanging on top the Fort: this happens, if meeple is eaten by dragon only if dragon moves over the Fort, that is, over both tiles of the original city in two consecutive moves. Sounds confusing, but I think it might work... This might make Fort a bit different from an ordinary city, which it after all is not. The same applies for Towers: when same Tower reaches both sides of the original city, the meeple may be eaten. This means, that Tower must be placed "under" or "over" the Fort. Otherwise it will never reach the whole Fort. This rule may be justified to fit in the Carcassonne spirit if one thinks, that a Fort is more complicated as a building than an ordinary (although a bigger) city. Then one could think that it's easirer for a follower to find a hideout inside a Fort than from a city... What do you think? 

3) Total protection for the meeple in a Fort. This is easiest but perhaps the dullest option.. 


About Bridges: Indeed, the most powerful way to use bridges is to connect fields! Otherwise they might help you out of a bad situation, although they are not as powerful as

-Ekrates

[Ailurus]

I like the second possibility

Sometimes I wonder whether the creators test the expansions thoroughly enough, there are always so many exceptions to consider and very few of them show up in the manual.

I really like the bridges because one can deploy a follower on top of them
About that, when I play with BBB and Towers we use an extra rule: a follower on a bridge cannot be taken captive by a tower of only one story high. I always imagine the procedure of capturing as follows: a meeple climbs on top of the tower and looks down on the field (as far as he can look, this depends on the number of tower pieces). Subsequently, he chooses a follower and captures it. He cannot see a follower on a bridge when the tower he stands on is only one story high.

[Gwommy]

I tried looking up the rules on BGG, but couldn't find them in English.  But I'll be picking this game up tomorrow and most likely test it out tomorrow night.

[Ailurus]

Gwommy, I translated the rules from German to English for BGG. Let me find it for you, just a sec...

[Edit]
Here it is