Dear Boardgamers

I am posting two session reports on the game Carcassonne which I found on two now defunct websites - hillbillygames.com and marxspiele.com. I think they reveal the terrible schism which is now affecting the board game community following the Eurosnoot – Ameritrash debate and how innocent board games are now being used as weapons in an entirely unnecessary gaming war. I urge you all to reject this terrible division which threatens us all. I only hope my warning hasn’t come too late.

Session Report One : Carcassonne in West Virginia

My so-called buddy Cletus brought this new game into the woods for us to play called Carcassonne. I thought maybe it would have had some cars in it or sump’n but when he opened the box there wasn’t no vehicle in sight. Just some tiles and some dopey looking men. Now, I swear, most times I would have told Cletus to take his funny looking game which didn’t even have no dice and throw it in the creek where we chuck all our other junk but Darlene, his sister or his cousin (that aint never been entirely clear but when it comes down to it kin is kin) was with him and I aint seen her since last spring so I made an exception. And let me tell you what I found out because it is bad. Real bad.

First thing - it’s set in France. I guess I don’t need to say no more about that.

And then the rules are like nothin´ I´ve ever seen before. This aint no all American game with dice and luck and killing and stuff like what I was brought up on. No sirree. This is something diffrent. So anyways, I read some of the rules and they’re talking about building cities and roads and cloisters and sticking your meeples on them. Those meeples don’t look like no action figure to me but I aint never been to France and maybe that’s what an active French guy looks like. Now, OK, at first, this don’t sound too bad. I’m all in favour of urban development (though how realistic it is for France, I don’t know – how those Frenchies ever get anything built what with a three and a half hour working week and every other day being a holiday, I dunno.) But what the hell, it’s only a game. So anyways, we start building and I’ve got me a nice big city under construction and it’s looking fine and Cletus starts building his own tiny city that aint no bigger than a cricket’s private parts.

“That some kind of one horse town you building there, Cletus,” I say.

Darlene starts a hollerin’ and Cletus goes all red and looks as sore as if a coyote ate his grandma. So I head down to the stream where I’ve left a six pack cooling.

You aint gonna believe what I see when I come back. There’s Cletus with a big smug smile on his face and his dirty red meeple slap bang in my big city.

“What d’you think you’re doing?” I say.
“I connected my city to yours,” he says. “Now it’s ours.”
“You connected your trailer park to my metropolis and you claiming equal ownership?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
And I start rummaging in the box looking for some kind of thing to deal with this situation. I’m looking for a shotgun tile or a semi-automatic weapon tile or sump’n like that so I can blow Cletus’s ugly meeple out of my city and all the way back to Essen, Germany which is where he belongs.
But there aint no tile like that. So I read the rules again and it says that even though I built like ten tiles of that city and he built like two that that city is now his as well.
Darlene starts a hollerin’ all over agin when I read that bit out. I don’t know why coz it ain’t a bit funny. From what I can see this here Carcassonne has got no respect for private property.

But we’ve still got a six pack to drink and Darlene’s lookin mighty pretty with her new braces and so I decide to give it another go.

Anyways, Cletus has got this big road running out my, goddammit, our city and he sticks a meeple on it.

“That’s a robber,” he tells me with another one of them smiles which makes me want to pick up his meeple and shove it right down his throat.

So, I’m straight back in the box looking for a law enforcement tile. But it seems that just like the semi-automatic weapon tile Mr Klaus-Juergen Wrede forgot to design a lawman tile. Can you believe it? He found time to create felons but he couldn’t trouble his pinko liberal European ass to create upright police officers with guns who’ll shoot first and ask questions later. So this robber meeple just stands on the road and there aint nothing no law abiding citizen can do about it.

“He scores points too,” says Cletus.

Now I’m starting to think I’m hearing things like Pa did after he was trapped in the mineshaft that time and the mine company forgot to get him out because it wasn’t profitable.

