Carcassonne Central

My FLGS is really a hobby shop with all kinds of things going on there.  They have a pretty respecatable board game section and it is where I got Carcassonne for the first time.  I have been trying for a while, with little to no success, to begin a board game night with some friends and it has been a bit frustrating.  The hobby shop has been as well, but part of the problem is the lack of staff to head it up.  They have all those nice games on hand, but nobody really knows anything about them.  So, I offered to head up a weekly board game night.  They were excited to take me up on it and I'll probably begin in a week or so.  Naturally, I chose to start with Carcassonne.  I'll let you know how it goes.  

Congrats. Good on ya for being an ambassador to the hobby. Keep us informed on how it goes.

A number of months ago I compiled some thoughts on creating / growing a game group. Here is the link.
http://boardgamegeek.com/blog/148/thoughts-on-creating-and-growing-a-gaming-group

Hopefully, you can find a useful tip or two in there. Good luck.

Well, tonight was the first meeting.  It's a good thing I invited my friend because he and his brother were the only two people who showed up.  It wasn't a total wash though, we had fun.  I'm told that there is another guy in town who is anxious to start coming when he's available in about two weeks and we should add one of the store employees next week.  I started with Carcassonne tonight.  They had the base game and WoF on there shelf in the back room.  The base game was the first addition (which we used).  It was interesting to note the improvements that have been made in recent editions, if to nothing more than the score board.  They were missing two green meeples though, so I might bring my own set next week.  We'll probably stick with Carcassonne for another week or two.  My friend who came tonight is actually really excited to play Munchkin.  I might have to stick that in before TTR which was #2 on my list.  Either way, with those three and Flash Point: Fire Rescue, I should be set for a month or so. 

The game went pretty well.  It was the first time playing Carcassonne for both new players.  I explained that I hardly ever win when I'm teaching the game and it proved true again tonight.  The winner had 106, I had 91, and the other had 60 something.  The guy with the lowest score and I were fighting over a farm for most of the game which we split in the end.  The three of us were fighting over a large city that we didn't finish and managed to split three ways at the end.  I should have fought harder for the city than the farm since the farm only yielded 12 points and the unfinished city scored 21.  Regardless, they caught on very quickly and I was pretty pleased with their grasp of fighting for features pretty early in the game. 

Overall, I was encouraged by the outing and am looking forward to next Monday night. 

Congratulations and way to go by being an ambassador to the hobby.

It's always fun to teach others new games! I too always seem to lose when teaching newcomers  :).  I would be happy to attend this gamers meeting if I didn't live out west.. Well I am glad you had a couple folks there. What is TTR?

TTR="Ticket To Ride"...another great gateway game.

Oooh gotcha, that is also on my list..

Nice job CK. I wish I had something like that around here - I'd join in an instant.

Maybe you need to start one.  Where do you live?


Thanks for sharing that.  I haven't read all the way through it yet, but I will and I'm sure there will be some very useful info in there!

My FLGS has gaming events almost every day, but they don't play any games that I'm intersted in and the word "local" is used loosely (takes 45-60 minutes to drive there). I usually only go there 2 or 3 times per year.

Before they had a full calendar of gaming events, they had (and still have) several store-copies of games so that you can try them out before buying. The store was not as busy back then as it is today, and one day when I had stopped in to buy a Carc expansion the owner convinced me to stick around and play a game of Alhambra with him and some of his friends. Although I didn't end up getting hooked on Alhambra, I did enjoy playing it very much.

Cheers to CKorfmann for starting things up at his FLGS.