Among the things the kids and I got up to over the course of last weekend while I was staying at their place was a fun-filled game of Carcassonne. Now, this is one of those games where there are two stages of scoring. Someone who’s far and away in the lead during the main part of the game can get screwed when it comes time to add up partials, farms and trade goods. Case in point:
Alex was blue, Erica was red and I was yellow. He had the trade goods advantage (yes, those are his barrels and textiles at the bottom of the picture) but only one little chunk of farmland. Erica had equal share of The Unfinishable City with me, but I managed to connect both of my farmers, thus cutting her out of that scoring opportunity entirely. (Alex helped, mind you. He didn’t realize until later what a bad idea that was. Heh.)The Unfinishable City? Oh yes, indeed. Let me show you:
This is what happens when the
time-honored tradition we call “horning in” is taken to its (il)logical extreme. I started a city, then put my builder on it. Erica positioned herself to horn in on it, and added
her builder. Once she succeeded at that, I horned in again to take control of the city, which was followed by her doing the same yet again. She actually tried to get a third
meeple into the fray, but it sat on what became the two-point micro-city, because of the straight-through city piece (with the shield) I played above it.Eventually the whole thing became a place to sink city pieces that couldn’t really go anywhere else usefully. By the time the place looked like what you see here, we had only about sixteen tiles left in the bag. No, that thing wasn’t going to be finished, even had I
wanted it to be finished.
Ah, I love Carcassonne
