World Team Carcassonne Online Championship
2025
Week “two”
Dear ambitious city builders and enthusiastic road constructors,
The second week was again filled with plenty of excitement and full of drama. Emotions were so extreme that it nearly caused some heart attacks among our streamers!
Weekly records
- The highest points scored in a game in R 2:
- 139 Lazybore (UK)
- 137 bazilyuk (Ukr)
- 133 Littlesmallsmall (HK)
- The game with the highest accumulated score in R2:
- 249 Litllesmallsmall (HK) vs Cinderella_23 (Hun)
- The game with the lowest accumulated score in R2:
- 104 pengiun-EM (Twn) vs napalmEye (Lat) (a new season record)
- The lowest winning score R2:
- 63 vadzimir (Tut) (a new season record)
- The highest losing score R2:
- 117 Ryner-kun (Tut)
- The lowest score R2:
- 39 napalmEye (Lat)
- Chilean player adanlasheras beat last week’s longest road with 17 points at table #667809929 on move 134
- This week’s fields were slightly more productive than last week, scoring 33 points for the following players: Leuschi (Ger) and speed951 (Svk) at table #665553697, TanyaU (Ukr) at table #668300990, and Angostur4 (Ita) at table #668317360.
- A 33 point city scored by Charoling (Cat) at table #666023237 was this week’s largest metropolitan area. But why did this city score an odd number of points? It was incomplete!
- Charoling’s city contained exactly half (22) of the 44 city tiles (and all 10 shields) from the base game. Even so, there were still 11 completed cities, ten of which were in the same field, so Charoling and R4muzero (Fin) managed to score a field equaling last week’s field record and only 3 points short of this week’s record! This was possible because every splitter tile was part of two different cities (although one also contributed to the incomplete urban sprawl), leaving only two isolated city pieces on the final board. Has there ever been a WTCOC game that holds both the largest city and largest field weekly records?
- Meami (Ger) scored 51 monastery points at table #665560868 (4 complete and 2 incomplete monasteries)
- The first game between Cinderella_23 (Hun) and LittleSmallSmall (HK) saw the biggest comeback of the first two rounds: the Hong Kong player was leading 34:0, but the game ended with Cinderella_23 winning (98:94).
- A total of 3 matches ended with 5-0 scores. That makes it 7 this season so far.
- 5 games ended in a draw, 2 from the match between Croatia & Tutejšyja. These 2 draws must’ve been very locked games since they ended in a very low scoring 68-68 and 63-63 (which is also the season’s lowest winning score so far).
- Hong Kong and Taiwan have both won all of their draws so far.
- 1 duel was won by a ‘no show’, and 3 games were won by ‘time’.
Talking about winning by time…
Can you imagine Moya88 (Cze) winning by time?
Well… it happened!
Since 2009, Bekse (NL) has been struggling to remain patient while playing Moya88 (Cze), who is well known for using as much thinking time as possible during a game. This week Bekse thought to himself “lets play a bit slower this time” which resulted in one win and a solid advantage in another game… where he ended up running out of time by 3 seconds (against Moya88 of all people!). This result decisively (and ironically) lost the game, the duel, AND the match. Ouch! Playing slowly without running out of time seems to be a skill that requires practice, especially when you want to challenge the Master in it!
Mr. Curiossonne presents…
Debutants (part II)
Thailand stays on a roll in their debut season, winning their 2nd match. If we look back in time at who had the longest win streak starting since their debut, we obviously end up in the first WTCOC season (2020), where Romania holds the record of winning their first 5 duels, closely followed by Portugal (4) that same year. When we look at the new teams entering the scene after 2020, then Chili holds that record by winning their first 4 matches in 2021 (but somehow still didn’t manage to qualify for the playofs). Following Chile is Argentina (2 in 2021) the only team that could win more than once as a new team making their debut. Well done Thailand! How far can they stretch it?
Debut winning streaks:
- 5 Romania (2020)
- 4 Portugal (2020) & Chili (2021)
- 3 Japan & Germany (2020)
- 2 Catalonia (2020), Argentina (2021) & Thailand (2025)
“…Another one of last year’s newcomers, Croatia, also started this year with an impressive 5-0 win. That puts a lot of pressure on Vietnam…”
Was it prescience…? Or did our previous newsletter motivate the Vietnamese players? But the fact is that Vietnam also won their first duel of this edition and makes it that all 3 debutants of ‘24 didn’t miss their start in ‘25. Now that Finland and Croatia also won their second match, Vietnam can’t stay behind!
Player participation
- The Netherlands is the first team to have used all of their players. That said, their team only consists of 8 players.
- RCP and Hungary already used 9 of their players during the first 2 rounds.
