Curiosities week ‘three’

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World Team Carcassonne Online Championship

2025

Week “three”

Dear curious fans of the Curiosities,

The third week passed us by faster than a Japanese bullet train, and we’ve passed the halfway point of the group stage. Some teams are already fighting for their survival, clinging to the hope of advancing, while others are inching closer to securing a spot in the playoffs.

Weekly records

  • The highest points scored in a game in Round 3:
  • The game with the highest combined score in R3:
    • 275 Roide2 (Fin) vs vallics (Hun) at table #669350929
  • The lowest winning score, the lowest losing score and – as a consequence – the lowest combined score in R3:
    • 61 + 33 = 94 203club (Chn) vs easttung (HK) at table #671150302  (new season record in all three categories)
  • The highest losing score R3:
  • 30 point fields are back in style after last week’s spree of 33 point fields, as demonstrated by Matej_11 (Svk) and Someone_you_know (RCP) at table #668852467, Nallerheim (Fin) and kissemo (Hun) at table #669362491, yuhaihanemi (Twn) at table #671545028, and by jcvargasg (Chl) and kingoscar (Gua) at table #671872041.
  • JinaJina (Bel) completed a 48 point city at table #670337646, falling just short of this year’s largest city record, But… unlike the 50 point city from the first week, he didn’t have to share those points with his opponent!
  • There were 4 different 15 point roads scored this week by balala fairy (Chn), panpan712 (HK), danisvh (Cat), and Logan Ghanesh (Mal) 
  • Bekse (Ned) scored 45 monastery points at table #671597404 (5 complete and 0 incomplete monasteries)
  • At table #671640079 Glovir (Por) scored 51 field points (new season record) but even that was not enough to win the game.
  • At table #671140873 Sunny369 (HK) placed his last meeple on turn #20 (51 tiles left), and then… he never got one back. Or actually, he did, but only with his last tile when the scoreboard lead of his opponent, Secret_Star (Chn) was 30:0. But this unfortunate game didn’t discourage the Hong Kong player, who finally managed to win the duel!
  • 1 match ended with 5-0 this round (Ukr vs Rom). That makes it 8 this season so far.
  • But was that 5-0 an easy win for the Ukrainian team? Not at all. All 5 duels ended 2-1, making it only the second match this season with the maximum possible number of games played (the first one being Finland’s 4-1 win over Hungary).
  • 3 players ran out of time this week and 2 duels were lost by a no show.
  • 4 players were very close to running out of time, with under 3 seconds remaining. (One of them finished the game with 0:00 on their clock!) Interestingly, all four players lost their games, probably the time pressure didn’t help their endgame decisions.
  • Only 1 game ended in a draw this round. Of Course Hong Kong was involved, for the third round in a row, and they won them all! Maybe the Finnish team should take this into account for their confrontation with Hong Kong in week 4

“Hot Guns”

Taking a look at how things currently stand in the group stage, most players have had some ups and downs. 298 players have played at least 1 duel so far, which is 82% of the registered players. Germany is the only team to have fielded all 10 registered players, but due to different group sizes, some teams haven’t played their third games yet.

  • Of the 298 players who have already played this year, only 2 have won all 3 of their duels 2-0:
    • HotlyHotly (Twn) & GUN007 (Tha)
  • 10 other players have cheered victory in their 3 duels, but not without losing at least 1 game:
    • Moya88 (Cze), Larpaatori & Nallerheim (Fin), Muzhachello (Lit), IMD5 (Mex), kspttw & UY_Scuti (Pol), Zokanero (Esp), adrear (Ukr) & Zedson (Bra)
  • 3 players have won both of their two duels 2-0:
    • JinaJina (Bel), Gladki_Alex (Tut) & squallus (Fra)

Debutants (part III)

Thailand also won their third match in their debut season, matching Japan & Germany’s debut winning streaks… But can Thailand keep winning to match Romania’s debut streak? Or will Romania defend their debut record by beating Thailand in their direct confrontation in Round 4?

Debut winning streaks:

  • 5 Romania (2020)
  • 4 Portugal (2020) & Chile (2021)
  • 3 Japan & Germany (2020), Thailand (2025)
  • 2 Catalonia (2020), Argentina (2021)

National Championships

Busy days for some teams, because this week Lithuania and Belgium held their National Championships 

In Lithuania, 3 of the current team members were participating, but none of them finished in the top 3. The winner is a female player known on BGA as niamniam.

In Belgium, 8 of the 10 team members battled for the title. Raf Mesotten (aka CraftyRaf) finally won his first – and long expected – National Title by beating obiwonder in a tense final game. Unlike team debutant Valmir79 (who was one of the 8 players who made it to the playoffs) the previous 3 National Champions (JinaJina, 71Knives & N2xU) all missed making it to the playoffs due to a tight tie breaker.

Clock Curiosity

An interesting clock phenomenon has been captured during one of Alexey’s WTCOC streams. In this portion of the stream you can observe that Loku_elo’s (Esp) clock jumped from 11:45 to 11:37 (8 seconds!) at the end of his turn (move #69 at table #668338051).

So what’s up with that?

