Solo play

[koolkat]

It seems that I've been knocking at the wrong doors, that is to say that I've been posting at inadequate places.
I think Novelty can't read "koolkat" any longer. I understand him. But... I like being here so let's fix things up!
This post has been moved from another thread. It was all about playing solo when we're on our own.
I played a few times both Solitaire Carcassonne's. That is:
1) With all base set trying to make a 8x9 board, pulling out tiles from the Carc bag following BGG rules. My best (actually I just played a couple of times) is five points (five tiles that could not be inserted on the 8x9 board). I think it's a nice variant and helps us think about what tiles are still to come out. Though strategy is different from normal game it's still good for your mind gymnastics. The final board looks nice because it's squared filled with closed cities and we only may have a few gaps because of the tiles that we didn't manage to fill into.
2) The other variants (23+23+23+start tile and 20+20+20+11+start tile) is also great, because it's fast and makes us think a lot about how to use the 4 meeples (in this solitaire we only have 4 meeples). It's great becaus we need only a little space to play on, we still score points and strategy is different again from the normal and the other solitaire version. A score under 60 points for the 20's and 23's partial games and a score under 40 for the 11 partial game would be something to forget.

I think this is a nice solution for when we're all by ourselves or even to compete against some other players.

Did someone tried these versions yet? How was it?

[Novelty]

I think Novelty can't read "koolkat" any longer.

I can still read you fine and well thank you.  It takes a while to get used to a forum.  You're doing fine.  Just try to post in the correct place and if you fail, there's always our friendly neighbourhood mods to help out

Back to the topic: How long did it take you to play those games?  Does it take more time because you have to think?

[koolkat]

No, Novelty. As soon as we get used to the game, the tinking is quite automatic. Things move real fast and that's why we can keep playing more and more. 20 minutes or so will do for any variants I mentioned. Perhaps next week I'll give it a try with some expansions, though I think The Catapult won't do. I'll have to check the rules again.
I got the german box, so I got rules in german. Thanks God we got forum's! And thanks to forum's we got english rules!

[Lardarse]

Where were these rules for solo play? Have any other suggestions been made?

[Novelty]

It's on BGG I think.  Check out http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?topic=539.0

[Lardarse]

So I just tried "the jigsaw", and after making a potentially dangerous decision to have the starting CRFR tile with the road running east-west, due to table constraints (when playing with my parents, we play on the floor) meaning that I can't fit 9 tiles vertically, and then having to worry about where my cloisters were going (with about 20 tiles remaining, there were 4 of them still in the bag), then with 8 tiles remaining having to count the CFFF tiles in play (4, leaving 1) to leave myself a cloister space, and then needing my last 2 tiles to fit RRxx and RFRx holes and getting CRRR and CRFR, I managed to complete the jigsaw on my first attempt!

My mum got home a few minutes later, and after I explained the jigsaw to her, she said "if you try it again, you won't do it." She's probably right...

[koolkat]

I understand why you call it "jigsaw". But jigsaws have always the same drawing. The first thing that attracted me on the game was the fact of the board is always different. So I couldn't possibly call the game that way. But that's only my opinion.

[Captain Pedantic]

So I just had a try at solitare Carcassonne and had a go with the 23+23+23 game. I scored 37+48+81

For clarification. It is a new board each time you are not adding to the one board?

Now to try the 8x9 jigsaw
 

Edit - For my first game of jigsaw I scored 3