Carcassonne Maps: Great Britain

The Game

Carcassonne Maps is a series of Carcassonne expansions. Carcassonne is a boardgame with no board, and Carcassonne Maps turns it back to a game with a board. You will need not only the base game but also at least one more expansion with tiles. Every Carcassonne Maps expansion requires a certain number of tiles, and those in the base game are not enough. There are some common rules across the Carcassonne Maps series, and each map has some unique rules too. Although you use tiles from other Carcassonne expansions, you won't use the rules associated with them. 

Let's first talk about the common rules across the different maps. Each map has several starting positions. You place the standard starting tile on one of these positions, and draw random tiles for the others. When placing tiles, they must expand out from these starting positions, similar to standard Carcassonne. You don't place tiles anywhere you like. Squares have been drawn on the map, and you can only place tiles in these squares. The concept of a border is introduced - borders as in the edges of the playable areas. When you place a tile on a border space, any feature touching the border is considered closed off. For example you still have an open-ended castle, but the only remaining open end is on the border. In this case the castle is considered complete and you score it. The same goes for roads and monasteries. The borders on the maps help players complete features. 

Those face-down round tokens have point values. They come in three colours, and they are worth 1 or 2 points. Not all the maps use these tokens, but quite many do. They are used in different ways on different maps. Generally when you place a tile on a space with a round token, you claim that token and score the points on it. As you collect tokens, you will be able to use them in some other way. 

The Isle of Man is the unique mechanism on the Great Britain map. At the end of your turn, you may place a meeple here to take an additional turn. Your meeples here are temporarily unavailable to you. They are freed when you have three round tokens of different colours or three round tokens of the same point value. When either of these happen, you must turn in the combination and retrieve all your meeples. You know the colour distribution of the round tokens up front - blue in the north, purple in the south, and orange in the west. So you can somewhat plan to collect the right colours at the right time. 

The maps have towns, and they are an optional variant. If you use the town variant, you lose 2 points for covering a town, but you get to take an extra turn. Also when completing a road, every town next to the road gives you 2 points. 

The Play

Most of the elements in Carcassonne have not changed. The biggest difference to me is the impact of the borders. Completing features becomes a bit easier. However since the maps do come with some features, these introduce a new challenge. When you lay tiles, your tiles must match these features. Overall I find Carcassonne Maps slightly more challenging. The features on the map include major cities which appear as partial castles. They tend to be lucrative and they entice players to expand towards and claim them. 

Our London did not grow to become a large castle, only a chubby camel. 

The point tokens and Isle of Man are simple variants. It's nice to have some alternative ways of playing, but these are not something radically different from the original. I find the existence of the map itself is the main attraction which introduces a new play experience. 

In our game, despite using the recommended number of tiles, by the time we were done, about 20% of the spaces was still not yet filled. 

The Thoughts

Well, this is an expansion, so it is for people who already like Carcassonne. If that's you, then the maps will offer a fun and new experience. It's different enough to be interesting. Before playing I had imagined gameplay to be more restrictive, since the play area is fixed. Now that I have played it, I find that you often still have many options on your turn. The concept of the borders gives you a new tool to complete features. The features on the map also give some context and create objectives you strive for. 

boardgaming in photos: Innovation, Race for the Galaxy, Carcassonne

8 Oct 2023. I played Attika with younger daughter Chen Rui. This was quite a brutal game. I almost connected two temples, but Chen Rui cut me off. We had instances of starting new settlements to grab land and resources from each other. The more I play this game, the more I appreciate it. I have an urge to find an English version. Mine is German. The game was first released in 2003, and it has never been reprinted. That's a shame. It's a great game! 

13 Oct 2023. I played Innovation with Allen. I'll never tire of this game. This is Carl Chudyk's magnum opus. It is an evergreen in my top ten games. It's an unusual game, and also a little challenging to learn, but once you get into it, it is full of surprises and crazy situations. It's a wild ride. 

