Home-brew rule changes?

[Gantry]

When Natasha & I play Carc (which has only been for a couple of months) we have been playing the various expansion sets, but we always seem to change the rules slightly when the two of us play.  What we typically do is keep the large meeple, no matter what expansion we play (or don't play).  (gasp!    )  Also we generally play the kinder gentler "additive" game unless we agree to get competitive or play an expansion that requires us to take opponent meeples (a "subtractive" game), like Princess & the Dragon.

What "home rule" variants do you use?

[Tobias]

We tend to change the rules now and then, and to test new things. Usually though it's about leavning features out, such as the King and Robber baron for example. We almost never count the points for the fairy either, since none of us remember to do it ...

One rule we usually play with is that small cities - two tiles only - don't give any points. This makes for building bigger cities and farmers aren't that powerful. Usually in the endgame everyone goes for farmers - which can be a bit boring, with this way it's not so extreme.

[Dathkadan]

In general, I like all the rules--but there are some I consistently forget: the point for the fairy, checking to see what city regin the Count is in, etc. The only intentional change my friends and i make is that we usually just use the big meeple as the scoring meeple. We also use several river expansions because they look cool and sometimes help make bigger fields.

[mjharper]

We try to avoid house-rules, but then I find it hard enough to keep the official rules and all their details in mind. If we started using house-rules, I'd be absolutely no use to anyone on forums 

But we do have two minor ones. Firstly, if we use both The Count of Carcassonne and The River (I or II), we lay out the river first (not second) and then place the City of Carcassonne wherever it fits best. Need to be able to agree for that one, so that no-one gains an advantatage, but you end up with a much nicer arrangement. Secondly, we take the tile for the next turn at the end of the current turn, which means you have a while to think about where to place it. Some people have said that this means that I get your tile, but I don't think a covered tile can be said to belong to anyone. Whatever, it makes for a somewhat faster game. Since both my Alina and I (the normal sparing team) are procrastinators (masters of analysis paralysis) we need something to speed us up a bit…

[Johngee]

#1.  I guess that our First and Foremost HOUSE RULE is the fact that we use a combination of the Rio Grande Games v.1 & v.3 Rule Sets.  We became accustomed to scoring 4 points per town once for the majority farmer (the player with the MOST farmers in a particular field).  Because farms are a real pain to figure out and this method has become so ingrained within our little group, I didn't want to rock the boat to disturb my friend's from their comfort zones.  When I became aware of the v.3 Rule changes we discussed them, but have chosen to keep it this way for our own convenience.  This means that we also continue to score:  5 pts. per town if the farmer has its corresponding pig or the pig herd tile, and 6 pts. per town if the farmer has both the tile swine and porcine meeple in the same field. 

I've read many times that the Farmers in Carcassonne are WAY TOO POWERFUL and that is the primary reason for the change in Rules v.3.  But...if scoring LESS points for each city, then scoring them multiple times depending on how many adjoining farms they touch, is confusing for me to comprehend -- then I don't want to be the one to have to explain it to the others in my group.  We're comfortable with it this way and will indubitably continue.  I'm just finally getting some of the other players to try their hand at keeping score. 

However we did adopt the v.3 Rule change whereby all completed towns, including those small two tile ones, (unless they contain a Catherdral) are scored at:  2 points per tile.  Cathedral Cities, of course, score 3 points per tile and the Shields on tiles count either 2 or 3 additional points as appropriate.  I realize that this eliminates the penalty for building very small cities and in fact encourages the building of more of these two-tile towns by those players who are trying to maximize the value of their farmers, BUT it's just easier to remember and easier to explain to new comers.  Perhaps a game variation would be to have two-tile towns receive zero points; hmm, that's could be the topic for another discussion. 

Personnally I believe that having POWERFUL Farmers is a GREAT game mechanic, at least in the way that we score them.  There seems to be two distinct strategy types employed in Carcassonne.  The more aggressive A-Players tend to go for the "NOW" points by finishing town and road features, while the more passive B-Players lackadaisically start new things or add to things, but have a good eye for interconnecting their farmed fields for "LATER" points.  Over and over, I've seen how high scoring Farmers CAN turn the tide of the game for whoever controls them, especially when the 2nd & 3rd Farmer is miraculously joined into one huge field for that "majority" status.  That's just their Tortoise way of surpassing the Hares among us as we approach the finish line.  Therefore I think that these two methodologies are designed to balance each other out in the long run and do work well together. 

