Corey Young

The standard rules state that you should make 2-card draw piles with the bottom card facing down and the top card facing up. You’ll have 3 times more piles than players. E.g. In a 3 player game, you’ll make 9 piles of 2 cards each.

I enjoy mixing up the public and private information a bit. In a 3-player game, I’ll deal out the following piles for the draft. Ds are face down cards and Us are face up cards.

DD DD DD
DU DU DU
UU UU UU

If you choose the UU piles, you know more about what you’re getting, but then so does everyone else.

Want more of a good thing? Try adding 8 black (Cities) cards to each level (instead of the 4 recommended) when playing with 4 players. Each round, you’ll deal 9 cards and play 8.

Yes, you could conceivably add 3 black cards when playing with 3 players, but that’s just crazy talk. I mean who’d actually want to play with 10 cards each age and…

Hrmmm… I’ll be back in a few hours. Until then, try the 9-card version.

Gold becomes crucial when playing with Cities. When the cards require you to pay the bank, you’ll have to take debt tokens if you don’t have enough gold. You can’t pay debt off, so you’ll just be stuck with it. If you think about it, debt costs 3-to-1 when scoring, so it really hurts.

You have an extra card each age, so think about cashing one in, if you have no real purpose for it.

The new Cities expansion plays very well with the Leaders expansion, but it also plays quite nicely without it. It’ll speed up play and reduce the number of cards and features you need to plan around.

As recommended in the Cities rulebook, you might want to try it that way the first few times you play.

I’m still waiting for an iPad/iPhone version of 7 Wonders, but this will hold me over for a while. The 7 Wonders Companion app provides several interesting functions:

1) Scorekeeper
The app helps calculate and record scores at the end of a game. There are other apps that do this equally well, but this app’s interface is more visually appealing. It also keeps ongoing victory statistics.

2) Reference
During the game, the app provides easy access to the upgrade trees and a calculator for scoring science. I don’t know anyone who would use the latter during the game, but some might find it handy.

3) Starting Wonder Randomizer
This is one of my favorite features. Before a game begins, you can tell the app how many players are playing, and which expansions you’re using. The app then randomizes the available wonders, and shows a visual map showing who gets which. Rome, Catan and Manneken Pis are included as available wonders.

4) A New Wonder – Cupertino!
This is an odd, but fun feature. You can use your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad as a new wonder board. The new wonder is Cupertino, a.k.a. the proposed ring-shaped HQ for Apple. The artwork on this wonder is beautiful, and matches the feel of the rest of the game. The starting resource for this wonder is money, similar to Mannekin Pis, but the amount of money changes each time you play, based on Apple’s impact on the high tech market. Similarly, its wonder levels provides gold and causes other players to lose gold (similar to Catan’s Robber feature), also based on the market.

The app is available in the app store at
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/7-wonders-companion/id504797218?mt=8
for $1.99

I hate to even mention it, but I felt it necessary to pull a few of the cards from circulation because they were borderline inappropriate. I’m in no way a prude, but I often play SW with my tweenaged nephews, whose parents would not be impressed with a few of the sexier cards. Not a huge deal, but I’d hate for one small image to cause my in-laws to prohibit their kids from playing.

Everyone should understand the special rules for when you use up most of the dice in the cup. Your turn does not end just because you ran out of dice. This is important during the final round, after someone has gone over 13. It means that even a brainless (he he) player could catch up and win!

I’m not a game collector, but I do collect Carcassonne expansions. I made it a mission to collect them all. I’ve even played the entire game, with every published expansion, including the Plague, both Rivers, and Crop Circles.

And it was kinda fun. Kinda. Mostly. Takes about 4 hours with 5 players. My friends were all glad they’d played, but mostly just to be able to say that they’ve played with the whole shebang.

So I’ve come to think of my expansions as spices. Sure, you can throw cinnamon, ginger, clove and mustard in the same soup, and someone might like that, but a lot of people will push back. Some people like a lot of spice, but most like just a bit. And certain spices just don’t work together. A clear example of this is the Plague expansion. It’s the concentrated garlic of the Carcassonne spice rack. You can play it with other expansions, but the Plague overpowers everything.

So spice up your Carcassonne game, but do so with moderation.

Oh, and in my spice analogy, Catapult is arsenic.

This is an obvious tip for any game, but doubly so with this edition of Wiz-War. The 20-page rule book doesn’t really get started until page 6.

Do not try sitting down and going through the rules together for the first play. It’ll take 30 minutes.

