Analyzing Carcassonne

Introduction

So this week I will be analyzing the infamous board game Carcassonne or as a senior student named is “Knarkassonne”(roughly translated to drugassonne). I will go through the core system, the system I enjoyed the most, enjoyed least and the most interesting. After this I will try to write about who the board game appeals to the most and a small summary of what I thought of the board game.

Carcassonne

Carcassonne (named after the medieval French city of the same name) is designed by a board game developer named Klaus Jürgen Wrede. The board game includes tiles of different environment that connect as a dynamic puzzle in which you place your followers named Meeples on the environments on the tiles.
There is also a scoreboard in which everyone has a meeple on that goes through a “score road” each time you score.

My group played Carcassonne with the river expansion already included in the box. Each game creates a beautiful map of cloisters, roads, stations, medieval cities, rivers and fields. each tile has either a combination of these environments or just one of them. The game is set up as 8 meeples for each players but one of these eight on the score road board. You then place the river tiles in one pile and the rest(without the starting tile of the original game) in another. The starting player puts the first tile on the table and the rest follow clockwise. All tiles must be connected so:

the rivers connect(they cannot make a u-turn though), a city against a city, roads against roads and fields against fields. You can see an example of a “perfect” connected map (courtesy of http://norvig.com/carcassonne.html).

so a turn involves taking a random(unless it is the first tile and the last river tile) tile and placing is somewhere it fits but after this a player has the option to place their a meeple on an environment of the tile they just placed. Depending on which environment they place is upon they gather up score. The game follows this formula until all tiles are expended.

The goal is to create followers to be knights(meeple on a city), farmers(meeple on a field), bandit(meeple on a road) and priests(meeple on a cloister). The player will gather score at the end of the game but can also get back their meeple if they finish the requirements for each environment. Cloisters have to be surrounded with other tiles, cities have to be finished, roads have to have a station on each end(a city, rest station, cloister or a crossroad) but farms are counted at the very end of the game and need to have cities adjacent to the field. The farmers are connected through fields across the finished board and can be bordered off by placing roads and cities to block them off other fields.

There are also other hurdles like meeples cannot occupy another claimed environment unless they place a tile not connected to the claimed area but then connect it, making the players share its points but if one player has more meeples the other meeples lose the claim and the one with the most meeples gain all the points, rendering the losers meeples useless.

The game demands clever decisions on where you place your meeples and tiles depending on what kind of strategy you are using. On to the systems!

The Good

The dynamic puzzle tiles are in my opinion the greatest achievement this game conquered. You have a massive map of cities, roads, intersections, cloisters and fields, painting a beautiful picture when each game is done.

The 72 tiles fit everywhere and always create a new map on each play through creating both depth in the sense of new opportunities and each strategy a player uses can be countered. The way this system is designed can not only leave room for more dynamics as the massive amount of expansions have showed but the game is immortal. You can easily replace the medieval France theme with a futuristic Dubai, space colonies or any theme you enjoy.
I do have to explain that me saying puzzle does not mean it anything near a puzzle as puzzles are not enjoyed with points, meeples and the strategies Carcassonne offers. This is a game and the system I enjoyed the most are the tiles.

The Bad

The randomness and the system of players. I know we are only allowed one here but I need to make sure I say my five cents here. The random tile given to each player creates missed opportunities and makes sure the player with the most luck wins. With no dice like backgammon it does offer the same amount of help to players like giving the last piece to finish their road/city, extending their road, field or giving the option to contesting an environment. It is way worse to allow more than three players playing cause not only do you lose more turns some players get the advantage shown in this picture.

I feel it creates rift between the players that the dynamic we saw in the game do not balance out later on. While you can potentially play this game in three various ways the turns might make sure you wont get the tile you need. So if you want to counter the system make sure you read upon the tactics of professional players in order to evolve as a player.

The Interesting

There is a rule that allows each player to use something the rule book named diplomacy. This potentially allow each player to give their input to not only disrupts the current players thoughts during their turn, making sure that they wont look in their directions but you can potentially talk your way to win. It has some issues if you are less than four players playing but with a group bigger than three it can be very confusing and for new players this is what they need to watch out for. It demands charm and the inability of other players to succeed but it has so much potential to be used as an offensive force to win.