I had all five colours now, and four of them were splayed. 

I rarely get to ages 8 and above. 

In our game, this was the card which helped me the most - Industrialization. It didn't directly score points, but it helped me draw many cards to be added to my empire. More cards meant more icons, and that meant a much more powerful empire. I could bully Allen, I didn't have to worry about him piggybacking on my dogma powers, and I could piggyback on his dogma powers. 

I had so many cards! By now we had exhausted the Age 8 cards and we were going into Age 9. 

14 Oct 2023. I still play Race for the Galaxy against AI's once in a while. In this particular game I managed to score exactly 100pts. I normally play against 2 other AI players, and my winning rate is probably below a third. So I'm not actually very good at this. It's just that I usually take screenshots only when I win. Most of the time things are not that glamourous. 

The scores for this particular game wasn't high. What was unusual was I tied one AI for the win. We were both at 42pts. The tiebreaker in Race for the Galaxy is remaining hand cards and goods. We tied for that too, at 8. Ties are quite rare, especially when all three expansions are in play. 

15 Oct 2023. I did Carcassonne with my wife Michelle and younger daughter Chen Rui. Michelle and I are veterans, but Chen Rui is quite new to the game. Michelle knew I was the biggest threat and she kept persuading Chen Rui to gang up on me. 

In this photo, Chen Rui (black) was first to start a castle in this area. I (green) was next, placing my meeple on the castle on the left. I placed a regular meeple, so that if Chen Rui and my castles merged, we would both score points for the combined castle. Later Michelle (red) created a new castle on the right. She placed a big meeple, which had the strength of two meeples. If her castle merged with ours, her big meeple would overpower both of ours, leaving us no points. I told Chen Rui, see what your mom is doing to you; you should listen to dad. 

Eventually Chen Rui the newbie won the game. Michelle and I had been too busy tripping each other up.  

The highest scoring castle in the game was this one completed in the early half of the game. It had a cathedral, so it had a x3 multiplier instead of the usual x2. This single castle scored Chen Rui and I 63pts, which was huge. It was very hard for Michelle to catch up. However Michelle did manage to share that very lucrative central field with Chen Rui. I wasn't able to work my way in to neutralise them before the game ended. 

3 Nov 2023. I visited boardgamecafe.net (physically in Cheras) to buy some Exit games. My family likes them. Now some of them contain jigsaw puzzles. I got myself one, to see what it's like. I had not visited the BGC physical store for quite some time, and took the opportunity to browse. There were so many new games I hadn't heard of before. I bought the latest version of Through the Ages and also the expansion New Leaders and Wonders. Michelle and I used to play a lot of Through the Ages. We had a lot of fond memories. Let's see if I can convince her to revisit this. I'm going to ask the children to try this too. 

boardgaming in photos: Carcassonne - The Discovery, Saint Petersburg, Maori

18 Mar 2023. TTGDMY  did a playtesting session at Boards & Brews. This was Cedric's prototype. It looks like chess. Each player has 7 ninjas, each in a different colour. One of them secretly holds a scroll, and you don't know which among your opponent's ninjas is the scroll holder. To win you need to kill that scroll holder. You use dice to perform actions. Every round the dice are rolled, and the two players take turns claiming a die until each has three. One die will be unused. You then use the dice you have claimed to take actions. You need dice in the right colours to activate specific ninjas. You also need dice with the right values to perform specific actions. E.g. to get the light blue ninja to throw shuriken at an opponent ninja, you need to have both the light blue die and another die with the value 3. 

Boards and Brews is a nice new boardgame cafe. The owners have been running boardgame cafes for many years, but this location is new. It is more a cafe with boardgames than a cafe you go only for boardgames. The fee is based on minimum order amount as opposed to an hourly charge, so it's less stressful and you don't need to keep looking at your watch or hurrying your opponents. You can AP (analysis paralysis) as much as you want. The photo above shows a TCG area so it looks like a tournament setting. The other side of the cafe is like a coffee house. I like the ambience. Comfortable and relaxing. 