To quote Inigo Montoya,
“Let me ‘splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”

Wiz-War comes with A LOT of components. Save yourself 10 minutes of setup time by getting some small zip-lock bags. I use a total of 12, including 2 for the decks and one for each of the wizards and its corresponding parts. “You’re blue? Here is all the blue stuff”

During play, I use a nice component tray. The one I found at a craft store looks like a wide cash register drawer, with 7 bins, each of which having a curved lip at one end to simplify pulling bits.

Frag is about scoring frags. Being fragged yourself isn’t that bad, in game terms. You get to choose your starting stats, dividing points among Speed, Health and Accuracy. As a long-term strategy, I recommend a balanced distribution, but when you’re just learning the game, try going heavy into Speed or Accuracy.

Speed will allow you to get more power ups, run away from threats and close to short range quickly.

Accuracy will allow you to pick your targets off from a safe distance.

It happens. You drop a farmer too early and the rest of the players make a sub-game out of boxing him in. There he sits, hemmed in on all sides by walls, roads and the river.

Well sometimes we play a simple variation in which you can pick up, and SCORE a farmer if his farm is complete – meaning that there is no way for the farm to expand. This is easy to determine during play. Note, this does not mean that all the cities around the farmer must be complete. The farm is scored normally and the farmer is returned to the player’s supply. Incomplete cities are not scored, and when they are completed later in the game, no more points are rewarded.

As far as I know, there are four official 7 Wonders expansions available.

The obvious one is Leaders. You can find it listed here on BoardGaming.com

There are also two additional Wonders – Catan Island and Manneken Pis. I had to google around a bit to find copies of these for sale. I’d point you to specific site, but I can’t vouch for any of them. You can print copies of these wonders for no cost by visiting the publisher’s site. They make PDFs of both available for no cost. I used these until my “real” copies arrived.

The first, Catan Island, is a tribute to the grand-daddy of boardgames, Settlers of Catan. Instead of a resource, this wonder allows its player to convert 2 of any resource into any single resource. The middle of side A provides 7 gold, while forcing all other players to pay the bank 2 gold. This is an homage to the Robber in Catan. The B side provides an additional Leader, so you’ll want to be sure to have the Leader expansion to take advantage of it.

The second Wonder expansion is Mannekin Pis, a relatively well-known statue in Brussels Belgium. Instead of a resource, the player starts the game with an additional 4 gold. (Meh.) The A side of the wonder copies the wonder levels of your neighbors. The first level copies the first level of the player to your left, the second to the right, and the third lets you choose which 3rd level you’d like to copy. The B side has a single level, but it takes one of every kind of resource to build. It provides gold, victory points and military might. And a beer.

The last expansion is a single Leader card that you can only get in a back issue of Spielbox magazine. The leader is Stevie Wonder. Yes, THAT Stevie Wonder. He allows you to build one level of your wonder by paying gold instead of resources.

[Edit] Replaced the word “g–father” with “grand-daddy” in the text above. Interestingly, the first 3 letters were replaced with and asterisk after I posted it.

The Plato leader card is more powerful when you use Babylon (B). Plato provides 7 extra points at the end if you can collect one of each type of card. Using a balanced approach to collecting cards, you should be able to collect 2 full sets by game end, which is worth 14 (!?!) points. This isn’t that hard to accomplish.

Try to complete the second level of Babylon before the end of Age I. This lets you play both of your last cards. Properly done, you’ll end up fielding 21 cards, instead of 18 like everyone else.

Collect two different science cards, then finish the 3rd level of Babylon. A full set! That was easy. 10 more points.

Don’t play Plato until the start of Age III. No point letting everyone know what you’re doing too early, right?

In case you’re thinking that you could make 3 full sets with 21 cards, remember that you’ll have to use at least 2 cards to build your wonder. Hmmm. You could use Stevie Wonder to build your first level in Age I. Then use Solomon at the start of Age II to gain another card. Then not build the 3rd level. Theoretically possible.

Wow. I need to step back from the game, huh?

More practically, if you were to catch Justinian AND Plato, they work well together in this strategy.

Okay, the fact that there are at least 4 possible starting (core) sets for Carcassonne make the subject line obvious. Stick with me here.

If you’re just starting out with Carcassonne, you’ll need a core set. You have several options:

Standard Carcassonne
Travel Carcassonne
Carcassonne: Wheel of Fortune
Carcassonne: 10th Anniversary Edition

The first two have the exact same 72 tiles. It’s important to note that the tiles in the travel set are smaller than the tiles in any other Carcassonne game, so it will not work with any of the expansions. That being said, the tile sets are identical in terms of play. These tiles are also standard in the iPod version and the Xbox version. Once you’ve played enough, you’ll have them memorized.

