The 3 Musketeers

[Gwommy]

I'm going to start off with this as being a variant.  And there's not 3 Musketeers in this variant (unless you're playing with 3 players).  But my thought  was to make a way so that you can have a feature that can't be 'stolen'.  So how about a musketeer?  I'll give you my idea and you give me your opinions, good or bad.

I was thinking that to make a Musketeer, you have to have your wagon in play.  When you add to the wagon's feature, instead of placing a follower on the tile just played like normal, you can instead place a follower on top of your wagon as a Musketeer! 

A musketeer will shoot/kill any follower that joins in on that feature or if you join that feature to someone else's feature of the same type.  The shot followers are returned to the owner's supply.  If a musketeer connects to another musketeer, then they are both killed at the same time before any scoring takes place.  When a feature is finished that has a musketeer on it, then both the wagon and the meeple are returned to the owner's supply, the wagon loses its ability to move to the next feature.  If a big follower is used for the musketeer, then it can live when connected to a musketeer that is made from using a normal follower.  No other followers may be placed on the wagon as a musketeer.

Sound reasonable?  Or would it be better to instead make this an expansion and create an entirely new follower for this task?

[meepleater]

I like the sound of this. I don't think you should make a new follower, then it could become too easy to use them. Using a wagon-meeple combination sounds good. Just one question: you say the wagon loses the ability to move, is that permanently, or just that turn?

[Gwommy]

It would be for just that turn.  Later you can deploy that wagon as a normal wagon again.  And after that, you can choose to make another musketeer.

[CKorfmann]

I don't have anything to add.  I think it sounds good.

[Gwommy]

Here's the first draft.  I think I covered everything.  Can you think of any loop holes that I might be missing?

http://gwommy.tripod.com/carcassonne/Musketeers.pdf

[Whaleyland]

It's been a little while since I last reviewed a fan expansion, but this one caught my attention since I am one of the only people I know who has actually read all 5 Dumas Musketeer books. Anyway, the expansion seems simple and straight forward and I really like its ideas. Very basic and requiring of no new parts (except an official expansion), I wish this were an official option for Abbey & Mayor. My only gripe, and it is the only one, is that my copy of the pdf for some reason has all the words blurring down the page. Literally, it looks like the letters are bleeding. I don't know what caused this, but I'd like it to not do that as it makes it very hard to read. Here is a copy of the image to observe the oddity of it. Otherwise, it all looks good and I will implement this next time I play Abbey & Mayor.

[meepleater]

I think the letters have some sort of shadow- I agree, it makes it hard to read. But the expansion looks really good.

[Gwommy]

Yes, the letters are kind of bleeding.  It's the Baskerville font which is the default font in the Expansion template.  Perhaps my version of the font is different from the font of whoever put together the templates.  Either way, I can change it.  It's not a big deal.

==EDIT==
The new version has been uploaded.  It can be downloaded using the same link as above.

[Whaleyland]

Okay, that version worked. Nice new font, too. I like how it suddenly changed from version 0.1 to 1.0. 

[Gwommy]

LoL!  I didn't even realize how funny that is until you said it!  I just changed the font.

[Novelty]

A few comments:

A variant doesn't have extra pieces (by the normal Carc Central defination).  I think what you mean is "Expansions Required" instead of "Extra Pieces".  The wagon, and its rules from A&M are required for this variant, so technically, this is an A&M variant.

The use of the word "meeple" in 2. Deploy a following is confusing.  Does that mean the fairy and the dragon (and all those non-follower meeples) can be removed from play by a musketeer?  Or do you mean "follower" instead of meeple?  Also, you might want to define what does "kills" means in terms of game actions (i.e. does it mean removed and returned to the owners supply?  Does it mean removed from the game completely? Does it mean something else?).  Also, the sentence "If a Musketeer was formed with a large follower, then it kills a Musketeer made from a normal follower." can be read to mean that everytime you make a musketeer with a large follower, you can remove any musketeer with a normal follower from the game (because the "on the same feature" clause is missing).

Personal pedantic quibble: Majority may not be understood by everyone.  "most followers" would be the best phrase there, I guess.

[Gwommy]

The wagon, and its rules from A&M are required for this variant, so technically, this is an A&M variant.

Does that mean you me to change "A Carcassonne Central variant by Gwommy" to "A Carcassonne Central Abbey and Mayor variant by Gwommy"?

With the exception of the change from above, I've updated it to the same link as before:
http://gwommy.tripod.com/carcassonne/Musketeers.pdf

If requested, I can make the change noted above.

[Novelty]

Nyaah, you don't need to make that change.  I still can't upload anything though, so you'll have to be patient.  Oooh, do you have an image of the follower on a wagon as a separate gif/jpg somewhere?

Edit: I've added it to the completed list, given you a merit point and made it available on the downloads page through an alternative upload route.  Still can't access it properly to get Architect there - hopefully Gantry will fix it soon.

[Gwommy]

Sure thing:

[Novelty]

Thanks for the image Gwommy!  Also, would you let whoever is making those custom meeples montage to use this image?