I am working on a dice game using 8-sided dice. This is already the third version. The first two didn't work and I had to restart. Only now the core mechanism feels somewhat feasible. There's more work I need to put in to get this to be a viable game. 

I asked younger daughter Chen Rui to play Maori with me. This is a light to medium weight game with a spatial aspect. You claim tiles from the centre of the table to add to your personal board, to form islands. You score points based on the various features of the islands, from palm trees and huts to flower circles and sea shells. 

This 4x4 grid is shared. The position of the boat indicates the row or column from which you can take a tile. On your turn you must advance the boat. If you take the tile right next to the boat, it's free. If you want to take a tile further away (but in the same row or column), you have to pay. 

This is my completed player board at the end of the game. Trees are normally worth just 1pt, but on an island with at least one hut, they are worth 2pts each. My large island at the top gave me 18pts! 

I played Saint Petersburg with elder daughter Shee Yun and Joti. This is a 2004 game, older than my daughter. Saint Petersburg can be described as a distillation of 80% of Eurogames out there. In a gist, make money in the first half, score points in the second half. You build your engine in the early half of the game, and then switch to running your engine at max speed to score as many points as you can before the game ends. Sounds familiar no? Many Eurogames sound like this. 

Shee Yun had two observatories, and put them to good use. She grabbed extra workers early, and that gave her an insurmountable lead. By game end, she scored more than 100pts. Joti and I couldn't beat her even after adding up our scores. A complete bloodbath. Observatories are powerful and we should not have let her buy two of them so early in the game.  

I like the artwork in this first edition of the game. Simple but unique style. The latest version has different artwork. 

This is Carcassonne: The Discovery. This was designed by Leo Colovini, and not by the designer of the original Carcassonne, Klaus-Jurgen Wrede. A few years ago I almost gave this game away, because I hadn't played it for a while. However this was vetoed by my wife Michelle. She's a supporter of Carcassonne (although at the time she too hadn't played this game for a long time). Now this game is out-of-print, and if you ask me now whether I'd give it away, I'd probably say no. I'm glad I hadn't given it away earlier. This is why you should listen to your wife. 

Carcassonne: The Discovery shares the same basic rules as the original Carcassonne. However when you sit down to play, it feels very different. I find it more a gamer's game than a casual game. You can play Carcassonne in a relaxed manner. Carcassonne: The Discovery presents many difficult decisions so you can't run away from some brain exercise. 

One difference from Carcassonne is that the scoring of completed features is not automatic. You don't just take back your meeple (pawn) immediately. You have to spend an action to take it back and score points. On your turn, you must place a tile, and then you may perform an action. Your options are either place a meeple, or recover a meeple. When a feature is completed, your meeple still stays put. You need to spend an action to get it back. 

Scoreboard

There are only three scoring methods in Carcassonne: The Discovery, compared to Carcassonne which has four. However they are more complicated. You score points for having your meeples on mountains, plains or seas. Unlike Carcassonne, there won't be majority competition on the same feature. Everyone who is involved gets to score points. You can't deny other players by placing more of your meeples than them. You can at most try to prevent them from joining their feature to yours. Without the majority competition, the player interaction is still pretty high. There is still incentive to collaborate. You don't lose much in the strategic richness of the game. 

Michelle and I are Carcassonne veterans. Yet we played Carcassonne: The Discovery like we were newbies - slow and ponderous. It was embarrassing. Yes, the rules are different, and we hadn't played this for a long time, but I believe the biggest factor is this is a more challenging game. It felt great rediscovering this game. We did a four player game, with Shee Yun and Joti. At game end, Michelle and I tied for the win. That was amazing, since it was a game with scores above the 100s. 

Box cover. Mine is a German edition. 