  • The game log confirms that both clocks were showing the correct time remaining (9:27 for Sir Gus and 11:58 for Loku_elo) at the moment Sir Gus placed his meeple marking the end of his turn (move #69).
  • In the video, we can see that neither player’s clock was counting down during the scoring animation, and that Loku_elo’s clock resumed counting down from 11:58 once the animation was complete.
  • However, when Loku_elo finished his turn, the time shown on his clock in the video (which had gone down to 11:45 by that time) jumped further down to 11:37 time remaining. 
  • The game log confirms that 11:37 was the correct time remaining for Loku_elo at the end of his turn, because he placed a tile 21 seconds after Sir Gus placed his meeple.

The conclusions are: 

  • The animations showing the points scored during Sir Gus’s turn occurred during Loku_elo’s turn. 
  • Although the animations didn’t shorten Loku_elo’s thinking time, the clock failed to show that Loku_elo’s thinking time was being consumed while the animations were running. The time jump was simply due to a time correction that was needed because the clock didn’t start counting down until after the animations had finished. It should be noted, however, that Loku_elo couldn’t have placed his tile while the animations were running. 
  • The same phenomenon can also be observed in another video clip (here) which shows Mars15 completing 4 features in one move. Again, neither clock was counting down while the animations were running, and when pchan19 finished his turn, his clock had to skip 17 seconds to re-synch with the server clock!

So what can we do?  

  • Hit the refresh button (F5) to refresh the game, skip the remaining animations, and re-synch the active player’s clock to be consistent with the BGA server’s time. Unfortunately, refreshing also takes up time and the game is not visible while the table is refreshing.
  • Ask BGA to add a Carcassonne option to disable animations (which has already been done for other games including Lost Ruins of Arnak and Terraforming Mars). If you think this is a good idea, check out this BGA Suggestion and upvote it!
  • Ask BGA if they can make active player clocks take animation time into account. If you think this is also a good idea, check out this BGA Bug Report and upvote it!

Unanswered questions:

  • Why do player’s clocks wait until animations have finished before starting to count down? 
  • Is there a significant correlation between Ervin_G’s (Rom) shockingly short thinking times and the number of features completed during his opponent’s turns? Or has he always been secretly refreshing his games whenever he needs to skip animations? 😉

Keep in mind:

Whenever a player finishes their turn by placing a tile or a meeple (but before the animation happens), the BGA server ‘tells’ all clocks to reset (if needed) to show the correct time remaining according to the server. This command ensures that any time discrepancies that might arise between the BGA server and the clocks that players and viewers can see on their screens are removed at the end of each turn. Therefore this particular issue is mostly just a curiosity until the final turns of a game, at which time a few seconds can be critical! We are aware of at least one case (video here) where the clock jumped on the player’s last turn, resulting in his thinking time going into negative. 

Mr. Curiossonne presents…

Mr. Curiossonne’s investigations

Mr. Curiossonne can’t believe that none of his assistants thought to tell him that Navarre79 (Ger) is a board game developer and designer, and one of the creators of the escape room board game series Exit – The Game.

Mr. Curiossonne tried to discover if there were any rituals performed by our players before taking part in an important duel. Not many people volunteered information about how they usually prepare themselves, but listening to music seems to be a bit of a thing. 

Mexican player Lichidakiller declared he puts up the same music session of Nordic folk (https://youtu.be/rkUIGHmnw8E?si=cgQ4zSl3ozGgRdDx) when he has to play a duel in an international competition. It helps him to relax and concentrate.

Latvian player and streamer Alexey_LV also gave us his secret. At the start of every single WTCOC game, he turns on the same piece in his headphones: “’V mlhah” (In The Mists) by Leoš Janáček: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWWAXFCk4m4&ab_channel=ArielWoy. But it isn’t so much for relaxing as it is a tactical strategy. The song lasts for about 14 minutes. So whenever it stops, he has a sudden silence in his ears, indicating that he needs to start focusing harder to recount tiles and points for the endgame. Does that mean that the key to beating Alexey is finishing the game within those 14 minutes? It’s worth a try!

For others, music is absolutely a no-go, since they can’t concentrate. But maybe they haven’t found the right music yet. Please comment in the box below if music is for you a ‘go’ or a ‘no-go’, and if ‘go’ …what do you listen to? Mr. Curiossonne is véry curious!

Not all players have music rituals for relaxing. Helic (HK) simply loves playing with his cat before he starts a duel. Helic also told Mr. Curiossonne that he avoids playing Carcassonne before his duel on the days when he has a match.  What are our readers’ thoughts about that? Do you avoid playing, or do you play to warm up? Do you seek a challenge or confidence building? Please share your opinion with Mr. Curiossonne in the comment box below. He’s véry, véry curious 🙂.

Most of the teams have some sort of a team or community group where they fire each other up or simply wish team mates good luck. Croatia takes this to the next level. They meet in their “locker room” (a Discord voice channel) and hype each other like a real football team. Mr. Curiossonne wonders if they are also chest bumping each other through their screens in the process? 🤔 They also have another voice channel named “stands”, so that players who don’t play can watch, comment and discuss the games.

Italian captain pollo_verde claims that his team has no rituals at all… although a guy might grab his ba**s to ward off bad luck when things get tough.  

Well, you guessed right. Mr. Curiossonne is eager to know if your team is doing something similar.

Thank you for reading, sharing & caring,

szigfrid, manarori, JinaJina & Mingo  😘

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