Who Would Play This

Carcassonne is competitive game with various systems to use as a weapon during the play through so it would bring a side of you that is deceitful, strategic and makes you think in future turns rather than quick reactions. The box recommends players over eight years old with(my gestimation) friends you enjoy intellectually to play with. Elements of both chess and backgammon are used here so I would recommend people that like to create, compete and socially interact with other players.

Core Mechanics

This is a tough one in my opinion. On one hand you can argue that the goal of the game is to gather points and therefore the meeples and the choices of putting them on environments are the core. On the other hand you can argue that the tiles creates opportunity and allows new tactics to evolve making sure be as opportunistic as you can be each time it is your turn. I follow the latter.

The core mechanics of the game in my opinion is the tiles and the dynamic it offers. They are designed very thoughtfully designed to allow a dynamic map each play through, they destroy long term planning as each tactic can be countered and they offer all systems more incentive to be used. It is only destroyed by the fact that the randomness of each tile given.

It can be argued that the random giving of tiles creates a fog of war and during our play-throughs we did create as many stacks of tiles for players to pick from, making the game a bit more interesting.

Summary

Carcassonne challenges your picture memory, social stamina and the ability to read other tactics before they read yours. You have to be vigilant and opportunistic while allowing your plan to be more fluid. While some ways of playing Carcassonne varies depending on who you play with, how much experience they have and how many there are it does have it charm with beautiful art, challenging strategies and the ever so addicting way of gathering points.

The core mechanics help the systems like diplomacy, meeples and the randomness to flourish and with mini-expansions, expansions, spin-offs the re-playability is enormous. Klaus Jürgen Wrede has created a game with little complexity meaning beginners can stand toe to toe with experts.

The limited meeples creates demands caution and the rules of the game are easily understood making this game a new favorite of mine. I would argue that some rules like the meeple booty sharing is a bit off, making someone invest a farmer which can never be returned to the player will lose all of their points just because someone was lucky enough to add more farmers on that field is a bit unjust. I read another review that they proposed a evenly shared booty depending on how many meeples are on that specific field(same with a city/road). It would solve one problem but as I have not played a round with that rule I cannot endorse it but I would not rule it out.

For a game that takes less than an hour to play the play-throughs are unique, enjoyable and will always create a story enough to make sure the game stays on the recently played pile of boardgames.

I give it an eight out of ten(even though it is only an analysis) because of its re-playability and ingenious design.

make sure you look into next week for another analysis.

Analyzing Pandemic

Board Game Analysis

Introduction

So we are currently on a course named advanced game design and our current assignment is to analyze any board game. I guess this is to make sure we don’t repeat old mistakes by grinding core systems until we see patterns designers use.

Pandemic

So the first one we chose was Pandemic. Pandemic makes the players take a role in the institution of CDC or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fighting different diseases all over the world while finding cures for all four diseases in order to win.

Different to the majority of board game, Pandemic makes every player take a unique role and cooperate in order to beat the game before it kills you.

The core components of the game are five pawns(players), a player card deck, epidemic cards, infection cards, 96 disease cubes, 6 research stations, 4 cure markers, an outbreak marker, an infection marker, five role cards and the world map you play on.

There are five roles each player randomly gets at the start. Scientist which requires less player cards to research a cure, a medic which treat diseases at a quicker rate, the dispatcher who can use the four actions given to each player to either move his own pawn or others just the same. There are as well a researcher that can give its cards to any player in any city rather than using the ability everybody has which has the restriction that both pawns needs to be in the same city the player card applies to. The last role is the operation expert which has it easier to build a research station anywhere.

The game start with placing epidemic cards evenly in the player stack, placing nine cities with different amount of disease cubes and starting all pawns in Atlanta with a research station.
Each player then takes off to either manage the diseases, finding a cure or using logistics to make sure the rest of the pawns do not lose actions taking longer routes moving around the world map. Each part of the world has different diseases which are colorized as four different disease cubes.

Each player has four actions which are to move the pawn, research a cure, build a research station or trade cards. Each turn ends with the player taking two player cards and being the infector which involves taking infection cards to further infect the world, making sure the players have to catch up to the disease each turn.

The epidemic cards will eventually be picked in the player deck and will further infect a town with three disease cubes. If the cubes exceed three cubes of the same color an outbreak occurs and every connected city receives a cube of that color and if a connected city has already three cubes a chain reaction will start. When an individual player finally has five (or four if you are the scientist) she can research a cure which makes it both easier to treat the disease and now have the ability to obliterate the disease from the planet; by taking the rest of the cubes off the map.

