Carcassonne Board Game

Game Timing

Our games are basically played in 3 phases:

1. The 24 combined River tiles which we attach to one of our Center Scoreboards.
2. Then we move on to the basic strategy phase which is determined by which expansions we are playing with in this game, how many tiles will be played after the Rivers.
3. As the number of remaining tiles gets low, we move on to the end-of-game phase. We no longer want to place a Cathedral on our city to get extra points, we want to place in on the large city that another player is working on so it will be worth points!

Most of our previous games included Inns and Cathedrals, Traders and Builders, and both versions of the Flying Machines; for a total of 129 after River tiles.

Then, one of our players, not saying who, decided to look into even more expansions. The Royal Gates expansion was a total waste of time, but the City Gates and especially the Water Wells were definitely added nice features to the games, but also increased the after River tiles by 39 extra tiles which increased the time necessary to play a game by a considerable amount.

So the question now is relatively simple, but the answer is complex! How do we increase the features in our games without increasing the amount of time necessary to play the game?

1. Randomly select a fixed number of tiles that each player will play the game with; mix up all of the standard and expansion tiles, then make some equal sized, then let each player select a fixed number of tiles, ie 30 tiles each, and place the remaining tiles on the side.
2. Use your cell phone alarm to set a tile limit on the game:
   1. You want the game to end by 10 PM
   2. Set the alarm for 9:40 to give us a series of warnings that the game is about to enter its final stage.
   3. When the alarm goes off, click the "snooze 5 minutes" button to create another warning. Do this two or more time!
   4. When the final warning is rung, each player, starting with the current player, will get 3 more turns.
3. Take each turn faster: Draw your next tile as soon as you place your current tile turn. This will give each player ample time to determine how and where to place their tile while the other players are placing their tiles.

As a preview to all of the words below, these are the four primary suggestions made on the Carcassonne forums:

• Time: Set an alarm for 10 PM.
• Tiles: Give each player 25 or 30 tiles and put the rest on the side.
• Score: The game ends when first player reaches 150 points.
• Preview: Draw your next tile as soon as you play your current tile.

But the easiest way to make the games go faster is to play with less expansions, less features!

Our standard game includes the Center Scoreboard with 24 River I and River II tiles. 71 Basic Game, 18 Inns and Cathedrals, 24 Traders and Builders for a total of 113 after river tiles.

Lately we have also been including 8 Flying Machines (Roads) and 8 Flying Machines II (Cities), then we added 24 City Gates and the last game also included 15 Wells; which brings the after river total to 168 tiles!

And these numbers do not include 20 Under the Big Top or 24 Halflings or 18 Tower or 30 Princess and Dragon etc.

As we add more expansion to our games, the games get more interesting, BUT, at the same time the tile count increases which makes the games take longer. Our normal game with just Inns and Traders has 137 tiles, add the Fliers and the total is 153 tiles, and if we then add all of the other expansions that we have played with and enjoyed, the total goes to over 300 tiles, and that does not include the extra 50 tiles for the expansions that we don’t like!

Is there a way to play the game with all of the expansions that we like in a reasonable amount of time?

The original Game Timing page was create in November of 2021.

When we introduced the Water Well tiles in April 2023, the additional value for the roads made us think longer when playing our tiles so the game took a lot longer to play, SO, we started talking about what we could do to speed up the games.

As a pure coincidence, a thread was published on the Board Game Geek forum the very next day: Playing with less tiles (randomly pull some out) with the purpose of playing “slightly shorter blitz game but not necessarily sacrifice on all the expansions”.

I joined in on the thread, then posted my own thread, Playing "quicker" games, on the Carcassonne Central forum. The first response was from Snearone who suggested:

"Do players draw next tile as soon as they lay down previous one, so they have time to think about it, or they wait for previous player to finish the move and then draw the tile?
In my experience this one is a must, as it greatly speeds up the game."
Basically: Look at your next tile As Soon As Possible!

Other opinions included:

• The game ends when the first player reaches 150 points, then do the normal game end scoring.
• Setting a timer for 2 hours or an alarm clock for 10 PM. When the timer goes off, the current player complete their turn, then each player gets one more turn, then do the normal game end scoring.
• Our after River stack could be well over 100 or 200 tiles, we could make a decision that we will only play (for example) 120 tiles, make 4 stacks of 30 random tiles and place the rest of the tiles on the side.

This is the original 2021 page

When you start playing Carcassonne your primary objective with each new tile is how you can score the most points with it - how to maximize your point scoring. As you continue to play Carcassonne, you start to develop strategies for how to maximize your points while minimizing your opponent's points! You start making more and more decisions for each turn and each turn takes longer. Once you start really playing to win it's hard to go back to the gentle and relaxing game you once knew.

The Basic Game of Carcassonne which used to take about 45 minutes is now taking hours!

The third House Rule on the WikiCarPedia Base Game page says: "Take your next tile at the end of your turn, to give you time to think about placement and avoid analysis paralysis".

Here is an idea for speeding up our games that was posted on the Carcassonne Central forum on October 26, 2021!

