Joining Farms and Barns
Introduction
If you are playing Carcassonne with multiple expansions that means more tiles, more cities, and possibly field-related bonuses from your pig, etc. In games with multiple expansions one or more fields can easily be worth upwards of 30 points or more. And don't forget those smaller fields -- those are important as well. At the end of a game placing your last meeples on a few small 6-point fields can make all the difference between who wins.
One of the major disadvantages to Farm creation in larger games with more expansions, is that they tie up your meeples until the end of the game.
The introduction of the Barn from Expansion 5: Abbey and the Mayor adds a whole new layer to your Farm strategy, but let's talk about just Farms first.
Just as roads and cities can be joined to increase your score or decrease your opponent's, so too can fields be joined with similar results, so let's start this article by talking about the why and how of joining fields.
Why would I want to join fields?
In your quest to have your farmers supply the most cities (and keep your opponent from supplying very many), there are several scenarios in which you might want to join two or more fields. You might want to...
- Join a field you own to a field your opponent owns (if his has more cities).
- Join two fields that you own to increase the likelihood that you'll score all the cities on each individual field since you'll have multiple meeples on the joined field.
- Add additional meeples to a field that you share with another player, basically stealing the Farm.
- Join two of your opponent's fields to prevent him from scoring field points twice for any cities that border both fields.
- Pre-emptively join your field to an adjacent unclaimed field to prevent your opponent from using it to steal your field.
- Spoil your opponent's attempt to join a field they own by setting up your own join that necessarily occurs when your opponent joins their field
Just remember that when you place multiple meeples on one or more Farms, you will have less meeples to place on cities, roads, monasteries, etc. for the remainder of the game!
How can I join fields?
The most common or obvious ways to join fields include connecting fields around the corner of a city and using a cloister with a road to join fields on opposite sides of an existing road.
This gets a lot easier when you are also using the Bridges, Castles and Bazaars expansion where the field under a bridge does the joining for you!
But you can also join fields with cleverly placed road curves, or with any tile that has a field that connects opposite sides of the tile.
Turn 1: Blue places a farmer on the field. Turn 2: Red places a road tile with a farmer. This is OK because the two fields are not yet connected. A later turn: Red places a FFxx tile that joins the two fields.
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Inns &
Cathedrals |
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Abbey &
the Mayor |
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This can take a little practice to spot, but once you see a few examples you'll be able to identify more opportunities to join fields when you need to. Just be aware that some of the expansions include tiles specifically designed to block your placement of the second FFxx tile using a city that touches a field at both corners of the expansion tile.
 | x9 |
 | x3 |
 | x3 |
 | x5 |
| RRFF | | CFRR | |
CRRF | | CCRR |
In the base 72-tile version of Carcassonne, there are 20 tiles which feature a curved road sections. That accounts for almost 1/3 of tiles in the game, so, when you place a follower and attempt to close a loop, your chances of success are very high because these tiles turn up so often. In other words, play the percentages!
The fields of Carcassonne are divided by roads, cities, or anything else that clearly split them visually such as a river.
Road loops can make it easier for a player to score large farms (connected to more cities) at game end. If scoring points for farms is part of your strategy, building looped roads can help. They tend to result in fewer borders, meaning more open areas of farmland. This allows the player who controls the farms to count more cities at game end.
If you place a follower on a cloister early in the game, try to build a road surrounding your cloister. The benefit is that every section of road you place around your cloister is earning you 2 points instead of 1. This is an exercise in efficiency.
Tiles with fields on opposite edges can be used to build multi-tile field “bridges" to connect two separate areas of the board. This situation is less common, but you can sometimes mount a sneak attack by stretching a field over several tiles to join with another field.
How can I block my opponent from joining fields that I want to keep separate?
Conversely, if you are concerned about your opponent joining fields you can block him. You don't always need to create a space where no tile will fit, you can also block field-joining by forcing a 3-way road tile (preventing a loop) or placing a city edge adjacent to another city edge.
Sometimes blocking your opponent may take two moves, but if the cost would be losing a valuable/critical field (say one worth 30+ points!) it is often worth putting your other projects on hold to focus on blocking your opponent's field-joining attempt.
How should I choose a spot to join fields so my opponent is less likely to block me?
Try to join fields where your opponent can't place a single tile to restrict or block your attempt. Compare the two situations below. The first attempt can be foiled easily with any tile that has a road while the second cannot. Of course your opponent can place a tile that would allow them to block you on their next turn. If they do, try to ensure your joining attempt can be successful. If you get a helpful tile place it to force the most common tile remaining into the spot where you are joining fields.
Other related strategies
Another helpful strategy in the early game is to choose where you build your projects to protect any fields you've captured early in the game. The opposite also holds true as you can weigh your options for tile placements to help attack a field your opponent has already captured; just make sure the field is worth it.
As the game winds down, be aware of the pieces that are remaining that can help or prevent you from joining. Are there any cloisters with roads left? What about FFxx tiles like FFRR or FFCC? Are there any 3- or 4-way roads that can prevent a looping join? Don't forget the 4-way double curve road. Also use your knowledge of the remaining tiles to your advantage to block or minimize the chances that your opponent can join fields where it's advantageous to him. This is pretty apparent when playing on iOS with the option to have the remaining tiles visible, but is much harder in a live game or where this option is disabled.
Barns
Let me start by adding a new word to the Carcassonne vocabulary: a Barnyard is a field occupied by one or more Barns!
If you place a tile that creates a junction where 4 tiles connect to
create an open field. . .You may place your barn directly on that
junction instead of
placing a meeple. In other words, the corner of each tile forming
this junction must only depict a field in order for a barn to be
placed there.
You may place your barn on an unoccupied field or a field already
occupied by farmers, even if you are not one of the
farmers. You may not, however, place your barn on a field
already occupied by another barn. You can however join barn
fields by placing your barn on an adjacent field, then place
an appropriate tile that will join multiple barn fields together. Once
placed, your barn remains in play until the end of the game.
This is an image of just one small section of a larger map. The barnyard on the left currently touches 6 completed cities. The open field on the top right has 1 Blue farmer and 1 Red farmer and touches 4 completed cities (2 are the same as the barn cities). The open field on the bottom right has 1 Red farmer and 1 Red pig and touched 5 completed cities (1 is the same as a barn city).
OK, if any player draws a 4 field sided Monastery and decides to place it in the open space, it will join both of the Farms to Pink's Barnyard! The combined fields will now touch (6 + 4 – 2 + 5 – 1 = 12) completed cities and the new field will be occupied by 1 Blue farmer and 2 Red farmers with 1 Red pig. Blue will score zero points. Red will score 24 points, 2 times 12 because of the pig, and the Blue and Red meeples and pig will be returned to their stacks. Pink still own the barn-field which now touches 12 completed cities worth 48 points at the end of the game.
As the game continues, if any player can place a meeple as a Farmer on a field that is adjacent to, but not connected to Pink's Barnyard, then, on a subsequent turn place a tile that joins the two fields, they will score 1 point for every city currently touching the Barnyard (12 points), and they will immediately get their meeple back. To make it better, if they can place their Pig on the tile used to connect the two fields, they will get 2 points for every city (24 points).
If a Blue Barnyard is joined to Pink's Barnyard, there are no meeples, so nobody scores anything for the joining, but the new combined Barnyard is probably worth more at the end of the game.
Timing
The biggest key to when you should place your Barn is that you only have 1 Barn, once it is placed it can't be moved. How soon do you place your only Barn? Once you place it, the other players will attempt to start new cities on the other side of the map, and they will do what they can to block the expansion of your Barnyard.
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