Carcassone at work
Last Friday I ran the first session of Friday Lunchtime Gaming at my place of work. Despite a general email to all employees turnout was low. Four people stopped by to look at the game titles I had brought for the occassion, soliciting remarks like: "I've never heard of these games." and "Where do you get those?". Two of the four eagerly sat down to try Carcassonne, the quick little tile laying game. The third person eventually agreed to play and number four declined. So, including myself, we played a four-player match of the base game without any expansions. We also used the original farmer scoring rule.
The rules are easily explained although during the game there was one confusion regarding the road intersections. I had explained that the intersection ends a road segment and had shown a tile with a little house on the junction. Later on in the game someone played an intersection without the house, just some shrubs, and thought the road segments continued on that particular tile as there was no house present.
About halfway through the game the fourth person returned and sat by as a spectator and was very interested in the game. So much so that we brought the game in on Monday and have left it in my desk drawer. Even without my presence there have been four players to play a game during lunch every single day this week. We did introduce the River expansion on Monday and have included that in every play since then.
I'm considering adding the the smaller expansions like King (and Robber) or The Count before incorporating the larger expansion sets as the smaller ones would add flavor but not so much time to the base game.
Next up I might try and introduce Cartagena as this can play more than four people.
Doei!
Thursday May 19th, 2005
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We added the King expansion. The five extra (special) tiles made people hopeful of closing their cities but in the end noone was able to really cash in on them. The King and Robber tiles were in held by the people in second and third place overall. It didn't add much in time to the game even though just a little more thinking was involved regarding closing off roads and cities. It seems like a good expansion to step up from the base game.
This game *is* popular with non-Eurogamers. Everyone in the office that has played it ordered at least the base game, with one guy going all out and ordering it with every expansion set available, even though we've only played the River and King expansion so far.
On a side note: the Adam Spielt catalog came in the mail this week and Staci saw that the only Carcassonne title that had a five star rating was The City version, so she wanted me to get that one. Hey, I only need to be told once to buy games.... ;-). The Adam Spielt rating runs from no stars "Not enough data to rate this game yet" all the way up to five stars. One star meaning "Good" and five stars meaning "Super". What else would you have expected? They are selling the stuff so would they ever rate a title as "Dog", or similar?
Doei!
The rules are easily explained although during the game there was one confusion regarding the road intersections. I had explained that the intersection ends a road segment and had shown a tile with a little house on the junction. Later on in the game someone played an intersection without the house, just some shrubs, and thought the road segments continued on that particular tile as there was no house present.
About halfway through the game the fourth person returned and sat by as a spectator and was very interested in the game. So much so that we brought the game in on Monday and have left it in my desk drawer. Even without my presence there have been four players to play a game during lunch every single day this week. We did introduce the River expansion on Monday and have included that in every play since then.
I'm considering adding the the smaller expansions like King (and Robber) or The Count before incorporating the larger expansion sets as the smaller ones would add flavor but not so much time to the base game.
Next up I might try and introduce Cartagena as this can play more than four people.
Doei!
Thursday May 19th, 2005
=======================
We added the King expansion. The five extra (special) tiles made people hopeful of closing their cities but in the end noone was able to really cash in on them. The King and Robber tiles were in held by the people in second and third place overall. It didn't add much in time to the game even though just a little more thinking was involved regarding closing off roads and cities. It seems like a good expansion to step up from the base game.
This game *is* popular with non-Eurogamers. Everyone in the office that has played it ordered at least the base game, with one guy going all out and ordering it with every expansion set available, even though we've only played the River and King expansion so far.
On a side note: the Adam Spielt catalog came in the mail this week and Staci saw that the only Carcassonne title that had a five star rating was The City version, so she wanted me to get that one. Hey, I only need to be told once to buy games.... ;-). The Adam Spielt rating runs from no stars "Not enough data to rate this game yet" all the way up to five stars. One star meaning "Good" and five stars meaning "Super". What else would you have expected? They are selling the stuff so would they ever rate a title as "Dog", or similar?
Doei!
