World Team Carcassonne Online Championship
2025
Week “five”
Dear lovers of breathtaking battles and memorable moments,
The final round of the group stage was nothing short of thrilling, packed with unexpected twists and dramatic moments. Teams fought tooth and nail for a spot in the playoffs, filling the matches with surprises and nail-biting finishes. A number of games became instant curiosities that will surely become iconic moments in WTCOC history. Every point counted, and the smallest margins made all the difference.
Weekly records and facts
- 17 matches, 85 duels, and 200 games were played this week
- 1 duel(s) had 1 game played (1 games total)
- 53 duels had 2 games played (106 games total)
- 31 duels had 3 games played (93 games total)
- Three teams finished the Group Stage undefeated: China (Group A), USA (Group E) and Croatia (Group G). But… this could be a bad omen, because no team has ever won WTCOC without losing at least one match during the group stage. Will these undefeated teams be able to break the curse?
- Thailand becomes the first debutant team since 2021 to progress to the playoffs. Moreover, Pakshe and co. have achieved this in a very difficult group which many had considered the “group of death”. And Thailand, by the way, also had the lowest starting player rate (43.9%) out of the 16 qualified teams.
- Croatia, Finland and Thailand are the 3 teams to progress from the group stage to the play-offs for the first time.
- Japan and RCP have maintained their perfect record of never missing the WTCOC play-offs.
- With their victory in Round 5, the USA became the first team in the history of WTCOC to have beaten Japan twice (the first occasion was in 2022).
- Catalonia and Hungary met for their 4th WTCOC group stage encounter (after 2020, 2022 and 2023) matching the existing records of Portugal vs Taiwan (2020, 2021, 2022, 2024) and Brazil vs Colombia (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024). The latter two teams will meet for the 5th consecutive year (!) as they are scheduled to face each other in the first playoff round.
- Tutejšyja was probably the unluckiest team of all this year, losing all of their matches 2:3. Their game difference was only –6, confirming that they were always just a hair’s breadth away from victory. (In 3 out of their 4 matches they won either equal or only one game less than their opponent.) They also had the 4th lowest starting player rate of all teams, starting only in 42% of their games.
- Only 1 game ended in a draw in this round. As a result, Uruguay really put the squeeze on Poland, who were fighting for qualification (see below).
- Let’s see who performed the best in the group stage:
- GUN007 (Tha), Nallerheim (Fin) and Muzhachello (Ltu) are the three players winning 5 duels. They lost only 1, 2 and 4 games, respectively.
- 7 other players won 4 out of their 4 games played: Zedson (Bra), mitaocat (Chn), qazxswedc (Chn), Meami (Ger), James81 (Ita), Natpeera-ch (Tha) and Smile- (Ukr)
- Winning 4 out of 5 duels: Larpaattori (Fin), CTCTCTCTCT (HK), UY_Scuti (Pol).
- 10 players won 3 duels out of 3. One of them, barry10 (Ita) won all three duels by 2:0.
- GUN007 is also the first player in this WTCOC to win a game with less than 3 seconds remaining on the clock (at table #677832047). In 7 other instances, the player in time trouble lost the game.
- This was a week of extremes: The highest and lowest winning scores from round five were 11 points higher and 7 points lower than the previous records after rounds 1-4… that’s an 18 point increase in “extremeness”! 😜
- It’s worth examining both record breaking games:
- At table #678355204, the third game between Adanlasheras (Chl) and statmatt (UK) was a full-on point tsunami, with the Chilean winning 165-142, and setting new records for the highest winning and combined (307 points) scores. How did it happen? As usual, it was a result of some high-scoring shared features: a 38-point shared city (the largest city of the week), a second shared city worth 20 points, a shared 10-point road, plus a shared 30-point field. Adanlasheras almost scored 100 points with cities (98).
- With less than a third of the points compared to the above-mentioned record breaking game, Mendeleiev (Uru) and Kurasant123 (Pol) scored 54:42 at table #678408611, breaking this year’s lowest winning score record and falling only 2 points short of the lowest combined score record.
