Carcassonne: Fix for the last-player disadvantage.

[dhnyny]

Carcassonne has 72 tiles. In theory, this means that with two players each gets 36 tiles, with three players each gets 24 tiles, and with 4 players each gets 18 tiles. The problem is that the 72 tiles includes the starting tile, which gets played automatically before the game begins. In practice, what this means is that whichever player is unlucky enough to go last gets one fewer turn than all the others, a fundamental disadvantage. This could be remedied by automatically dealing the starting tile to the player who goes first, allowing that player to place a meeple/partisan and effectively giving all players the same number of turns.

[demiurgsage]

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10857
read this topic, they don't want to do it (at least until there will be official variant of the rules that fix this disadvantage).

[dhnyny]

Thanks for pointing me to this. It makes sense as a basic policy, but I don't really see why it shouldn't be offered as an optional variation. The variation that gives each player a hand of three tiles is available as an option, though it's clearly not part of the original game, so what would the harm be in offering the option of a correction to the 72-tile flaw in the original game? I'll try to contact the makers of Carcassonne itself but I doubt they're going to want to fix it.

[dhnyny]

I contacted the company that manufactures and sells Carcassonne. Here's the reply:

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for contacting Z-Man.

I understand your plight, and the solution you present is certainly a valid way to address the point you raised. Hans im Gluck is the rights holder to Carcassonne, so they would need to be the ones to endorse this change. I’ll forward your request on to them and let them decide how they would like to proceed.

Thanks again for your interest in Carcassonne!

Steven Kimball
Head of Studio
612-405-6814
SKimball@AsmodeeNA.com
Z-MAN games