I knew that the Wheel of Fortune version added a new board and stamped a special wheel symbol on some tiles, but I only recently noticed that the features (cities, roads and cloisters) differed slightly from the standard set. For example, there are tiles with 1/4 city at the top, with a road entering from the left that dead ends into the city. That tile doesn’t exist in the standard set.

The same kind of differences can be found in the 10th Anniversary set. They add the celebration feature to 10 tiles, but again, some of the tiles are just different.

I don’t know what is inside the various Big Box bundles, but I suspect they’re repackaged standard sets.

So what? For the most part, I don’t really care. It would make a difference in tournament play, but I don’t participate in that.

My current huge bag o’ tiles has 3 starter sets in it (standard, Wheel and 10th). I was thinking it would be a good idea to take out 2/3 of those tiles so that I was playing with only a single core set. That’s hard enough to do because most of my tiles predate the marked sets, when Rio Grande started putting symbols on each tile to indicate which expansion it belonged to. Now I see that there isn’t really a standard “standard” set.

Meh. I’ll just leave them all in. Not like I could ever actually keep count with all the other tiles.

If I ever get tired of playing, I could tile an apartment with the full collection.

This is a game variation using the mini-meeple that come with the travel version. I inherited an incomplete travel version, so I decided to put the adorable mini-meeple to good use with my regular game. The mini-meeple are about 75% the size of conventional meeple. I had to paint one gray, since there are no expansions for the travel version.

Steward
Each player is given one Steward mini-meeple. It is valued at 1/2 a regular meeple. If a Steward and an opposing full meeple both end up in a completed feature, the player who used a regular meeple gets all the points. Obviously, if one player has a lone meeple in a feature, while another has a regular meeple and a Steward, then the latter player gets all the points.

Any feature already claimed by a Steward cannot be claimed by another player, as normal. Standard rules about joining claimed portions of features still apply.

We don’t care for low bids like 80, so we made a rule that if you win the nest with a bid of less than 90, you have to declare trump BEFORE you look at the nest.

Let me start by saying that I do not favor any iPad or digital product over its conventional tabletop equivalent. I find them to be entertaining puzzles and good practice, but they are hollow representations of their desktop equivalents. I’ll also say that I don’t work for or have any interest in any company that stands to gain from my positive review of this app.

With that understood, I will rave a bit about the iPod/iPad/iPhone version of Carcassonne. I have many iPhone versions of my favorite desktop boardgames, but TheCodingMonkeys’ version of Carcassonne stands alone in terms of quality, game play, appearance and overall portrayal of the desktop game.

Pros

* It looks like Carcassonne. The artwork on the tiles is identical, and the peripheral art in the interface matches the rest.

* It’s very easy to use. The controls are intuitive.

* The tutorial is perfect. It’s a brief, pleasant guided tour of how to play. It’s so good, I use it when I’m introducing people to the desktop game. It does in less than 4 minutes what usually takes me 10 minutes or more.

* The AI is really clever. You can play against 2-4 AI opponents with various styles of game play. There are two of each type of opponent, so you can really fine tune your game. No, they’ll never be as fun as any human, but they’ve made me a better player.

Cons

* Cost. At $9.99, it’s among the most expensive apps I own. Expensive, but a good value.

Did you know that there is (or soon will be) another expansion for 7 Wonders? It was released at Essen.

“‎7 Wonders: Catan Island is a mini-expansion for the 2011 Kennerspiel des Jahres winner 7 Wonders that pays homage to the SdJ poster child The Settlers of Catan. 7 Wonders: Catan Island debuts at Spiel 2011 with all funds collected from sale of the expansion being donated to Aktion Deutschland Hilft.”

Appears to be only a single new Wonder board, but it looks very nice. The price is only $2.99 and the proceeds go to charity. I already pre-ordered a copy. I don’t want to get in trouble for huckstering, so just Google “7 Wonders: Catan Island” to find an online retailer.

It helps if everyone puts their military cards in the same place relative to their Wonder board. It lets you see at a glance how much military your neighbors have and it REALLY speeds up settling each military phase.

We tuck Military cards under the upper right corner of each Wonder board, much like you do with resources, but stacking out to the right instead of “up” like the resources.

Search the App Store for “7 Wonders scorer.” The good one has the pyramid symbol on it.

