Farmer Revenge

[Gantry]

Last nite we played 2 games, both with River 1 and Traders & B.

Game 1: Within the first handful of turns after the river was placed, Nat had 2 farmers down.  In an interesting stroke of luck (or inattention on my part), by the end of the game, the board was split into basically 2 large farms, each covered by her 2 farmers. The best I could muster in terms of farmers was a 2-city farm on the outskirts.  Needless to say, I tried playing catch-up the whole game but never really got close, even with a majority of the dry goods.  Nat 187, Gantry 143.

Game 2: This time, I wasn't going to let her out-farmer me.  I placed a farmer a few tiles into the river, and never looked back.  The map ended up being split into 3 main farms, and I made sure that I owned them all, sacrificing some good city tiles to do it.  My pig was also placed on the biggest farm.  In just under an hour, the final score was Gantry 185, Nat 118.

I find it interesting how one can categorize a map into regions by farms.  Usually maps have 2, 3 or 4 main farms that service the cities, depending on the expansions played.  To me, a strategic farming region is defined as having at least 3 completed cities in it by the end of the game.  Rarely does one lay a farmer for only 2 completed cities unless it's in the last few turns of a game (at least in my games).

[Novelty]

The huge farms issue is something I really don't like in Carc.  I know it adds a lot of strategy, but I hate the "come from behind" for the win scenario.  I have no idea if barns actually solve the problem or excerbates it... to me I think barns make it worse.

Hence the reason why I jumped onto Scott's Forest expansion (which breaks up farms rather nicely) and there's also the Fishermen expansion.  Hopefully both those expansions will break up the big farms.