When all the diseases are cured before a specific colorized disease cube is gone, the player deck is emptied or more than eight outbreaks occurs the infector is defeated and the game is won. If any of the latter events happen the game is lost.

The good

I like to see systems as code because in the end they are only a set of rules correlating with other system and the designer just tries to shut down the bugs created by the exchange. A good system is already designed to correlate and fits perfectly with another system in place. The system I personally think has this connection between other is the disease cubes. They are designed to be placed at the start of the game to show where the players should focus and sets the tone of the game. You have places to go and diseases to cure depending on where these cubes land. With all these abilities they also trigger outbreaks which potentially can be the end of that game session.

You are only allowed to have nine outbreaks which occur when more than three of the same cubes are in a city and if a specific color cube is depleted, the players’ have lost. So the disease cubes sets the tone of the game and decided which cities and color the players should focus on and which cure would be more suited to research first.

The bad

I cannot say if I dislike a system as the game is knit between the systems of player cards, disease cubes, cure markers and what the players’ actions, the system I like the least is the player cards. They are able to be traded if both players are in the city the player card shows unless you are a researcher and allows the player to discard it in order to travel to that city. The problem with the latter ability is that you usually want to go to that city to help clear it or use the color of the city to provide a cure.

Curing a disease if you travel with the player card eliminates your chances so they are a bit redundant personally as they could have play tested a version where you can travel with that card as a role specific ability and the card does not disappear.

The interesting

The most well thought system I can think of is the pawns and all the including roles the players can choose from. The roles in a balancing perspective are very balanced but some discrepancies are present.

The dispatcher is a complex role as you tend to think in a wider possibility range as he can control all players during his turn. It creates a problem of focus if the player is not a management genius. Another role that we mistakenly thought was irreplaceable is the researcher. The ability to give a player card to another pawn if they are in the same city is not cutting enough corners to be useful. The rest of the roles are very useful as co-operation shows, the medic does his own tango by moving from one city to another treating its citizens. The scientist only needs to stay on an area where a research station is to develop the cures, the operation expert is able to build a research station anywhere they stand to make sure there is one close enough to minimalize the number of actions the researcher of the cure need to make.

The combination of all the roles fits perfectly for an effective team to treat each disease and cure the world but as you start the game, all roles are given randomly and this is where the tactics of each game change. Depending on the role you have lost you will have to think of the disability given each play through.

The interesting part is that what if there are only three or even two players. The fewer roles you have the dynamics of the game changes and subsequently change the difficulty. The system challenges players and make sure each corner you look from requires a different way of thinking and where you stand is decided randomly.

Who would play this?

The co-operative nature of the game insists on communication between the players to kill a randomly generated enemy. I believe it is a great way to socialize and use your management skills. Anyone who enjoys puzzles and non-competitive games will enjoy this one.

Pandemics core mechanics

#1 Action points system

Turns in pandemic are given in four different or similar actions the player can make. These action points are used to travel to another city from the sea, sky or plain adjacent cities from where you stand. Then there are special actions which are building a research station, treat diseases in the city the players are in, discover one of four different cures or trading player cards with other team members.

The critical decisions made each turn will change the game space each turn. When each turn is done the viruses spreads randomly throughout the world by two infection cards each turn. Creating more panic and effectively making sure each player maximize their existing action points.

#2 Hand Management and collecting cures

Much of the tactics spoken before or after a turn is about the current player cards displayed on each hand. The decisions of using up a player card to travel, using it for one action, trading it with another player or even to save it will either ensure a win or a failure. Managing these cards is critical as you only receive two new player cards each turn you play.

The key to success when using this mechanic in Pandemic is to use the share knowledge action. Communicating with your fellow scientists about what cards everyone has and who is discovering what cure is paramount for success. The share knowledge action involved both players to be in the same city to trade that player card unless you are a researcher which able you to hand any card to them as long as both are at the same place. Be wary though because each trade costs precious action points.

Summary

This board game has systems challenging you randomly and making sure you think of everything before making an action.

Pandemic creates an atmosphere of communication and co-operation which in turn has some downsides.

Some players might think they have the better tactics and would try to control the situation, even other players which decreases the amount of fun you would have contributing evenly. Another problem that could be people not communicating and dismissing other tactics said by other players. There are some times ideas that will work just as the turn changes because of the infector so never dismiss an idea but delay the thought. Avoiding these behaviors will maximize the games’ fun meter.