Favourite House Rules? (for the CAR)

[DavidP]

Instead of starting with the spring and setting aside the lake we put all of the river pieces in the bag. That way river can be any size and there is usually more then one option for placing a river piece.

We play with a three tile hand. The Abbey counts as part of your hand. You play your turn including the builder, and then draw back up to three tiles. It adds a lot of strategy to the game. People tend to hold onto city splitters and farm joiners, or if there is a long road in play that can get the baron they hold onto a road completer.

[RationalLemming]

Some of these have already been mentioned before. 

As mentioned by some other people, we also shuffle the lakes that end the river into the pack so that the river can be any size (stops players predicting when the river will end so they can place a farmer that will loop around the end of the lake surrounded by a farm).

As mentioned by Joff, the player who holds the king and robber baron tiles gets a flat 10 points. It is consistent with trade goods, saves counting everything and also stops certain people from creating a lot of little castles and roads to get extra points. 

We use unused pieces (or some other objects) to represent the size of the biggest city and the longest road on the score board when playing with the king and robber baron so that we don't have to remember how big the previous feature was (and don't have to go searching on the board if we have forgotten).

We mix the original starting tile (without a river) in with the river tiles. If it is drawn then it acts like a 'bonus' tile that can be placed anywhere as obviously it continue the river.

To raise the stakes of a challenge between shrines and cloisters and to make it more worthwhile to risk the chance of getting no points we say that the winning challenger gets the points for BOTH structures (9 + 9 = 18 points) and the loser gets nothing.

[Scott]

We use unused pieces (or some other objects) to represent the size of the biggest city and the longest road on the score board when playing with the king and robber baron so that we don't have to remember how big the previous feature was (and don't have to go searching on the board if we have forgotten).

I mentioned in another thread many moons ago that I had my brother make me replicas of a city piece and a road piece from Settlers of Catan. (Don't have Catan, not going to buy it for two pieces, wouldn't desecrate another board game like that anyway.) With some brown paint, they stand out nicely as being neutral figures.

Alternatively, the two keeps from Carc: The Castle would also work.

[kjamma4]

We play the King and Baron differently.  The player that completes the first road, gets the Baron and keeps it until another player completes a longer road.  While the Baron is in your possession, you get 1 pt for every completed road.  Same goes for the King and cities.  We like using this method, as the scoring is done throughout the game, instead of having to count the roads and cities at the end.  Some games one player has the King or Baron the entire game, other games they change hands many times.

Excellent idea. I'm going to present that one to the gang this week.

Thanks.

[kjamma4]

... we lay the Mayor flat (same as farmers). This way we can tell at a glance which cities contain Mayors as we found that we had to double-take when using the big meeple and Mayor.

Very clever. We had the same problem and I was going to make up stickers (showing a pennant) to afix to the Mayors but this is a much better idea.

Thanks.

[Joual]

We play the King and Baron differently.  The player that completes the first road, gets the Baron and keeps it until another player completes a longer road.  While the Baron is in your possession, you get 1 pt for every completed road.  Same goes for the King and cities.  We like using this method, as the scoring is done throughout the game, instead of having to count the roads and cities at the end.  Some games one player has the King or Baron the entire game, other games they change hands many times.

Very interesting way of using the King and Baron!

In our group we use the basic tiles from CAR, I&C, T&B, King&Scout, The River and the GQ expansion (roughly 140 tiles). We've discussed alternative ways of using the King and Baron. Our latest idea was that it should be awarded to the person who scores the largest city/longest road, resulting in 10 bonus points at the end of the game. We don't like the fuzz of counting everything in the end. But now I think I'll ask the other players if we shouldn't use your house rules instead :-)

[michael]

Some house rules we use.

To determine the first player; each player draws a tile from the bag, the player that drew the tile with the most roads (0 to 4) plays first, if there is a tie for most roads, a draw-off takes place, this is repeated until someone wins. (We have this rule because I am the oldest and I said so!   )

Starting with the first player, we draw one tile at a time while building the river;
then continuing with the next player we each draw three tiles placing them face up before us; we then continue normally drawing a replacement tile every time we play one; the only exception is when we use our abbey wildtile.

We use all the expansion tiles even when we don't play a particular expansion.

I have just read through the postings (some nice ideas there) and I will suggest that our house try some of the house rules mentioned.

While I was reading the postings about the king & robber baron expansion a thought crossed my mind; to place one or more D12s or D20s (dice used in role playing games) on the largest road and city to identify them and their size.

[metoth]

We do not score the points for any uncompleted features at the end of the game.  Games with my  husband easily take 3 plus hours because he takes FOREVER to take a turn, so we are generally sick of it all by the end of the game, so we don't score as we should for incomplete cities, etc. 

In our house, you are not permitted to lay down any meeples until the entire river is down.

We score a flat 10 points at the end for the barron and king. 

We score points for the pig herd titles and the pig if they end up in the same field.

We do not allow anyone to try to build things off the end of the table. 

Games between my husband and I usually end up being pretty close according to points, so we are generally happy with our rules even though they aren't quite right...

[Scott]

We do not allow anyone to try to build things off the end of the table. 

That's an official rule actually.

[Novelty]

We do not allow anyone to try to build things off the end of the table. 

That's an official rule actually.

Where is it stated in the rules?

[Scott]

It was in one of the FAQ answers.

[Novelty]

It was in one of the FAQ answers.

Was it an official HiG FAQ answer?  Is it in the CAR?  I can't seem to find it.

[Gantry]

One would think that this is a limitation imposed by the law of gravity...

[metoth]

One would think that this is a limitation imposed by the law of gravity...

I would think it would be too, and yet my husband insists on trying to hold up the tiles with his hand throughout the rest of the game.   :

[Novelty]

We just shift the whole game on the table to allow for placement at what was formerly the edge.  I don't think there's a rule that says you can't do it...