It greatly simplifies scoring. It walks you through in the same order as the scoring sheet. It keeps track of your win/loss records and can email your scores for each game.

Best of all, it does all the Science math for you, optimizing the Babylon and guild multi-cards.

The app includes features for the Leaders expansion.

If you have no clue about the correct answer, play the odds and look for big gaps. For example, if the question is “In what year was Silly Putty invented?”

and the responses are
1889
1920
1960
1963
1970

The biggest gap is between 1920 and 1960, so it’s worth a try.

BTW, the correct answer is 1943.

The rules state that when a leader is discarded for 3 gold and when the spare (4th) leader is discarded after the recruitment phase of the 3rd age, the leader cards are to be placed back in the box.

Instead, we place these cards face-down in the discarded age cards. Whenever players can go through the discard pile, they can choose to play leaders as well. Just like age cards, the person playing the leader card may ignore the cost of the card.

Others have already recommended sleeving your 7 Wonders cards, and I agree. I got my own copy a week ago. We’ve played it more than 30 times in the past 7 days. I noticed some slight residue already, so I’m sleeving my cards now. Before doing so, I’m cleaning each card. You’d be amazed, and disgusted, by the guck I got off the cards. I assure you, my friends and family are no more slimy than most. They’ve been good about not eating Doritos while playing and such, but the muck is still there.

I found another benefit to the sleeves. I’m colorblind, and I have a heck of a time discerning blue/purple, red/brown and sometimes red/green. I didn’t want to mark my cards, but I have no reservations putting small marks on the sleeves so that I can tell the colors apart. I don’t have to mark most of the cards; only those that show the tiny card-shaped rectangles.

I’m sure most of you aren’t colorblind, but you might have your own reasons to mark some cards – like writing hints about what some of the symbols mean.

The only part of sleeving the cards that I don’t like is that it precludes riffle shuffling, but then the mix isn’t as critical as it is in poker, and riffle shuffling isn’t good for the cards either.

As mentioned by others, Mayday makes perfect sleeves for the larger cards used in 7 Wonders. I just asked for them at my FLGS, and they knew exactly the right size. Buy 2 of the 100 packs and you’ll have enough for the whole game and the Leaders expansion.

NEVER pass Imhotep. That’s pretty easy, isn’t it?

Imhotep is a huge bargain, allowing you to ignore 1 requirement for each level of your wonder.

Look at the dream scenario – Imhotep with Alexandria (B). The first level requires 2 clay… err 1 clay for you. That should be easy to get. Once you build your first level, you have everything you need to build the second level, and half of what you need for the third!

Imhotep is also great when playing Gizah (B).

One easy decision is to play Tomyris early. Her benefit comes into play at the end of each age. She’s a great deterrent, but only if she’s in play.

Tomyris’ ability is to pass the -1 combat tokens to those who attack you. This requires some special planning.

War-like Tomyris
If you’re playing Tomyris and you choose to be aggressive, you have little to lose. Your neighbors will have to either take the beating, or try to match your strength. Beating you holds diminished return, since each victory over you will give the attacker a -1 token. No big deal, but it’s made worse by the fact that you (the player with Tomyris) don’t get hurt.

Peaceful Tomyris
Consider never buying military when playing Tomyris. Your final military score will be 0. More importantly, any neighbor who attacks you will see their victory tarnished by having to take a -1 token.

The worst situation is sitting with a player playing peaceful Tomyris on your left and an aggressive player on your right. (Directions don’t really matter) If you start to build up your army, you’ll get -1s from Tomyris every turn.

As much fun as it is sticking a player with an undesirable leader, we adopted a rule that allows each player to make the final decision on which rulers they will use. Simply deal each player 5 leader cards instead of 4. Perform the draft following the standard rules, but when each player is passed 2 cards, they may choose one and discard the other.

One warning: this has a huge impact on the B side of the Roma wonder. In 6-7 player games, the 4 cards drawn for completing the first level of the the wonder will likely be the dregs.

The more symmetrical a tile is, the fewer ways you’ll be able to play it. If a tile is double-symmetrical (meaning it looks exactly the same no matter how you rotate it) get rid of it early. Examples include the #, the * and the all-u tiles.

Some tiles are symmetrical along a single axis, meaning that they’ll work two different ways. These are less dangerous, but you should still strive to find tiles that allow you to connect the most ways.

I also like to keep at least one tile with a u-turn on it.

