Mega Carc (w/ Bridges, Castles, and Bazaars)

[vagabondriot]

We played a base game with the following expansions: King and Scout, GQ 11, River 1, River 2, The Count, Cult Siege and Creativity (no creativity tiles used), Abbey and Mayor, Traders and Builders, Inns and Cathedrals, Princess and Dragon, Tower, Catapult, Wheel of Fortune, and Bridges Castles and Bazaars. There were four players initially, but one had to leave halfway in so we just continued with three. The game lasted well over 5 hours and had some interesting dynamics. I (red) won with 603, followed by yellow with 394, green with 338, and blue with 110 (blue left halfway in). This was my first time using Bridges, Castles, and Bazaars. The three expansions fit in rather well (the Bazaar functioned much better with 4 people than it appears to with 2 people as I have read in other threads). The bazaar tiles may be ugly, but they added to the game rather than hindered it as I expected. Another player and myself bid big over a tile with a princess on it (we were trying to steal a city out from each other that was worth 50 points). Sometimes the bazaar pieces were 3 cities and a road piece, and I would get the road piece for nothing and use it to claim a field while the others fought over cities. We used castles, but perhaps not as often as we should have. Too often, there would be no large almost completed feature nearby to justify making a castle, or there would be a road that looked like it would be worth less than the four point city. The castles mostly were utilized with cloisters. Bridges were a lot more fun than I thought they would be. They allowed fields to be joined in ways that one wouldn't expect, especially at the end of the game (I extended the field where my barn was immensely and forced one of my opponent's farmers to be scored for minimal points). An interesting note was that there were 67 completed roads at the end of the game, so with about 50 tiles left we all started competing to make a large road to attain the robber barron. The bridges made this much more possible. It seems like it was a good strategy to save bridges for the end of the game to make longer roads and to connect fields. This was my first game playing with all of the expansions, but it was a lot of fun and I definitely look forward to doing it again.

We took pictures every roughly every 30 tile placements.

























End of the game...

[Novelty]

Wow, nice game of mega-carc!  I don't blame blue for leaving halfway!  Were the "holes" deliberate attempts to sabotage, or did they just happen?

[McJazz]

Great review and even better photos!! Looks like the only thing you guys were missing was der Tunnel.

Saturday we decided to play a mini-mega-carc. We didn't have the time or stamina to throw in everything, so we randomly picked about 120 tiles worth of expansions. We came up with: King & Scout, the Cult Pieces (shrines), Abbey & Mayor, the Tower, Wheel of Fortune and Bridges, Castles, & Bazaars. It was agreed that everything played pretty nicely together, without many issues. We especially liked the way WoF pieces affected the bidding process. People would bid higher if it meant the pig would give them points. We also had the same experience as you with the bridges and castles. Bridges expanded the fields in odd ways and the castles were best used near cloisters. Overall, the only complaint was the tower. My group just can't seem to get over how destructive towers can be to their carefully laid plans.

We had one instance of a tower under a bridge. Luckily, we never needed more than 2 tower pieces at the location.

I'm guessing you guys had over 300 pieces. How did you finish in 5-6 hours? Maybe my group isn't as familiar with the game or they like to over-analyze everything, but we took nearly 4 hours to play around 1/3 the number of pieces you had.

Did you come across any compatibility issues or other strange interactions?

[vagabondriot]

The holes were both deliberate and incidental. We would often retrieve stranded meeples with the aid of the towers, catapult, or dragon. We moved as fast as we could, all four of us were rather proficient players (I won by such a large margin due to careful field manipulation, especially with the aid of the tower and dragon). There were about 350 tiles I believe. We don't have der Tunnel or the crop circle one; we are waiting for the RGG release in the fall because I don't want to pay european shipping prices to America. The only really strange interaction was that we rarely used the City because there were pretty much always times to place meeples on the tiles and scoring someone else's feature without getting any points yourself was rather rare. There were no compatibility issues.

[Albinoasian]

Hi, interesting game it looks like.

Last night we played something similar. Although we opted to leave rivers out, and we don't own the catapult. We decided to switch out the base pieces for the WoF, but now we are a bit more experienced we'd add all the bits in next time. We had roughly 180 bits and the game took us over 5 hours. We all agreed it was the most enjoyable MegaCarc that we've played. The bridges really did help in sneaking in on farms.

We had to come up with our own rules for a couple things either because we couldn't find the answer in our rulebooks. They may have been stated somewhere but we weren't sure. Can you tell us what you did?

1) The dragon can move on the outside tiles of the Wheel and the City. We found it meant the dragon didn't get out of that area for most of the game. Next time I think we will say those tiles are out of bounds

2) Castles, The wheel of Fortune, The (Count's) City  are safe from the dragon and the plague? We weren't sure but we decided to keep them safe.

[jcardwell3rd]

Illegal bridge placement in 15th pic.

[CKorfmann]

Illegal bridge placement in 15th pic.

I think you mean 16.

And another, picture 20, lower left.  Are we party poopers?  :

[vagabondriot]

My mistake for not catching that during gameplay, but it was a long game and upwards of 4 AM at the end.

[Carcking]

it was a long game and upwards of 4 AM at the end.

That sounds like my kind of group!

[jcardwell3rd]

I just played a mega over the weekend. 2 player, took about 6-7 hours. after all was done we found an illegal tile, and it was placed near the middle of the game. I wounder how things would have changes...

[jcardwell3rd]

Man! That Iphone is wrecked! LOL

[vagabondriot]

Man! That Iphone is wrecked! LOL

Indeed it was. I had dropped it the day that game was played and was not in the greatest mood, to say the least. Fortunately, I was able to convince an apple employee to give me a new one for free last week so now I have a brand new one.