Cartwright is for carriage only. You need the real number of cards to get the bonus chit.

Werner is correct. To claim the 7 counter, you must have 7 cards. Also, you can not place houses unless you have played the cards. The cartwright is only good for "upgrading" to a higher carriage.

Thanks much for clarifying

I always thought you'd have to use the cartwright to get the 7 in this case. +2 to the lenght of your current amount of cards played. So in this case you couldn't take the 6.. I might be dead wrong here but this is how I've played it every time. Makes it at least more interesting.

I think the rule says that we can only pick up the next higher carriage even if we have a longer route than what is required. E.g: I have already carriage 3 and I construct a route with 5 cards, and decide to use cartwright or just simply close the route, I can only get Carriage number 4 and not the higher numbers...that is how we plsy....do let me know if that is wrong?

I understand that the cart wright might be very helpful to complete route to get higher carriages if you want to be the 1st to lay your hand on the next higher carriage.

Madhu

I'm pretty sure (they are not in front of me) that the English rules say that if you currently have the number 5 carriage, have played 5 cards and want to use the cartwright, you can, but you only take the next carriage card (in this case the 6 carriage). I do not remember any rule that says you can only take the 7 carriage in this case (having played 5 cards in your route you are scoring).

The only two cases I ever use the cartwright are:
1) if I have scored several shorter routes to earn other bonuses and I need to keep up with my opponents (and their carriage points), or
2) if I need to end the game before one or more of my opponents can score a large route

http://www.boardgameswithscott.com/?paged=8

I based my assumptions on the boardgameswithscott.com review and re-reading the rules..

Let's say you have the 4 and the 5 cart, then you score a route of 4 cards and use the cartwright to get the 6 cart. The rules also state that you can use the cartwright to get a cart that's 2 bigger than the number of cards you just scored. so it doesn't affect what number cart you already have but only takes effect based on the number of cards on your current route.

Based on this you couldn't score a route of say 4 cards when having only the 4 cart and then using the cartwright to take the 5 cart, you could only take the 6 cart but you can't since you don't have the 5..

You can of course score a bigger route than what you currently have a cart on, let's say you have the 4 cart and you build a route of 6 and score it, then you can take the 5 cart.

The rules say

hmmz. My rules stated that it should be +2. Oh well. These things have happened before. I guess Scott got it wrong too. Anyway it's best to play how it feels the best, for us this rule has added a lot in form of as to when to score the routes; you can score now and get the next cart you need otherwise it's a missed opportunity to use the cartwright and you've already made your decision to score a longer route to get the bonus chits..

I think people should give it a try at least. It's not a major change but can still affect the gameplay nicely.

I don't mean to single you out, but it always amuses me when people initially learn a game with an incorrect rule, and their immediate reply, upon learning of the error, is "but my way is a really good variant, you should try it."

I'm not sure it "nicely" affects game play. It looks like it takes 4 balanced special actions and makes one of them much more restrictive than the others.

Just looked up here on the geek is the english rules http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/16412 and there's a paragraph stating the following:

Assistance of a Postal Officer in this Phase:
Wainwright (Wagner): By calling on the assistance of the Wainwright in this phase, the player may take the next available Coach Card if the player’s completed route is short by up to two cards. Example: A player already possesses the Coach 6 Card. The player now completes a route that contains only five City Cards and uses the assistance of the Wainwright to take the Coach 7 Card.

I have the same on my rulebook and I guess I see the problem now more clearly than before; it does say "by up to two cards" and this is where we initially got it wrong then.. but then again the example is the last thing you read about this phase and it leaves the impression that it should be 2.

Sorry. I didn't try to make it a hip and cool variant or anything, we've played with this rule and it has been good. No need to get all pissed about it. My mistake. But at least a good one =)