- Next to the Netherlands… China, Spain, Italy, Hong Kong, Germany, Finland and Catalonia also gave 8 players the chance to perform already.
World Champion encounters
In Round Two we saw a duel between former World Champions UY_Scuti (Pol) and Someone_you_know (RCP). But that doesn’t make them the only one. Mr. Curiossonne dug into the past…
(The following only includes duels between former or reigning World Champions who had already earned their titles by that time)
- In the history of WTCOC to date, there have been 8 duels between reigning or former World Champions.
- There was the oddity in ‘23 where 4 World Champions were in the same group, and 3 of them (Moya88, g3rappa & Navarre79) played each other, resulting in a balanced outcome of 1 win each.
- The 4th player, Mars15 (Rom), mysteriously escaped having to play any of the other World Champions.
- UY_Scuti (Pol) and Someone_you_know (RCP) are also the Champions who have most often faced other World Champions during WTCOC (3 times each).
- 3 World Champions suffered defeats in the first 2 rounds this year:
- Someone_you _know (RCP) by UY_Scuti (Pol)
- statmatt (UK) by mpatis (Gre)
- dark_passenger84 (Gre) by Vainiria (Chl)
- The non-World Champions who have beaten World Champions most often during WTCOC:
- 3 manarori (Mex) (UY_Scuti, Someone_you_know & Mars15)
- 2 71st (RCP) & squallus (Fra)
Mr. Curiossonne’s investigations
Mr. M. Curiossonne has been investigating the professions of Carcassonne players. It should be no surprise to you that there are a lot of players involved with math, statistics or IT/programming. Besides those professions Mr. Curiossonne discovered that we have a wide range of professions among us, including pharmaceutical chemists, sport coaches, designers, tour guides, musicians, engineers, veterinarians, architects, construction workers, hairdressers, lawyers, trash collectors, … to all sorts of managers, teachers, students and logistic workers.
Some of us own board game shops: Mikhail-rus (RCP), Dohkogt (Gua) (which is also a restaurant) and kingoscar (Gua) (an online store). KatherynGen (Mal) used to own a Board Game Café, but sadly had to close it due to Covid-19.
In addition to owning the game store/restaurant SGC or Smiley Games Creations, dohkogt (Gua) has also designed two board games. Drunken Spirit is a party drinking game co-designed by dohkogt (Kenneth Pérez) and César Ocampo. The 2nd game is still in development. He has a prototype and has tested with customers and board gamers but hasn’t produced the game massively yet.
Matisek (Svk) is a board game translator for the Slovakian publisher, and is specifically involved with translation of the upcoming C3 (third edition) design of Carcassonne game.
Logan Ghanesh (Mal) is a board game publisher with Faculty of Fun, and one of the creators of Nasi Lemak The Game. Rumor has it that he was discovered by the Malaysian team while he was promoting at a local university workshop. He decided to play Carcassonne for the first time in the workshop’s tournament that was organized by the team…and won!
Alexey_LV (Lat) earns his dimes as a piano teacher and composer. Did you know he worked on pieces for the odd combination of an orchestra and a rapper? So, don’t be surprised when you hear a sudden ‘yo yo yo!’ during his stream when he plays the anthem of the winning team.
JinaJina (Bel) mainly works as a trip leader and tour guide, and sells merchandise for music bands. This means he’s on the road a lot, so when you play him he could be anywhere in the world (maybe Norway, Japan, or South Africa), or even several different countries if it’s a turn-based game.
Lichidakiller (Mex) has several jobs, but one of them is being an arborist technician. He does tree inventories in some of the green areas of the city in order to evaluate tree health and recommend maintenance measures. Does that mean his focus is more on the fields instead of city building while playing Carcassonne?
Argentinian captain bignacho610 studies video game design. So does it count as studying while he’s playing Carcassonne online?
Another Argentinian player, Lord Trooper, studies Theology… the same subject that Klaus-Jürgen Wrede (creator of the Carcassonne game) studied. Mr. Curiossonne found this to be a rather interesting coincidence.
Latvian player esedzus is a professional magician. So when you think you’re winning, he might have some tricks up his sleeve. And if you think you’ve won, it might be only an illusion! Can he change the face of a tile with a simple swoosh? “…now it is a straight road, …now it isn’t. …and I magically finished my city …ta daaah!”
Mr. Curiossonne needs your help
Mr. Curiossonne is still eager to know about any rituals our readers might have before playing an important duel. So, if you listen to a particular song during a duel or always go running in advance to clear your mind, please let us know.
Also, if you run into other team oddities, fun facts or little stories to share, please let us know through BGA, What’sApp, the community chats, smoke signals, …
Thank you for reading, building, and that breeze of magic y’all bring,
szigfrid, manarori, JinaJina & Mingo 😘