How to time games

Here is the Carcassonne Central post from JoanBC 9 posts and 0 merits

As we use to be 4 players in our games, and we use several expansions, each one of us tend to overthink and take some time to place the tile and decide what to deploy (if any) on it. This situation often leads to over 4 hours games.

We are thinking of timing the game so to set a time limit for every player. Is there a general rule (official or widely accepted) setting what time each player should have? And what happens if tile is not deployed (or turn finished) within that time?

This post asked a similar question to what our situation is becoming! And the following reply sounds interesting!

Corinthiens13 715 posts and 42 merits posted this reply. (I used red to "cross out" the parts that deal with the expansions we don't use)!

Here's how we rule it, with some adaptations to prevent conflicts and make it work with mega-carcassonne games :

At the beginning of your turn:

1. Reveal your tile(s) drawn at the end of last turn
2. If you have more than one tile (fortune tellers), choose the one you'll play
3. If the tile contains a dragon icon and no volcano has been placed yet, discard the tile and draw another one
4. If the tile contains a wheel of fortune, peasant revolt, hill or dragon icon, perform the corresponding action now (this is so you can't delay such actions by using special tiles)
5. Play the tile or keep it for the next turn (don't discard it) and use one of your special tiles (halflings, German castles, abbey). In that case, you do not draw a tile at the end of your turn

If the stack is empty at the beginning of your turn:

• You are not allowed to use a special tile (halflings, German castles, abbeys)
• If you have a tile drawn during a previous turn, you may play a turn with it, otherwise, you skip your turn
• The game ends once every players used their tiles drawn from the stack

At the end of your turn:

• Draw a tile and do not show it to other players
• Draw one additional tile for each fortune tellers you own
• If you played one of your special tiles (halflings, German castles, abbeys) and so you already have a tile left in hand (or more if playing with fortune tellers), do not draw any tile, you already have one

And here was my reply to this post

corinthiens13, your post was perfect, but we will have to make a number of changes since we do not play with all of the expansions that you do.

The only issues that our group will have to discuss is that using a Halfling or an Abbey is normally something you have to decide before you draw a tile. But, if we all play by the same rules we can do it your way.

Also, it could interfere with a builder second turn at the end of the game when the stack is empty and other players have a next turn tile in front of them. My guess is that our group will decide that if that happens, you merely take the last player's tile.

So, here is my idea on what we might try to speed up our games

At the beginning of your turn:

1. If you are not playing a Halfling or Abbey, reveal your tile drawn at the end of your last turn
2. Play the tile or keep it for the next turn (don't discard it) and use one of your special tiles (halflings, abbey). In that case, you do not draw a tile at the end of your turn

If the stack is empty at the beginning of your turn:

• You are not allowed to use a special tile (halflings, abbeys)
• If it is your turn, the stack is empty, and other players have "next turn tiles": you can take any players next turn tile! This could happen because they played an Abbey or Halfling or a builder second turn.
• The game ends once every players used their tiles drawn from the stack

At the end of your turn:

• Draw a tile and do not show it to other players
• If you played one of your special tiles (halflings, abbeys) and so you already have a tile left in hand do not draw any tile, you already have one

Final draft of our potential rules

These rules will be discussed and modified or discarded at our next game night.

The basic concept is that you draw your Next Turn Tile immediately after finishing your current turn. You can't put it back and you have to use it unless you play a Halfling or Abbey. This allows each player to start planning their next move as soon as they finish their previous move which should speed up the game considerably.

At the beginning of a game with the River Expansion:

• Create a parallel river tile stack
• Each player draws their first Next Turn Tile from the river stack
• Finish the river stack in order
• When the river stack is empty, start drawing your Next Turn Tiles from your random tile stack, or someone else's!

At the beginning of your turn:

• Make your final decision: Are you playing a Halfling, Abbey, or your Next Turn Tile, and play that tile!
• NOTE: If placing your Next Turn Tile generates a Bazaar AND a builder second turn:
  • Draw the tiles for the Bazaar first and keep them face down on the table.
  • Then draw and place your builder second turn tile.
  • If your builder second turn tile ALSO generates another Bazaar, ignore the second Bazaar!
• If your tile generates a builder second turn:
  • Use your Next Turn Tile if you have one,
  • Or draw a new tile from any random tile stack.
  • You can never take another player's Next Turn Tile!
• If your tile(s) generated a Bazaar:
  • Even if your tile and your builder second turn tile each generated a Bazaar, there is only one Bazaar!
  • Draw the Bazaar Tiles from the random tile stacks.
  • Perform the Bazaar auction.
  • Each player plays their auctioned tile.
  • If a player's auctioned tile generates a builder second turn:
    • Use your Next Turn Tile, if you have one, or a random stack tile for any builder second turn.
  • Note: A Bazaar tile or a Bazaar second turn tile cannot generate another Bazaar!
• When your turn is completed
  • Make sure that all players, including yourself, have a Next Turn Tile
  • Unless . . .

Near the end of the game:

• Stop drawing Next Turn Tiles when the total draw stacks reach 3 tiles per player
• This should handle any tile issues with Bazaars and Builder second turns

There is also one issue that we all have to be aware of: We currently make suggestions to each other on how to play our tiles. We now have to consider that all of the suggestions are coming from players who know what their next move will be!