Hi,
While I was not able to sleep last night, I came up with a Carcasonne variant. I have resumed the rules below. Also, I would like to add Artileries but I have not had any ideas so far (except maybe replace farms of carcasonne by artilery). Any comments on this are welcome.
Regards,
Jeb
Battlefield 1942 - Road to Carcasonne
Required:
1) Carcasone (Tiles, scoring table)
2) Axis & Allies (infantry, tanks, victory or territory ownerhsip counters (flags))
3) Deck of cards (Shuffle all figures + aces + jokers in a small deck of 18 cards)
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// Setup
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1) All players begin the game with two tanks and two soldiers which replaces the standard followers.
2) The stock of units a player has is called his "Army".
2) Option: divide the playing area in four. Effect is explained later on.
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// Play
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The game is played like carcasonne, except for the following rules:
1) Scoring a road
a) Tanks are worth two followers on roads, and infantry are worth one follower each.
b) When a road is completed, the player who scores the road places a victory marker on the road.
c) When a road is completed, the player who scores the road add an extra soldier to his Army as reinforcement.
d) If more than one player score the road, the road is contested.
e) When the road is contested, all scoring players put one victory counter on the road.
f) When the road is contested, no one takes reinforcements
2) Scoring a city
a) Soldiers are worth two followers on city, and tanks are worth one follower each.
b) When a city is completed, the player who scores the city places a victory marker on the city.
c) When a city is completed, the player who scores the city add an extra tank to his army as reinforcement.
d) If more than one player score the city, the city is contested.
e) When the city is contested, all scoring players put one victory counter on the city.
f) When the city is contested, no one takes reinforcements
3) Scoring a cloister
a) The cloister represents a command HQ
b) Cloister is scored as in the regular carcasonne (put follower on cloister, then place tiles around it)
c) When a cloister is scored, the owner places a victory counter on the Command HQ, and draw a "Tactical Action" card (from the deck of cards).
4) Tactical actions:
a) Each card would represent a tactical action, that a player may play during his turn, before drawing a tile.
b) Thus, there would be 5 possible actions
c) So far, the ideas I have are:
Secure contested area (Ace): Gain control of a contested area (road or city), and recieve appropriate reinforcement.
Bomber Strike (King): Remove one enemy unit from any road or city (Unit is destroyed, and not returned to army).
Paratroops (Queen): Place one of your infantry on any tiles as if you had just placed that tile. Unit placement must be legal.
Swift retreat (Jack): Return one of your units to your army.
Undercover Operation - Misinformation (Joker): Switch two units (ally or enemy)
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// End of game
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1) The game ends after the last tile is played.
2) Option: At the end of the game, when the play area is divided into four, the player who has the most victory marker in each area scores an amount of point equals to two times the number of victory markers he has. When more than one player has an equal number of marker, they all score one point for each victory maker in that area.
All in all, I think it's a good idea.
Like I told you over MSN though, there are a few things I'd work on.. I don't know what others will think of my suggestions though, so feel free to slam me into the ground. :)
First and foremost, I think that when making mods like this to a game, having a good explanation of why you are making rules act the way they do is a GREAT thing, as it helps readers understand the basic concept without getting too involved in the details.
Cards:
I think the Tactical Action card is a good concept, however I fear it will not be used often. There are only so many limited cloisters in Carcassonne, and then you have to get lucky, draw one, then be able to complete it. By the time it's completed, it will probably be nearing the endgame portion, and all the nice times you could've used your cards are long gone. Maybe starting with 2 cards would be better?
Also explain what the Joker does in greater detail. Upon first reading it I was under the impression that it switched unit places on the map when what you really mean is taking one of the opponent's units and replacing it with one of your own.
The Jack is pointless. :) But you already know that.
To me the Joker and the King are both extremely powerful cards. However, you can get 4 Kings and 2 Jokers. Having 4 Kings is quite unbalanced, since they will come up more often than Jokers. Maybe 2 Kings and 1 Joker would be better, as the Joker is undeniably better than the King, but the King is MUCH better than the Jack or the Queen.
I have no clue how the Farms in the expansion work, so my Artillery concept could be flawed if you wanted to go towards Farm-like behavior. I also assume that unit placement follows the standard Carcassonne rules (you can't put followers on roads or cities that are connected to roads or cities with enemy followers)
What I was thinking of is Artilleries are initially deployed on a Road or City tile, at the player's choice. Artilleries are the only units that move, and they can be used to let you place units where they could not be originally placed by firing on a unit already on a road or city.
Artilleries move one tile per turn if moving in cities or grass.
Artilleries move two tiles per turn if moving on roads.
Artilleries always fire two tiles away. They can not fire on adjacent cases.
Artilleries can be destroyed if they are fired on by other Artilleries or end up in a city, road or cloister scoring phase when the opponent wins the road/city/cloister.
Destroyed Artilleries are then redeployed in a City, Road or Cloister the player controls.
How's that? :)