“Whaddya mean he scores points?”
“One point for every road tile he controls,” says Cletus.
“You tellin’ me, Cletus,” I say. And I say it slowly so he knows I’m real serious. “You tellin’ me that this here game is rewarding criminality.”
“Yup,” says Cletus

I guess I must have looked awful pissed because Darlene starts hollerin all over agin.

I suppose I should have known. It’s just like I heard about in all those places in Europe like Denmark and Sweden where criminals gets to be reformed and then gets to go home at weekends and if they still want to be criminals then the government says they won’t stand in their way coz it’s only fair that everybody gets to do what they want and all that hippy crap. Well, maybe in Europe but not for me. This game is getting under my skin like a horde of angry cow ticks. I’m about to go, really I am, but then Darlene takes off her sweater and I can tell you that something’s being growing over the summer besides Ma’s alfalfa. So I give Carcassonne one more chance.

All I got to show for about an hour of playin’ this game is one damn farm. But it’s a hot farm. It serves nearly all the cities and I know that it’s gonna earn me a mighty big score and show Cletus good that I can win a game that don’t have no dice whatever he thinks. So I put down my last tile and I say I want thirty two points for my farm. But Cletus shakes his head, picks up his last tile and points to one iddy biddy farmer he’s got which is serving one two tile city and he says it’s mine too and doggone it if his last tile doesn’t connect his maggoty farm to mine and I’m busted. Well, I don’t know about you, but I remember from school what’s happening here coz we did it in history before they closed the school down for not being profitable and that’s The Collectivization of Agriculture. And you know when that last happened. In the goddammed Soviet Union that’s where. This whole Carcassonne thing is no more than a commie plot designed to brainwash good Americans into accepting the ideas of Karl Marx. So if we don´t stop it right now then pretty soon we´ll be saying that everyone´s equal and sharing stuff and profit will be a dirty word. This was too much for me.

“You’re being unAmerican,” I tell Cletus, “and I aint having it.”

And I go to start a beating on him but he ups and runs away like all commies do when they see a true American patriot coming at them. Which leaves me and Darlene in the woods. And she looks at me with her big eyes and says,

“I know a different type of game we could play, sugar.”

And so now in a few months time I´m a going to be a daddy. Well that’s if Darlene’s Pa doesn’t get me first coz he’s definitely got a shotgun tile. I tell you, I’m most likely a dead man. And what’s too blame. That goddammed bleeding heart liberal, Carcassonne. That’s what.


Session Report 2: Carcassonne in Frankfurt

SESSION REPORT: ASSOCIATION OF FRANKFURT SPIELERS

(Translated from the original German)

Game Group Name : Montagabendsfaktion
Group size : 5
Names : Gerhard, Petra, Angela, Helmut and Ulrich. Note Ulrich is a newbie playing in his first gaming session with the Association.

Note: In line with Association policy the identity of the author of the report will not be made known. All players will be considered to have authored the report.

The group spent fifty minutes discussing which game to play. In accordance with the statutes of the Association each member was allowed to advocate their game for precisely ten minutes. There then followed a vote using the Single Transferable Vote system. Ulrich wondered if we couldn’t just start playing without the voting but Angela explained in detail the group’s belief in collective decision making. Ulrich did not object further at this point. It was noted by the group that Ulrich opened his first bottle of lager

After only two recounts it was announced that the game we would be playing was Carcassonne. This had never been played previously by the group. In line with the Associations statutes it was agreed that during the first session of the game we would analyse the game to assess its Political Acceptability Quotient. What follows is our session report.

1) The group felt that the term “meeple” was insufficiently gender-nonspecific. It seemed to combine men and people. Part of the group felt that “weeple” would be more appropriate and in tune with the policy of the Association of advocating more positive female role models in board games. Others in the group felt that the “meeple” should be replaced with a cube in line with the Association’s policy of discouraging any non-abstract representation in board games because they cause sentimentality and irrationality of play amongst feeble-minded spielers. The matter was left unresolved and it was agreed to use the term “meeple” for the time being. It was noted at this point that Ulrich opened his second bottle of lager.