I recently received my copy of Horseless Carriage, the latest game from Splotter Games. Their previous game and a huge hit was Food Chain Magnate in 2015. So it has been 8 years. I'm a big fan of Splotter and am now confident to buy their new games without having tried them. After punching out all the game components from their sprues and bagging them, they no longer fit inside the box. There are many bits inside this game! Now the box lid is slightly lifted. 

revisiting Carcassonne

3 Oct 2021. I brought out Carcassonne again. The previous play was Sep 2019. I had thought it was much longer ago than that. Carcassonne by now has reached classic status. Published in 2000, it won both the 2001 Spiel des Jahres and Deutscher Spiele Preis. It is not as popular now compared to its heyday. In the 00's, it was almost like a mandatory game for new gamers. Now it is no longer surprising for newer gamers to have not tried it. Carcassonne has a special place in my heart because it was among a handful of games I played a lot of when I got into the hobby. My copy is the first edition. The current edition has different artwork for both the box cover and the tiles. 

My copy is a German version bought at Witch House in Taipei. I still remember when I first learnt the game, it just felt weird to me. I wasn't wowed into buying a copy immediately. In fact, I didn't think that highly of it. Being unfamiliar with Eurogames, I thought the best games should be like Axis & Allies and Samurai Swords. Thankfully I eventually did buy a copy. When I taught my wife and my friends the game, they all loved it. I too grew to be quite fond of it. 

One phrase we used to say when playing Carcassonne was farmers work lying down. When we placed a meeple as a farmer, we had it lie down to remind us that this meeple could no longer be retrieved until the end of the game. One important element which makes Carcassonne so much fun is how everyone can persuade, bribe and even threaten the active player when they are contemplating how to place their tile. We try to coax fellow players into collaborations. We remind them not to inadvertently help other players. 

This is the current box art, with a bit more depth of field. 

Originally I only intended to play with my wife Michelle. At the time younger daughter Chen Rui was at the table, so I asked whether she wanted to join us. She said yes, and picked black, because she always wears black. My customary colour was green, and Michelle's red. Michelle and I have been playing Carcassonne since before we had kids, and now Chen Rui is already 15. 

My Carcassonne is quite the Frankenstein, containing many expansions. I have the first expansion, which is almost essential. I call this the fat boy expansion because it comes with the big meeple. The official name is Inns & Cathedrals. I also have Abbey & Mayor. In this particular game, I used the tiles but not the various meeples that come with Abbey & Mayor. I have quite a few mini expansions, most of which came with the Spielbox magazine. I don't even remember their names. Since we have many more tiles than the base game, our games go a little longer. 

That huge castle at the centre started since the beginning of the game. If you look closely you can spot the starting tile - the half moon and horizonal straight road tile, just below the cathedral. This castle was not only big, it also had a cathedral, so it scored us about 75 points. Cathedrals are a high risk high reward proposition. If you manage to complete the castle, you score triple instead of double. If you fail, you get nothing. 

boardgaming in photos: All Manor of Evil, Carcassonne, Love Letter, Lost Cities

28 Aug 2019. I taught my colleagues Tyle and Jeixel to play Lost Cities, the classic two-player game from Reiner Knizia. This used to be the spouse game. It's only cards with numbers and colours, and yet the master designer has created something that is highly interactive and presents many difficult decisions. When they started playing, I was a little worried they would end up with negative points. In the end they did alright. It was satisfying to see them work out the tactics and to see the strategies click.

30 Aug 2019. A six player game of All Manor of Evil. The previous time I played, it felt impossible to survive till the second clock card was drawn from the deck. This time, the game ended with the second clock card. So it is not that impossible after all. I guess the first time I played we had more people incentivised to awaken one of the elder gods. This time round, only Ivan was desperate to awaken an elder god. For some others it was nice-to-have but not life-and-death. I needed to survive till the second clock card, and I tried to remove awaken tokens from the elder gods as often as I could.

We created a convention. The action card picked in the previous round, which may not be picked in the current round, is placed face-up in front of the player, so that everyone can clearly see it. Once the action card for the current round is picked, it is placed face-down and sideways overlapping the previous round card. It is easy to glance around the table to see if everyone has picked a card for the current round.

