C: The Discovery - First impressions

[Tobias]

I got my hands on Carcassonne: The Discovery a few days ago, and today Sara and I had a first go at it. At first (while I was reading the rules) it seemed straight forward and quite simple, but after the first play test I'm not sure it really is. I'll keep this one short and to the point until I've had a few more games.

Looks: The graphics are rather wanting, they sure didn't put a lot of effort into making the tiles look nice, instead they are rather bleak and boring. The followers actually look like small christmas trees ...

Extras: The game come with a coloured scoring sheet to keep handy during the game, and I'm pretty sure you'll want to consult it now and then during your first few games.

Gameplay: The thing is that you can't place a follower and score points in the same round, instead you place a tile, and then either place a follower or score points by removing one. This calles for some careful planning, becuase if you do finish building something - you can't score it unless you've previously placed a follower on it.

You can build grassplains, seas and mountain ranges. Some of these carry a town as well, and only grasslands funcion as one may have grown used to in other versions of C viz. you get points per tile. Regarding mountains and seas, you mostly have to worry about towns.

You score mountains by counting the numbers of towns in the range, and adding the number of towns on the adjactant grassplains. This means that while building mountains, you also need to keep an eye out for any grassplain that stretches out from it, and place as many towns on those as you possibly can.

Seas are scored by counting the number of towns bordering to it, and - if it's complete - how many tiles it is made up of.

In most cases you'll get twice the amount of points if the feature you're about to score is finished - seas are an exception since you'll count the tiles instead of doubling the points for the towns.

The scoring is rather complex, and I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment that this is aimed at a younger audience than vanilla C. I could argue that this is the hardest version of C there is as of yet, but I won't do it since I've only had one game :P

The tiles are odd in the way that quite many will cut off whatever you want to build at their corners, so it's rather hard to build something really big.

All in all I'm sure it'll be a nice game. It probably plays a lot better with more players though.

[Gantry]

Thats an interesting perspective Tobias, certainly different from others I've read!

[Wishmaster]

I've had Discovery for a long time now and myself with several other guys at work have spent many lunchtimes playing it as well all the other Carcassonnes. I agree with you regards the younger audience Tobis.... It's anything but easy to play and most definitely the hardest yet. On the face of it the rules are simpler than the others, but the actual game play is far more intense. You pick up a tile and twist it around and around trying work out where to put it!! You only have five meeples... and one of them is on the score track! So planning is very important. You are also correct in summising it will work better with more players. We usually have four or five and it is a very good game then, but does take longer to play as you have to think every move through.

So, in summary.... A good game, but only for (say) three or more.
Not for youngsters.
Be prepared for a headache.

[Gantry]

Be prepared for a headache.

 

[Wishmaster]

Sorry to dig this one out again, but I've just realised that since posting my original message here I've not played it since!! That will be rectified this Thursday lunchtime when four of us will go headlong into it again... hope we can all remember how to play!