Look for ways to block off an area with 6 or more free spaces in it – more if you’re playing with 2 or 3 players. This way you can bide your time while the other players go toe-to-toe in the rest of the field.

Sure, theoretically you can play Tsuro with as many as 8 players, but you’ll only get about 4 turns each. So much happens to the playing field between your turns that the tactics fall apart.

I love Tsuro with 2-3 players. It’s the sweet spot.

Betting/bidding is optional. I recommend that you don’t include this part of the game until you have the hang of the rest of the game.

If a city has a cathedral and you stand little chance of sharing in the points, introduce new openings in the city as much as you can. If a single city edge is exposed, play a tile with 3 or 4 open city edges. Remember, an incomplete city with a cathedral is worth ZERO points in the endgame.

Also if you’re using the Carcassonne: Cult, Siege and Creativity expansion (which should be added here, ahem) lay siege to the city (e.g. add a siege tile to the city), thereby bringing it back to normal.

Of course, snookering the the city, playing tiles in such a way that none of the remaining tiles could complete the city, is worth considering, but
a) with all the expansions, there is a tile for every purpose
b) it’s hard to keep track of them all
c) the abbey from the Carcassonne: Abbey & Mayor expansion works anywhere

If you grow weary of other players pouncing in and sharing/stealing points by moving their people from the city (a.k.a. the Count’s Castle), give them something to think about by placing volcanoes (from the Princes and Dragon expansion) near the city. If the dragon starts wandering around near the city, players will have to weigh whether it’s worth placing reserve meeple there.

Many copies from the original run of the game have a printing problem with the rocky portion of the island. The printing on the back is misaligned, leaving white strips along one side of the tiles. It is possible to distinguish the tiles this way, possibly even noting which one is the volcano.

Stronghold games will gladly swap these bad pieces with you if you contact them. The overall quality of the rest of the components is outstanding, and they want to maintain a good image in this area.

They also include an entirely new set of rocky tiles with the 6-player expansion. It’s the exact same set, but without the printing problem.

We all know the old joke about two campers running from a bear. The nut of it is that you don’t have to outrun the bear; you just have to outrun the other camper. Well, a variation on that will help you with the military aspect of 7 Wonders.

You have two neighbors. There is no need to beat both of them militarily. If one of your neighbors is going all Mars on you, just take the beating. As long as you’re at least tied with your other neighbor, you should be fine. Ideally, you’d beat the lesser neighbor and end up +6 for the game.

If you sic sharks, whales and seamonsters on a player for no clear reason, they’ll obviously consider retaliating. I use a simple technique to soften the blow.

I play defensively first. If I can move a shark away from me, even if there is an obvious play to eat another player, I’ll protect my guys.

In the early stages of the game, I will attack other players in order, rotating around to my left. If I attacked you last round, I’m attacking the next player this round. Period. Even if I could eat 3 of your swimmers vs 1 of his, I’m going for him. I let the other players know that I’m doing this from the outset. It’s predictable, and democratic. No skipping players.

Once players start getting people to safety, the rule changes. I go after the person with the most people safe. If two players are tied, I alternate between them. Again, logical and democratic.

Obviously, many players like to be more chaotic and opportunistic. Even I don’t always play the way I’ve described, but I found that it works very well with my kids and their cousins. No one ever feels that Uncle Corey is ganging up on them.

Some players are big believers in farming early. Well, I’m here to tell you, you’d be crazy to farm while the river is still being built. It is just too easy to get boxed in by some strange twist in the river.

It’s tempting to play on the tile with the pig farm, but I’d only do it if the river is almost complete and the farm has an obvious, large area into which to expand.

The “no U-turn” rule exists for a reason. If you make a hairpin turn, say 2 left turns in a row, there is a good chance that one of the next tiles will conflict with an already placed river tile.

In reality, U-turns don’t really mess things up as long as you’re careful not to place them too close to one another. We play that there must be 3 tiles between two turns if they both go the same way, AND you can never “aim” the river at another river tile. This latter rule prevents death spirals and dead ends.

When using both river sets, and all the expansions, you’ll end up with too many river endings. We handle it this way.

1) Place one Spring (start of the river) tile on the table. Put the other away. It won’t be used.
2) Remove all the river endings, and make a pile of them. Shuffle this pile and put it aside.
3) Shuffle the rest of the river tiles, including the T junction.
4) Play starts, and players take turns placing the river tiles, per the instructions.
5) When the T junction is placed, draw one river end tile and shuffle it into the rest of the unused river tiles.
6) Continue playing river tiles. When the river end tile is drawn, play it on one of the ends.
7) Continue building the rest of the other branch until you run out of river tiles, then draw another river end tile and cap the river off. Put the unused river ends away, and continue play normally.