This was still early game - not many awaken tokens on the elder gods. Later on things became much more precarious.

In this particular game I used the #4 action frequently to get more treasures. The #4 action lets you claim the top card from the deck if it is a treasure. The risk is it might not be a good one, e.g. it might come with a high insanity value. I needed to get to the second clock card, so drawing more cards from the deck was good for me. In the second half of the game, I sensed that I probably had more victory points than everyone else, but I knew I was also high in the insanity department. I tried to discard insanity tokens, but unfortunately by game end I still had too many. As the game ended, only Ivan was eliminated due to his character traits. Of the five left, I had the most insanity, so I was next to get eliminated. I counted my victory points, and had I not gone crazy, I would have won. Too bad!

31 Aug 2019. I came across this Agricola phone wallpaper on social media. Unfortunately it didn't fit my phone well. The alignment is a little off.

4 Sep 2019. I taught my colleagues Love Letter. They had a lot of fun, even those watching. We used paper clips as score markers. Love Letter is a microgame with only 16 cards, but it does take some effort to teach, especially when explaining some of the interactions of the card powers. It is a joy to watch new players pick up the intricacies as they play.

9 Sep 2019. It had been four years since I previously played Carcassonne. I used to play a lot of Carcassonne, with my wife Michelle and with my Taiwanese friends. Over the years I have collected many expansions, big and small. What was new to us this time was the Half and Half expansion, from Spielbox magazine. This expansion features half tiles - the triangular tiles. There's one in the middle of this photo. At the start of the game, every player gets two half tiles. On your turn, you may forgo drawing a regular tile and play one of your half tiles instead. In the photo above, that completed castle on the right previously had one of my regular meeples. It had been stuck there for a long time because I couldn't draw the right tile to complete the castle. On the left, Michelle's (red) big meeple was eyeing my incomplete castle. If her incomplete castle and mine joined up, she would win majority and score, and I would get nothing. By playing my half tile I completed the castle on the right and released my meeple. I also locked up Michelle's big meeple because she didn't have the right half tile to play into that triangular space to complete that castle with her big meeple. This was terribly mean of me, locking up her important big meeple for the rest of the game.

I think the Half and Half is just so-so. The half tiles are helpful. You can save them for a crucial moment. However I think a big part of the fun of Carcassonne is hoping to draw something that's useful to you. So I find such a kind of better control unnecessary. So Half and Half is nice if you want to have a bit of variety, but it's just a novelty and is not necessary.

boardgaming in photos: Carcassonne Hunters and Gatherers, San Juan, Captain Sonar

13 Nov 2016. Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers. It had been a while since I last played. I think it was the first time for the children.

In the original Carcassonne, the farmer scoring is a little complex and difficult to teach. In Hunters and Gatherers, this element is simplified. Instead of needing to count the number of forests (the equivalent of castles) your meadow is connected to, you simply count the number of animals you can hunt. There is no confusion with a forest being connected to multiple meadows. Each animal can only be in one meadow. This is not necessarily better, just easier to teach.

A forest with a gold nugget gives the player who completes it a benefit. This incentivises players to help others complete their forests. When you do this, you get to draw a special tile from a separate deck. These are always better-than-average tiles, and some have special powers. This is something not found in basic Carcassonne. The fishing huts are also a new element. They are scored at game end. You earn points based on the number of fishes in the whole interconnected river network.

In our game we had one humongous meadow right at the centre. Everyone fought over it. In this photo Shee Yun (yellow) was leading.