With a hungry Dragon on the loose and 18 overshadowing towers spread about, the powerful farmers have become the primary target of these offensive machinations.  Thus the farmers in our games tend to come and go more frequently than the other meeples.  I've also read somewhere that the LARGEST farm always wins, but that does NOT necessarily insure success in our games where several smaller ones with pigs can provide more aggregate points.  We've become rather good at segmenting fields with roads to block them from coming together.  The 20-30 bonus points for the King and Robber Baron have become much more prized pocessions for us than the Farmers and are highly contested throughout our sessions. 

#2.  The SECOND HOUSE RULE THAT we've come up with is a personal enhancement that is probably unaccepable to the traditionalists and Euro-gamers, who strictly adhere to the way the game designers intended them to be played.  However, I feel that bold innovativeness is an American strength, and since it works for us, we JUST DO IT anyway.  Early on, we discarded the race track score board in favor of simply using a paper and pencil to accumulate points.  I strongly recommend this procedure, especially if there are young children in the room who habitually bump into the darn thing.  Then we realized that a invaluable Eighth Meeple was available for game play - voila - so we did!!!  We've been using eight regular meeples, plus the Big Meeple, plus the Builder Meeple, plus the Pig Meeple (eleven total figures) for a long time and it is great FUN.  The scores may tend to run higher than in standard by-the-book sessions, but nevertheless it works well and is still very competitive.  Even with eight meeples, you'd be surprised how often you run out of them and wish you had one more to place on that Cloister you just drew out of the bag. 

#3.  Our THIRD HOUSE RULE is quite simple.  We always begin placing our Meeples on the very first tile after the Spring tile (River-I) or Branch tile (River-II) is laid down.  This almost always guarantees that the first player's first meeple is going to be a Farmer to take advantage of the Green Field that wraps around the Spring to both sides of the river, until eventually a couple roads interrupt it.  Hence there is a need for the Dragon and Tower mechanics to eliminate that meeple and also for the new Spring tile in the GQ#11 Exp with a road leading right up to it for separation.  Anyway we've discarded the "Youngest Player decides who goes first RULE" in favor of randoming drawing a meeple out of a hat that contains one of each color being used.  By the way: this change was lobbied for by the older members of our group who complained of being at a disadvantage, because they were not able to place the first Farmer.  I asked them if they wanted cheese to go with their whine, but eventually conceded. 

#4.  Finally, we have come up with two alternative methods of play when there is limited time available for a full scale Basic plus eight expansions game.  FIRST, we simply set a timer for one hour or ninety minutes, etc. and when it rings the game is over.  We simply finish the round so that every player has an equal number of plays and then immediately begin End Game scoring to determine the winner.  We do NOT have to play until the LAST tile is pulled out of the bag and placed on the board.  SECOND, is likewise a simple deviation, whereby someone grabs a handful of random tiles out of the bag and puts them into the box which is then set aside.  You can play a shortened version of the game until the last tile is drawn, but no one knows how many of which tiles have been eliminated, seriously hampering those players who have memorized how many of each tile type are available. 

I hope this report has given you some fresh ideas to try out in your own sessions and if you are ever in New Jersey look us up and we'll try to connect for a casual game of Carcassonne. 

[albie]

We generally use the following house rules in our group:

Mini Expansion Pig Farm
Yup, it's a pig farm, regardless of the "official" ruling from RGG. I mean, if it isn't a pig farm, why in the world did they make it look like one? Surely they should have realized it would cause confusion. At least they could have said as much right off the bat; that way, they could have actually included some instructions w/ this expansion.  Yup, it's a pig farm!

King & Robber Baron
These always just score a flat 10 points at the end of the game; this avoids having to count up all the cities and roads (so we can move on to the next game quicker). Some people have said keeping track of the size of the largest city/road is a pain; if this happens, we just thrown down a meeple of an unused color on the appropriate location, so we can just do a quick count whenever needed.

10 points to me actually is a bit low given the number of expansions we normally use, so I am going to lobby for a change that gives these tiles 15 points each if we use 1-2 of the big expansions and 20 points for 3-4. This is still probably way too low, but it's better than 10.

The River
We always start the game w/ the River/River II expansions. We were never quite sure how to interpret the "no U-turn" rule, so we just say you can't make an immediate U-turn upon the previous piece, but as long as there is at least one intervening tile, you can U-turn all you want. We once had one branch loop all the way around behind the starting spring tile. I think this is the actual intention of the original rule, but we made the house rule just in case.

Tower Guards Immune vs. Dragon
This isn't so much a house rule as a misinterpretation of the rules, but we ruled that tower guards cannot get eaten by the dragon. We had a lively debate on this one (I even claimed the dragon can't fly - even though it clearly has wings - so how could he eat a guy up in a tower?) but we ruled 2-1 that it just can't happen. Somehow, it felt right that a big old tower should provide some protection against the dragon. I have a feeling this one is going to get overturned, even though I would still like to retain it. I mean, if the dragon can eat a meeple in a tower, why can't it fly into Carc itself and eat the meeps at the market? Or the @#$%* Count himself? Yeah, I would like that! Hate the Count! OK, I digress.

