Imagine: Carcassone, with a rule switch: If, when points are added up at the end, you have more than 100 points, you win. Anyone with more than 100 points wins.
Edit: The board stops at 101. There are no points counted after victory.
Which is your strategy and, hopefully, tell us why?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I want to win (when playing games). Thus I want to get 100 points fast and early and as many afterwards as possible.
ReplyDeleteMichel Kangro Huh. I hadn't anticipated that. Imagine there are no points after 101. The board stops, and your counting meeple is just in a "winners circle"
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Hm. I'd probably not very much like the game, tbh. ;-)
ReplyDeleteCan you unpack why?
ReplyDeleteThis might be a good way to play with my kids.
ReplyDeleteThat said, with one winner, most people don't win - they are together in their not winning. With multiple winners, non-winners might feel both like a loser and excluded.
I think I have played enough Carcassone for this lifetime, however if I was playing I would try to win in fun ways (not necessarily best tactics so much as interesting builds to try and entertain myself). The only people I would help win would be my kids and any noobs at the table.
ReplyDeleteEveryone must score at least 100 or everyone loses.
ReplyDeleteKnowing the structure of Carcassone, it's clear that it is much easier for me to help other players get points than it is to get points myself. So I can get way more leverage on getting people into the winner's circle by concentrating on their score more than on my own.
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch So if two people team up and help each other out, they be in with a shot of being the only two winners?
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford: Uhhhh ... I suppose that would be a strange failure condition of my strategy... but I was more thinking "hey, if I play this right our game can have, like, five winners rather than just one or two. That'd be awesome!"
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch Yeah, I get that. Just exploring the possibilities.
ReplyDeletethis is basically Cosmic Encounter (everyone who gets to 5 points wins, everyone else loses)
ReplyDeleteedit- i guess the game continuing after someone reaches 100 is different
Adam McConnaughey: I feel like there's an assumption underlying your assertion. Can you expand upon why you think the games are similar?
ReplyDeleteAh, nevermind. Missed your edit.
ReplyDeleteWhen is the game over, if play continues even after someone achieves victory conditions? If nothing triggers the end of the game, won't every game last until everyone has won? And if that's true, does the goal become "get everyone to 101 as quickly as possible so we can go get lunch" or "get everyone to 101 as slowly as possible because we're having fun" or "try to be as silly as possible while playing this game because the outcome is already known"?
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting, Ron Stanley. Carc usually ends when you run out of pieces, right. So we know the ending mechanic.
ReplyDeletethe alternative is delightful, but I'm not sure how you got there. Can you unpack?
I've never played Carcassone so I'm answering theoretically...
ReplyDeleteSo, by nature I hate losing so I will play to win, but unless I have to (because the game is set up to do so) I will by pass opportunities to mess with other players because I hate PvP. It just stresses me out to much. So, mostly, I will just ignore the other players outside of necessarily interactions with them for the game. If the game has conditions where everyone can win, then I would attempt to do that.
William Nichols What, you never made more pieces for a game when the manufacturer didn't anticipate you playing it in a non-prescribed way? Sigh... kids today. Sometime I gotta tell you about the extra Dungeon! maps and monster cards my brother made.
ReplyDeleteApparently I got there because I don't know anything about Carcassone, but that's never stopped me from having an uninformed opinion about anything before...
I guess I was assuming it was the same as baccarat or jai alai, two other games I know nothing about.
I'm going to go with "play the same way me and my ex used to play Scrabble"--keep score but ignore victory conditions; try to make an interesting board and unusual words/map/whatever you make in Carcassone. Am I way off? Not sure why I haven't Googled Carcassone yet... maybe I'm having too much fun being ignorant.
Matt Johnson Indeed, Carc may not be your game. There's a lot of involvement of characters into each other's work, and a major strategy includes taking over their work, or messing it up.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I like to play to win. And winning should mean something. I admit to seeing games as competition and it's fun to have a challenge. If everyone was to help everyone to gain 100 points, that would take all of that away. Thus after if I reached 100 points, I'd not be very motivated to play at all. After all, I cannot improve my result anymore.
ReplyDeleteNow, I get everyone saying how everyone winning is great and I do kind of agree to that, to a point (which is especially once children or noobs are involved), but if it's too easy, it's not worth it.
From a perfect game, I want to be tested in wit, risk management or other skills. I enjoy beating a game mechanic or mastering it good enough to beat other people also trying to master it. It's not necessarily about the winning, either. I love loosing if I had a challenge and maybe have an idea on improving my game.
I kinda like Marshall Miller's idea: Make it cooperative from the start. Everyone needs to make those points or no one wins. That, again, would be a variant that would put some new flavor in and trigger some new neural pathways to get the optimal cooperative strategy for Carcasonne. :-)
So... anyone on this thread ever played Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert? They're great games and they are truly cooperative. Either everybody wins... or everybody dies. Despite that somewhat grim premise, they're great games for kids, especially if you want to encourage older kids and younger kids to help each other. Very similar to Marshall Miller's idea.
ReplyDeleteRon Stanley I know both and love them, though somehow I haven't yet introduced them to my kids. My older girl (9yo) isn't as much into boardgaming as I'd like, the boy (7yo) was too young when I last had one of them on the table and the little girl (3yo) is too little. Her time will come!
ReplyDeleteBut those games are perfect for what I said before, they offer a challenge of wits and you do have a very real chance of not winning.