Board Game Analysis Carcassonne
|
So, these last two weeks we have been playing board games for analysis, our group choes Carcassonne and here we go basicly. Carcassonne My thoughts and a quick analysis Core functions The game is made out of a number of tiles which make have landscape painted on them; fields, roads, cities and cloisters. These are used to build the playing field as the game goes on. Every player has a number of “followers” wooden human shaped tokens used to assert control over the land which is built during the game thus scoring points. At the beginning of the game a single specially marked starting tile depicting a city on one side and field on the other cut buy a road in the middle. This is placed face up on the table, all other tiles are placed face down. As the players take turns they draw tile and place it wherever it fits into the playing field. The player may then place a follower on the tile they placed as long as any of the connected patterns are not claimed i.e. if you continue building on a claimed city you cannot place a follower in the city it is already claimed, this applies to all forms of terrain. As you play you try to finish your projects, walling off cities getting two places for your road to go between, lands around your cloisters or finishing cities bordering on your fields all give you points. Finishing a city, road or cloister returns the follower and awards points and the game goes on. A field however cannot be “finished” even if it becomes completely surrounded by other features the follower will have to sit out the entire game on the board. This means that investing in farmers ties up your followers for the entire game and since you only have a set amount of them you run the risk of running out of followers which severely limits your chances of scoring points. At the end of the game the farmers and leftover other followers are collected and points for them distributed. Here there is a bit of a funny thing since roads and cloisters award full points for every involved tile but unfinished cities only award half their actual point value per tile leading to everyone scrambling to finish their cities as late game starts to creep up. Most interesting system How you build the map and the fact that some rules are made to be worked around was quite interesting. If you connect a city tile to a city already claimed by one of your opponents you may not place a follower to contend for the city. But if you instead start a new city right beside the old one and later connect them then you have the rights for half the point value of the combined city. If you manage to do this twice you gain the upper hand and all the points in the city are yours, as long as our opponent does not do the same thing to restore balance. The same thing apply to fields and roads, you can claim a new road and then connect it to a previously claimed road, thus forcing the other player to share the points with you. For instance it might be a better idea to finish of a city contested by two other players to make them split the points to make sure none of them gets the upper hand in the game by claiming the whole city and cashing in all those points. Though if they never finish the city they will only get half points, thus you have given them points they might not have gotten. This also partly touches on the risk/reward system of building large cities because if you are unable to finish them you are only getting half points and the larger cities are the easier it generally is for someone else to break in to the city to contend you for the points. Also interesting to note is that since fields give points for any finished connecting cities and since the cloisters award points for any tile placed directly beside them it can be worth your while to help your opponents sometimes especially if you can directly finish off an opponent how just started a small city neighboring your fields you will get 4 points but your opponent will only get 2. This thing where we have a whole game that is more or less about skirting the rules of the game itself kind of fascinates me since I get the feeling that much of it started out as bugs but were turned into features. Components properties behaviors relationships Good things Furthermore since randomization is at the very core of the game every play through is totally unique with a different map and different flow. There are many expansions to the game if you want to change things up a bit. The expansion pack included in the box that we tried on our last play was very easy to incorporate and only changed the beginning of the game but that there are many expansions to the game and some are quite complicated, incorporating different kinds of followers, more special tiles and one even has a small catapult that you shoot at the board. Another thing I liked is that it is often quite hard to see who is winning before all points are calculated. This means that everybody fees engaged throughout the whole game most of the time though there might be extreme cases where this is not the case. While it might seem that someone is climbing the points fast in the beginning. There are no real positive or negative feedback loops in the game making sure that no one races away too far early on. Unfinished cloisters and cities still give points at the end of the game, not as much as finished ones, this is a good motivator to keep you trying to finish them but you are still rewarded for your work even if you don’t quite make it. Bad things The first bad thing about the game is the name. It is quite hard to remember and when we chose Carcassonne I did not think I had played it. I had I just could not remember the name. If German game maker decides to name his game after a French city could he not have choose something a little easier to spell and remember? Secondly some might argue that the randomness can be perceived as a bad thing in some circumstances, as luck with drawing tiles can make a big difference to a game and pretty much ruin a players chance to win in extreme circumstances. Lastly it is rather hard to estimate the time a game will take, it can vary quite a bit depending on the players. Of course some house rules to set a maximum amount of time for each turn can easily be implemented, especially nowadays when almost everybody has a timer on their phone. Target Group The box says 8+ but I think that the target group would be a little higher than that, somewhere around 12+ maybe. Also the choice to have a knight on the box art feels like a way to draw in young boys that want some sort of fighting and action and instead get a strategy game which I remember having seen the game and even played it as a small kid but me and my friends did not catch on to it, the knight on the box was very enticing for a young boy but I was sorely disappointed by the content. This however would vary from kid to kid but in general I think that 12 would be better since every year makes a big difference in that age . Furthermore I actually think that most players are older than that, maybe 18-30. I do also want to add that I do not really think that casting a wide net is a bad idea since the game is so easy to learn even though it may not instantly appeal to the youngest players it is not to complicated for the either. Summary Carcassonne strength lies in that it is a game that is very easy to learn with lots of replayability value because the core system consists of you building the game world. It encourages strategy and thinking outside the box when you need to go roundabout was to conquer your opponents’ territory but you and at the same time adapt to the tiles you draw and plan for what the other players might throw at you. As to the low points I would say an over complicated name and unreliable play time as the only real offenders and those are no big faults at all. It is a clever game with simple rules that almost everyone can play. Since the score keeping is always a bit after the actual worth of all the followers on the playing field the game can quickly turn and you never know who won until the end unless you try really, really hard to keep track of it all. I must personally say that playing this game was great fun partly because I had great company, the veteran players helped the more inexperienced and by the last game everyone was pointing out when someone was making a bad choice, it was really great playing with you guys. //Max Nordlund |