Scoring
We use a combination of 1st and 3rd edition scoring. We now score farms using 3rd ed. rules, but we still score 2-tile cities as only 2 points, 'cause it just feels like too much of a reward to get 4 for such a puny city. I assume they did this for consistency, but sticking w/ 2 points encourages players to attempt to build up larger cities in my opinion.

That's about it. There are a couple more I am going to propose, such as adding the river fork tile to the bag and playing it whenever it gets drawn (and removing one lake tile from the bag until the fork is played) but that's all we use right now.

Oh, and I am glad we aren't the only ones who always forget to score the stupid fairy!

[Tobias]

Yes, if there are pigs on a tile it's a bloody pig farm. Period. It's stupidity beyond comprahension to make it not be what it is. Bah!

[albie]

Oh, forgot one other one. We always use the big meeple regardless of which expansion(s) we are playing.

[mjharper]

Re the U-turn rule - it's only immediate U-turns which are expressly forbidden (see this FAQ). You can still run into problems though; and anyone wilfilly creating difficulties should be immediately defenestrated. 

[albie]

You can still run into problems though; and anyone wilfilly creating difficulties should be immediately defenestrated. 

De-what-estrated? I had to look that one up!

defenestration

1. a throwing of a person or thing out of a window
2. a usually swift dismissal or expulsion (as from a political party or office)

Hopefully you are referring to the 2nd definition

[Gantry]

what a great word!   

[mjharper]

  It's one of my favourite words. A third meaning is apparently to remove Windows from your computer 

And I actually was thinking of the first meaning… if the person causing trouble is really getting up your nose 

[Scott]

Some people have said keeping track of the size of the largest city/road is a pain; if this happens, we just thrown down a meeple of an unused color on the appropriate location, so we can just do a quick count whenever needed.

The concept of largest city and longest road reminded me of Settlers of Catan, which inspired me to use a road piece and city piece from Settlers on the Carc scoring track to keep track of the size of the largest city and the length of the longest road. Probably nobody would want to sacrifice two pieces from Settlers permanently unless they had an extra set for modification purposes. In my case, I don't own anything from Settlers and I'm not about to buy the game just to get two wooden pieces. I prepared some drawings and convinced my brother to cut the pieces for me from some scrap wood I found in the garage. I sort of guessed at the sizing, trying to make them consistent with the Carc meeples, which included using metric units. I half-expected my brother to complain, since woodworking is always done in imperial units, but he was fine with it. Once cut, I sanded them smooth and painted them brown (two coats followed by one clear coat) to be distinct from other Carc pieces. Orange was a contender, but if I ever want to add a seventh player I would want orange meeples. The finished city and road piece fit easily into the King & Scout box once the Scout pieces are removed (since I don't have H&G and no desire to buy it).

[Joff]

This forum gave us some ideas for our own house rules. The sets we use at the moment (until my Abbey and Mayor set arrives) are: Carcassonne, Inns and Cathedrals, Traders and Builders, River, River II and King and Scout. Although we own it, we do not play The Count as we feel it detracts from the game somewhat.

So, here are our house rules:


Pig Farm

We do not play the pig farm tile scoring. The Pig from Traders and Builders remains unaffected.


King & Robber Baron

These always just score a total of 15 points at the end of the game for the holder. A purple meeple marks the position of the King on the Scoring Track; the brown meeple marks the position of the Robber Baron on the Scoring Track.


The River

If we use the River/River II expansions we start the game with the fork tile, leaving the spring as the last piece to be played.


Scoring

We use a combination of 1st and 3rd edition scoring. We score farms using 3rd edition rules, but an occupying knight still scores 2-tile cities as only 2 points.


Playing Area

It is permitted to move the River as a whole unit into the centre of the playing area before the commencement of laying any other tiles. All players must agree on the River’s placement if this is the case. The playing area extends to the edge of the table being used, the table edge being the boundary for tiles. No tile may overhang the table’s edge.

[Joff]

Playing Area

It is permitted to move the River as a whole unit into the centre of the playing area before the commencement of laying any other tiles. All players must agree on the River’s placement if this is the case. The playing area extends to the edge of the table being used, the table edge being the boundary for tiles. No tile may overhang the table’s edge...

Adding to that: No tile may overhang the table or free float in empty space!

Another rule we use that is different from official is that the starting player can be chosen by any method we choose.