This was the end of the game. Our central meadow had become even more impressive. Slightly to the left of the centre, you can see the forest fire tile. This tile neutralises all tigers in the meadow. Normally each tiger neutralises a deer. With a forest fire tile, all deers are saved from tigers. Just don't ask me why deers don't fear fires. Near the left edge of the map, you can see a tile with a stonehenge-like structure. That's a shrine. Whoever controls the shrine controls the meadow it is in. Shee Yun was the one who drew the shrine tile, placed a meeple to claim it, and then merged that meadow to the main central meadow. So all our manoeuvring and fighting over the central meadow had been in vain. Shee Yun defeated all of us in one fell swoop.

The score track.

25 Nov 2016. Jason, Allen and I played this 2nd edition of San Juan, the Puerto Rico card game. The 2nd edition has some new cards, and some old cards are modified. It was still fun after all these years. I enjoyed the new cards. I am a big fan of Race for the Galaxy, which is inspired by Puerto Rico and shares many mechanisms with San Juan. However I've never felt San Juan unnecessary. I own both, just that my San Juan is the first edition.. San Juan is more brisk, but still quite strategic. Race for the Galaxy is richer, more complex, but it can be intimidating.

13 Jan 2017. I brought Captain Sonar to Boardgamecafe.net, so this time I played with gamers instead of non-gamers. We did two games. I sat out the first one since we had exactly 8 other players. It was interesting to watch them play. I felt nervous for them. Sim (left) and Jeff (right) were the radio operators. Both made mistakes when tracking the enemy submarine's path, so I knew it would take a while for them to locate each other. Eventually it was Jeff who managed to narrow down the right position first. He knew he made some missteps, so he used the path he traced as just a rough estimation. His team used the drone and sonar to help him better determine the enemy position. Eventually his team won.

Jason was the only other player who had played Captain Sonar, but prior to this he played the turn-based version, which I have never tried (and have little interest in trying). He said that with no time limit, they considered and planned many things in detail. Before the captain decided where to move, they made sure the resulting route could fit into as many positions on the board as possible, so that the enemy radio operator could not easily narrow down the possibilities. In a real-time game, there is no such luxury. Having heard Jason's description, I am even more convinced that I should not do the turn-based version.

It turned out that gamers enjoy the game very much too. Success!

In this photo you can compare how close the radio operators' trackings are to the actual paths made by the captains. Captains' paths at top right and top right, and radio operators' trackings at bottom left and bottom right. Naturally you need to compare top left to bottom right, and top right to bottom left, because the radio operators are tracking the path of the enemy submarine.

I participated in the second game. This time I played radio operator, a role I hadn't tried before. I concentrated hard on the enemy captain, almost to the point of ignoring the rest of my team, but I still managed to make some mistakes. It was not easy! I did manage to do a decent enough job, and so did my counterpart on the other team, who had by then experienced one game and understood how things worked. Both of us managed to work out where each other were. In our first encounter we both scored hits. Due to path constraints we headed off in different directions. The enemy submarine took the opportunity to surface and repair all breakdowns. My team didn't. We had self-inflicted one point of damage due to poor management of the auto-recovery circuits. That minor explosion had allowed us to clear our board of all breakdowns. Don't ask me how we shot ourselves. I had to pay attention to the enemy captain and had no time for chit chat. Both our submarine and the opponent submarine circled around, and were poised for our second encounter. We both had good ideas where the other vessel was. We were both ready to strike once we got in range. Then the enemy used Silence. For a short moment, I couldn't be sure where they were. They could be headed towards us, or headed away from us, and I didn't know how far they had moved. It turned out that they had taken a bold move, speeding right into our range of fire. They shot first, and sank us before we could fire. When both sides know where the other is, speed becomes critical.

I have played four games, and I have lost all of them. I am either jinxed or a lousy player. Now there is only one role I have not tried - the first mate. My fellow gamers commented that one of the responsibilities of the first mate was to be the bridge between captain and engineer. He does sit between them. I have never thought of it that way. I feel this is not quite right though. I think it is better that the captain communicates directly with the engineer, or the engineer proactively warns the captain. I guess the first mate can pay attention to what the captain is doing and what the engineer is doing, and point out any risks, but him being an office boy would probably be inefficient.