I was recently introduced to the tile game Carcassonne at work; we’ve now started playing over lunch once a week or so. If you aren’t familiar with Carcassonne, you might want to peek at the site for the French city by the same name that served to inspire the medieval city-building theme. Then immediately visit Board Game Geek to read up on this wonderful little game.

Generally we play the Inns and Cathedrals expansion but last week we played with the Traders and Builders expansion for the first time. Its ok, but I believe I enjoy the game without that new expansion as the complexity of the rules; I was first drawn to Carcassonne because its simple to learn but complex to play but this new expansion introduces a few complex and bizarre rules that appear to be out of place. But the new tiles with Traders and Builders are really excellent.

We are going to play again today over lunch. Should be a lot of fun.

[cross fade, time passes, its now much later the same day that I started this post]

Eileen and I just got home from tonight’s Canucks hockey game; 5 – 2 win against Colorado and a very respectable showing. The team worked hard for the full 60 minutes – sort of a new thing for them. Tomorrow they travel to Edmonton for another game. If they keep it together for another good game this might just be a turning point for the team. Not a moment too soon.

Anways, yes we played Carcassonne today at lunch. I won by about 20 points or so: a very respectable win considering the competition. We played with the Traders and Builders expansion again (as well as Inns and Cathedrals) except we played with modified rules: three resource chips can be used to take another turn rather than simply being accumulated as points at the end of the game. This is sort of the same as the builder meeple, except you turn in your chips for a one-time opportunity. The pig was used to negate the effect of other player’s farmers unless they also played their pig in the same zone. The resource chip modifiication was really good; the pig modification didn’t really work for me. The person who proposed this new method of using the pig really hates “farm warfare” so he tried to invent a cheap and easy way to defeat it. I don’t think its wrong to have players pouring meeples into farm warfare, its just a different strategy.

Another game I can recommend is called Ticket to Ride. Check it out on Board Game Geek. I prefer the European version vs. the North American version but both are really good.