2) It was noted by the group that there were four types of “meeple” robber, knight, monk and farmer. It was further noted that non-judgemental names were issued to property owners – knights, monks and farmers – while non-property owners were designated robbers. This was deemed politically unacceptable. Helmut suggested that the effect was mitigated by the mechanic which allowed a robber meeple to become a farmer meeple later in the game hence implying social mobility. After a brief discussion this was considered to be insufficient reason to compensate for the politically offensive slur on non-property owners. It was felt necessary to rename the robber meeple. Petra spoke in favour of “traveller” whilst Gerhard advocated “worker” but both these names were eventually rejected and it was agreed to refer to the “robber” meeple as a “pedestrian” meeple for the remainder of the game. It was noted by the group that Ulrich opened his third bottle of lager and showed signs of impatience.

3) On the first turn Helmut began to build a city and it became apparent that the theme of the game involved the construction of cities and roads. The group checked the rules and discovered that larger cities and larger roads yielded better rewards than smaller ones. The group found this disappointing as the game showed no concern for the environmental effects of developing large metropolises or vast highways. Particularly unhelpful was the small point reward for building small two tile cities which the group felt represented a more appropriate size of community which would risk neither the overwhelming environmental damage or the collapse of social cohesion which come with larger cities. The group agreed to introduce an environmental variant which valued two tile cities at twice the value of larger cities. Ulrich suggested that we just get on with the game as all this discussion was getting boring. The group considered Ulrich’s complaint and found it to be unfounded. It was noted by the group that Ulrich opened his fourth bottle of lager.

4) Immediately afterwards Petra built a cloister. This led to a lengthy discussion about the bias inherent in the game towards the Christian religion. All members of the group felt this was a bad thing (apart from Ulrich who held no firm views on the question). It was agreed that a solution was required. Helmut felt that in line with the Association’s policy of encouraging non-Western representations within board games each of us should rename our cloisters to represent buildings associated with other world religions. Angela argued this contravened the Association’s policy of promoting secularism within board games and we should remove the cloisters entirely from the game. A vigorous debate followed in which all members of the group participated (except Ulrich). Eventually a compromise was reached and cloisters were kept in the game but were now referred to as “Places inhabited by people who have devoted their life to a non-specific faith based belief system.” The group felt this was a satisfactory outcome. It was noted by the group that Ulrich opened his fifth and sixth bottles of lager.

5) On the next turn Gerhard built a farm. The rules for building a farm were consulted. They were deemed to be in need of substantial revision as a number of serious political problems were immediately identified. It was noted that in line with the games unfortunate attitude to cities that larger farms were rewarded better than smaller farms. Also that if a large farm with two “meeples” took over a small farm with one “meeple” then the smaller farmers reward disappeared entirely. This was seen as a disgraceful endorsement of the agri-conglomerates that are blighting the lives of civilians across the globe and therefore completely intolerable. It was suggested that small-holdings were rewarded at a much greater value than larger farms and the group was on the point of agreeing this when a much more radical solution was proposed by Angela. She argued forcefully that all development either urban or rural was inherently wrong and therefore in order to make the game politically acceptable the group should institute a variant where nobody builds anything at all. The group swiftly recognised this as a brilliant solution to all the problems thrown up by the game and adopted it immediately. It was noted by the group that Ulrich opened his first bottle of methylated spirits.

6) The game ended immediately

7) Ulrich seemed upset. He expressed forcibly the view that, “he had been sitting in this lousy room for three stinking hours and hadn’t even got to put a tile down yet and that didn’t we know that games were supposed to be fun.” He then forced a “meeple” up Gerhard’s left nostril and left. The group considered Ulrich’s complaints. The group felt that although the Association has no strict policy on the issue of fun it was felt that in line with the Associaton’s policy of promoting board games as a serious adult pastime that Ulrich’s no fun charge was baseless. The group then removed the “meeple” from Gerhard’s nostril.

8) The group suggests that the Management Committee look again at the policy of permitting alcohol to be drunk at the gaming table.

9) The group suggests that the Membership Committee reject Ulrich’s application should it still be active.

10) The group packed the tiles and meeples away tidily in the box in line with Association rules.