It's been quite a while since I've played
Carcassonne with my wife. She stopped playing after we discovered that we were scoring the farmers incorrectly. We had played the game with Beth's brother-in-law and he had enjoyed the game so much that we gave it to him as a gift. He read through the rules and corrected us on the error we had made in scoring previously played games.
Last night, Candace and Blain invited us over to their place to play some games. I decided to take Carcassonne with us, since they hadn't been introduced to the game and I thought I might get Beth to try it again with them.
They own
Pirates Dice, so we played that, adding a cup of Yahtzee dice to the set so that their oldest son could join us. According to Blain, there is no bidding on wilds in that set, so they've simplified the game some, but we couldn't find the rule booklet to confirm that the rule was actually removed for that version of Liar's Dice. Anyway, we played it without bidding on wilds, which made it a bit easier.
When we got to the end of the first game of Pirates Dice, it was down to just me and Beth with one die each. It was her bid and she made a very strong call, two 6's, a bid that would have been unbeatable if it had been correct, since we weren't bidding on wilds. However, I only had a 5 and I challenged her on it. I won the game. But after I revealed my dice and claimed the win, Candace chimed in and tried to convince Beth was not required to bid two dice as the opening bid. A little too late to be fair, and something that never should have been needed to explain. No one ever asked before if there was such a restriction to the opening bid, and players had started with all kinds of bids up to then, so there was no reason to think that Beth would ever have the impression that she was bound to bidding two dice to open. I believe that she was playing strongly and Candace convinced her that she had played incorrectly because "the guys" hadn't taught her the rules correctly. Beth started agreeing with her and claimed at that point that she had won the game. It was totally frustrating to me that they were trying to steal the win that I got fairly. Beth has played this simple game quite enough to know better than that, and if there was any question, she should have asked before making her opening bid, or Candace should have reminded Beth of it when Beth opened with "two 6s" and had only one die. Why wait until after the game is over to reset the round?
Unfortunately they continued to frustrate me with Beth's false win after the next game. We had decided to play Pirates Dice once more, even though I just about had enough of "playing" for the night all together. The end of this game put me against Little Blain. I won with 3 dice still in my cup and the girls said, "Aren't you happy? Now you won once." I wasn't laughing. An honestly, I'm not laughing about it today either. Hopefully writing about it will finally release this frustration from me.
After that, I asked if anyone was interested in playing Carcassonne. I pulled the game out and got the usual question, "how do you play?" Then everyone but Big Blain walked away from the table while I explained the game. The basic set for Carcassonne doesn't have much to it, especially when you play without Farmers, which I chose to do purposely for Beth and to simplify the game for the new players. So I might have spent 5 minutes explaining the game, but felt a complete lack of personal respect since hardly anyone even cared that I was taking the time to explain the game for their benefit. A similar kind of thing happens often when I play new games with my brother, Tim. He says that he'll play a game but has no interest whatsoever in hearing how the game works. Of course, later on, he gets angry that he is losing due to some portion of the game that he did not understand even though I had tried to explain it.
Little Blain was getting bored of waiting for the next game, since the women were chatting about other things rather than getting back to the table to play. I wasn't even sure if they wanted to play Carcassonne at that point, so I had put the box away and was about to call it a night anyway. For the boy's sake, I asked again if we were going to play the game and the women finally agreed and came back to the table.
Candace is always trying to help Beth win the game if she can't, as a way to have "a win for the girls." Maybe we just need to play more party games that are really geared for teams and always play guys against girls. While Candace and Beth always seem to co-operate with each other, even to their own detriment, Blain and I are always competing against each other. This game of Carcassonne was no different, except that Little Blain was finally with us in a game. Little Blain helped Big Blain and I share and complete a nice sized city for around 24 points. This left the women in the dust, at the beginning of the game, but they formed their own city and moved up soon. By that time though, Big Blain was getting a strong lead. I was about 15 points behind and Little Blain followed me. Candace and Beth ended the game with about 35 points each, which was beat even by Little Blain. The girls couldn't claim a win on that one, not even a partial one on technicality - at least not with anything they could come up with at that time.
After the game was over, everyone commented on how much they liked the game. I hope to (re)introduce the farmers at some point, but even Big Blain was hesitant on the addition. Carcassonne might not get back to the table any time soon anyway, so I guess I'll see about it then. Maybe more party games would be better for everyone there anyway. I should pick up the Apples To Apples crate for that group.
