McUpdate
Had my annual review yesterday... I got a promotion and a nice raise! Yay me =)
I ordered Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers last week, and it showed up a couple of days ago... it's really neat-- kind of a streamlined, smoothed-out and nicely-tweaked version of the original (which was its intent, I think).
The mechanics are largely the same, but the scoring is somewhat simplified - with rivers and forests only scoring at all if they're completed - and the strategy's a touch more interesting with the addition of a stack of ten 'bonus' tiles, awarded to players who complete forests (the equivalent of cities in the original, more or less). The result of these changes is that the map tends to look generally more 'finished' by the end of the game, and scoring in general feels slightly less 'fiddly'. Players also have 2 huts that can be placed along rivers / lakes, to score points for rivers systems (which can include groups of rivers connected by lakes), and they can coexist with the little meeples, so there's an interesting overlap of the two placement strategies.
All in all, a nice alternative. I would say I definitely prefer it to Carcassonne on its own, though not having played the original with any of the several expansion packs out there for it, I can't say if the full expanded version of the original wouldn't also be quite good. I'll bring it up when I next visit F'ton anyhow...
I ordered Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers last week, and it showed up a couple of days ago... it's really neat-- kind of a streamlined, smoothed-out and nicely-tweaked version of the original (which was its intent, I think).
The mechanics are largely the same, but the scoring is somewhat simplified - with rivers and forests only scoring at all if they're completed - and the strategy's a touch more interesting with the addition of a stack of ten 'bonus' tiles, awarded to players who complete forests (the equivalent of cities in the original, more or less). The result of these changes is that the map tends to look generally more 'finished' by the end of the game, and scoring in general feels slightly less 'fiddly'. Players also have 2 huts that can be placed along rivers / lakes, to score points for rivers systems (which can include groups of rivers connected by lakes), and they can coexist with the little meeples, so there's an interesting overlap of the two placement strategies.
All in all, a nice alternative. I would say I definitely prefer it to Carcassonne on its own, though not having played the original with any of the several expansion packs out there for it, I can't say if the full expanded version of the original wouldn't also be quite good. I'll bring it up when I next visit F'ton anyhow...