Back to the Board - Carcassonne

Heartless Gamer writes to mention a feature on Grimwell online looking at the great board game of Carcassonne. Yet another terrific title from Rio Grande, the article takes a look at a possible introductory title for someone who might not have played a more serious board game. From the article: "Once you place a farmer, you can't get that follower back. The question thus becomes, do you play it now while the field is empty or do you wait, hoping your opponent won't claim the field the following turn? Farms can mean big points at the end of the game but could also mean missed points during the game if you run out of followers to play. The game plays smoothly once the players are briefed on the rules. Turns fly by and games complete relatively quickly. The only trick area of gameplay is ensuring players placing farmers are not overlapping other farmers. There can be a lot of land tiles between farmers, so a keen eye is required to ensure the rules are followed. Fortunately, the rule book has plenty of examples to help the players out."

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Spoonheads !??!?!

[krell]

Those Carcassonne guys gave Ben Sisko more than his share of headaches.

Re:Carcassone

[pruneau]

I totally disagree. Like someone else pointed, the medieval version of that game can (and will) be picked up by any people older than 8. As well, we had tournaments with the hunter and gatherer version, and I can tell you that assigning everything to luck is just a bad excuse for losing. We are still playing this game with my 30+ friends, and knowing the layout of the tiles by heart helps a lot. Now, if you really want to tone down luck, just make sure that everybody plays with two tiles to choose from in his hand, for example. Anyway, our recommendations:

• medieval carcassone: good for beginner, especially with the inn extension (allows 6 players)
• hunter and gatherers: very good fun for a long time for the vanilla version.
• settlers version: advanced one, can be very frustrating, but probably the more refined one. Lot of finesse and more options than before.

Re:german games

[angrymilkman]

If you like the social aspect of games there are two other games i can recommend: - Die wervolfe fon dusterwald - its a game about werewolves everybody gets assigned a card (werewolve, citizen, witch, hunter etc). The goal of the game is for the werewolves to kill the citizens and for the citizens to identify and burn the wolves. Its a brilliant game that can be played with up to 18 people. its a really cool game where everybody gets parranoid accussing others of being a wherewolf - kuhhandel - again a card trading game similar to bohnanza but very complex (you have to get four of the same animals and every turn you can either auction off an animal or force trade with other player and there is no real strategy for winning which makes it such a brilliant game. I wonder why almost all games come from germany? don't they have computers or tv's ;-)