When using both river sets, and all the expansions, you’ll end up with too many river endings. We handle it this way.

1) Place one Spring (start of the river) tile on the table. Put the other away. It won’t be used.
2) Remove all the river endings, and make a pile of them. Shuffle this pile and put it aside.
3) Shuffle the rest of the river tiles, including the T junction.
4) Play starts, and players take turns placing the river tiles, per the instructions.
5) When the T junction is placed, draw one river end tile and shuffle it into the rest of the unused river tiles.
6) Continue playing river tiles. When the river end tile is drawn, play it on one of the ends.
7) Continue building the rest of the other branch until you run out of river tiles, then draw another river end tile and cap the river off.
8) Put the unused river ends away, and continue play normally.

This sounds a bit crazy, but it works surprisingly often. Sometimes when you’re drawing something, people get stuck on something that it looked like when you started the drawing. they keep guessing things in that frame of mind, and just get stuck there.

The trick is to break your teammate’s concentration. When you’re finished drawing, cover your drawing with your hands for a moment. Then dramatically pull your hands back. I won’t promise that it’ll work every time, but it has many times for me.

Works the same for sculpting.

We’ve tried a lot of these suggested variations about drawing multiple tiles. For our group, it seems to slow things down. Analysis paralysis raises its ugly head. Too many decisions.

We like to try to keep things moving. We often play with 5-6 players and with many (sometimes all) of the expansions. This makes the game long enough. Adding time to each player’s turn is the wrong way to go.

By drawing your tile at the end of your turn (for use on your next turn), you’ll have time during the other players’ turns to think about your move.

Out of the Box makes laser-printable custom cards that blend in perfectly with the game. You can add new red and green cards with whatever you like.

This goes over so well at corporate events, especially if the players aren’t expecting it. Imagine the fun when the boss’s name shows up. You can include people, products, inside jokes, troublesome office equipment or buzzwords.

We got tired of people arguing about whether they got the point for having the fairy at the start of their turn, so we made the rule that if you play your tile before you claim the point, you don’t get it.

If you have a suburb on the map with only your pawns on the map, you can guess where the volcano will be placed. On the other hand, if your meeple are mingled with everyone else’s, the volcano is more likely to erupt out in the sticks.

The rules are a bit fuzzy on what exactly the dragon does to things other than meeple. We play that it eats (returns to the player) pigs, builders and barns. It also destroys towers, but the tower parts do not go back to the players. We also play that the dragon can go through the city of Carcassonne (the Count expansion).

When a player has a builder on a road or city, help that player end that feature right away. You don’t want them taking a bunch of extra turns, right?

Some people love using the pig, but we don’t tend to farm that much. We use the pig on the scoring track, giving each player another meeple for play.

Complete cities with goods, even if you have no claim to the city. You’ll get the goods for the city. It’s best to do this before the city gets too large because a) it could give another player more points than you want and b) it may get too complex to complete.

The bonuses for having the most goods at the end might not be worth the hassle if you’re playing with a lot of the expansions.

Remember that many of the rock/mountain pieces reveal whirlpools that swallow everything in the adjacent hexes. This is a great way to get rid of boats, swimmers and creatures. You run the risk of revealing a boat next to a swimmer, but there is more bad stuff under the rocks than boats.

Watch the number of tiles left on the island. Remember that any rock/mountain piece could be the eruption that ends the game. Divide the number of tiles left on the island by the number of players – that’s how many turns you’ll have left, at MOST. If your swimmers are too far away from safety, start prioritizing.

When using the Count expansion, place your big meeple in the city portion of Carcassonne. You’ll be able to move it to any city as it’s completed, stealing (or splitting) the points.

Rather than counting the longest road and largest city each time it comes into question, place a d20 with the appropriate value showing on the King and Bandit tokens.

If you’re using the Count expansion, consider placing your mayor in the city portion of the Count’s castle. When a player completes a city, you can move your mayor to the city, claiming one meeple for every shield in the city.

One of your options with the wheel is to put meeple on the wheel itself. If the pig that circles the wheel lands on the part with your meeple, you can score some extra points. A bit like a cake walk.

The thing is, if you’re using many expansions, the number of wheel tiles that move the pig are diluted greatly. You’ll find that your meeple will spend WAY too much time there, if they escape at all.