Does anyone actually play this game for fun?

[Jellby]

No professional tennis player is going to accuse another player of unfair play if they use an underhand serve.

Maybe not "unfair play" but apparently some have accused the other player of having "zero respect".

[YoPeroMejor]

So tell me, would you play chess without capturing pieces or check mate?

[GentlemanRocketeer]

This thread gave me a headache. Imagine playing a competitive game in a competitive manner.

Most of what needs to be said has already been said, but I would add this: I have the most fun playing Carcassonne in a two-player setting, where strategy and counterplay are much more effective. I enjoy winning and gaining an edge over my opponent. If I get blocked off, it's my fault for allowing it to happen, and I try to learn from it in future.

If I were just playing a peaceful game of Carcassonne where the objective is just to build nice looking roads and cities, and the winner is always determined by who happened to draw the best tiles, I would be having significantly less fun. But this doesn't have to be the case for everyone. It's horses for courses and there's no need to be so prescriptive about the definition of 'playing the game for fun'.

[Romain672]

The game is enough rich to not be on luck, even if you remove the counterplay part.
Knowing where to play our tile, when to play meeple on field, which card to keep in hand, to open more the castle or not and so on is already enough to have lots of skill involved.

[ANDN]

You must know I changed my mind. I read all your arguments, I appreciate it as valid. You are right of course.
Meanwhile, loving Carcassone so much, I could not just quit ...
I was at the crossroad: either quit playing because I couldn't get used to this annoying "blocking" thing, either accept it. I did. Completely.
And, yes, is more provoking and significantly increase your strategical thinking to play in such a way to prevent being blocked ...
Either way Carcassone is, by far, my favorite game!
Thank you and good luck!

The very concept of continuous landscape is what enabled blocking to exist in the first place. You act as though blocking is some sort of special technique. It's not. Blcoking is nothing more than one potential result of normal moves. Any time there is a square space between pieces, such as when they placed a meeple as a knight on page 4 of https://images.zmangames.com/filer_publ ... _rules.pdf , that act of placing the piece that led to making that blank square is a form of blocking. The field on the left of the newly placed piece serves to limit the opponent's options to expand the city, as they must have a field on the right. This is blocking. In fact, in some games players may frequently just end up blocking by accident as their pieces naturally end up disrupting other options. Some blocking may be more likely to slow or lock down a slot than others, such as if the pieces are less likely to have an available road slot than city slot, etc. but the concept is no different.
Carcassonne is an interactive game, whether you use blocks, or even taking your opponent's resources entirely, such as stealing their city, a tactic demonstrated on page 6.

I respectfully suggest that you may have misunderstood the rules of the game in your physical copy.

Other people have already pointed out other flaws in your reasoning that this is somehow a rule against blocking. I'll come at it from a different angle. The actual rule is about what you are able to do on your turn, and you are trying to turn it into something about what other player will be able to do on their turns. In order to preclude blocking, the rule would have to say something like "you must place tiles in such a way that it continues the existing landscape and in such a way that another player will be able to continue the landscape in every open direction from the tile you just placed."

It does not say that. Full stop. You are just tacking on the part after "and" as if it necessarily follows from the part before the "and". Such a rule would be silly because it would require encyclopedic knowledge of all tiles that are still available and it would occasionally preclude placements that complete a structure. Even if you tack on "unless it completes a structure" at the end, the first problem would still be present.

I'll also note that if your interpretation of the rules were correct, the publisher of Carcassonne would have required it to be implemented on BGA through the framework and there wouldn't be an option to make a so-called blocking move.

Sorry you’re getting some pushback against what you said. I think what you are saying is really interesting.
Whether it’s “officially correct” or not doesn’t matter.
What matters is that, as the OP said, for some of us board games, and especially board games like Carcassonne, are about more than just winning at any cost. Games don’t need to be labelled as cooperative games for some of us to engage with them as a creative and/or communal activity.

And how many of those players played in a carcassonne national team, the world cup, the carcassonne champions league, or were in the top-100 of any arena?

What about soccer? If an attacker launches a shot with the idea to make a fabulous goal, what do you say to the defender who blocks the shot? Bad sportsmanship? It's exactly the same for Carcassonne, but in Carcassonne you are BOTH the attacker (scoring), the defender (blocking) and you play with multiple balls (meeples). The goal of the game is not to make new friends, but to win the game (Although I made a lot of new friends within the community of high-level carcassonne players!). As mentioned by others: If you want to lay tiles piecefully with a friend, try a jigsaw puzzle.

Probably none. The style of play in competitive leagues is considered shameful by the anti-blocking faction and if they were to try to enter the national competitive sphere they'd be in for a rude awakening.

But all these soccer analogies are missing the point that soccer has a defined position of a goalkeeper who is supposed to do this. The anti-blocking faction would tell you the proper analogy is if one basketball team brought in a 6th person who just stood by the net blocking shots. Of course, the rules of basketball prohibit this, so there would need to be a rule change to allow it. But guess what game doesn't need to add rules to allow blocking?

[Meeplelowda]

You must know I changed my mind. I read all your arguments, I appreciate it as valid. You are right of course.

In this era in which people take a position and just refuse to move from it no matter what, we should applaud and respect it when someone considers of other points of view and reevaluates their position.

[Slartibartfst]

You must know I changed my mind. I read all your arguments, I appreciate it as valid. You are right of course.

In this era in which people take a position and just refuse to move from it no matter what, we should applaud and respect it when someone considers of other points of view and reevaluates their position.

i gotta agree, a Unicorn pretty much just galloped through the forum.

[boarmount9i]

I think blocking is just part of the game. The thing is, if you try to avoid blocking others, people will still do it anyway. One time, I tried to avoid blocking, then got the chance to finish a big city with a cathedral, when I was about to complete it near the end of the game, I got blocked.

The bigger issue for me is, when I played 1 vs 1 with someone who has much higher ELO, some just can't accept if they are losing and then said something rude or left the game when it's about to finish.