- But that’s not all! This game is even more interesting because Mendeleiev won in spite of drawing only three (3!) citycap tiles during the entire game. To demonstrate how impressive this is:
- There were 21 games during the group stage where one player drew only 6 citycaps, and only 4 of those players were able to win. (19%)
- There were 5 games where one player drew only 5 citycaps, and none of those players managed to win their game. (0%)
- There was 1 game where a player drew only 4 citycaps. He was able to win, but it was Alexey. 😁
- Kurasant123 was not crushed by this defeat, however, and eventually won the duel which proved to be of key importance for the Polish team.
- But that’s not all! This game is even more interesting because Mendeleiev won in spite of drawing only three (3!) citycap tiles during the entire game. To demonstrate how impressive this is:
- Other feature records for this week include:
- The largest field, worth 33 points, was scored by nazario77 (Ukr) at table #676465219.
- A 15 point unfinished road was scored by Rasdarot (Cro) at table #676465219.
- Claudio Jorquera (Chl) scored 40 monastery points at table #678345071.
- Mikhail-rus is the only player who participated in more than 2 duels without starting a single game, but he still won 5 out of 8 games (2 out of 3 duels).
Down to the Wire: The Thrilling Final Moments of the Group Stage
Several groups had plenty of excitement in this final week. Colombia and Greece could tell you all about the suspense leading up to Colombia’s win by a single point in their final and deciding game, but it was Group B that produced a “top ten most memorable Carcassonne moment” during the very last game of the group stage. Going into the match, it was clear that Poland needed a victory against Uruguay to progress to the playoffs, as a loss would see them drop to fourth place in their group. In their very last and deciding game, Uruguay’s BDDL1 managed to finish the game leading by one point… but he ran out of time by 4 seconds! Poland therefore made it to the playoffs, and even placed first in their group!
It’s also worth remembering how Poland progressed to the 2023 European Team Carcassonne Online Championship (ETCOC) playoffs thanks to a huge blunder by an opponent during the last round of the group stage… and then Poland won the tournament! Will this give them a similar boost?
Team rotations
Out of the 367 players registered for WTCOC 2025, 349 participated in at least one duel (95.1%), and 10 players can still hope for a chance to play during the playoffs.
Overall, 15 teams provided all 10 registered players with the opportunity to compete in their either five or four group-stage matches. Meanwhile, 13 teams gave playing time to 9 players (4 of which only had 9 players on the team), and 11 teams rotated 8 players into action (4 of which only had 8 players in their squad).
Group A had the highest number of players given the chance to compete, with only 3 out of the 60 registered players missing the opportunity to play, including vizecske, the highest-ranked player of the Hungarian team – making Hungary the only team where the top-ranked player didn’t compete in a single duel.
Group E had the highest percentage of players who took part in at least one duel (46 out of 47 players which is 97.9%).
In Group C, 5 of the 6 teams provided all registered players with the opportunity to play.
Vietnam called up two new players for the final two rounds. One of them found himself in a curious situation, playing only the first game of both of his duels. As it turned out he was unaware of the format in Round 4, and in Round 5, he simply couldn’t continue playing due to work commitments.
Mr. Curiossonne presents…
When Legends Stumble
Round 5 of the WTCOC delivered some of the most surprising results we’ve seen so far as the world’s elite players faced unexpected setbacks.
All nine World Carcassonne Champions participating in this year’s WTCOC were in their team’s lineup this week. Six(!) of them were defeated, a 7th was in serious danger of losing and five of them lost 0:2. During the previous four rounds, the champions lost only five duels altogether – and one of those losses was to another world champion in the R2 clash between UY_Scuti and Someone_you_know. Incidentally, those two “survived” the group stage, while statmatt was the only other World Champion to do so.
Champions from other noteworthy tournaments also struggled this week: The winners of the 2024 and 2025 MSO Grand Prix, krisna (Lat) and Alexey_LV (Lat) both lost their round 5 duels in R5. Luckily for them, their teammates demonstrated their own skills to earn Latvia a spot in the playoffs.
The winner of King of Carcassonne World Championship in both 2024 and 2025, bignacho910 from Argentina, also lost his duel..as did the winner of the 2024 KoC Tournament of Champions, Lawyer (Ukr).
As the tournament continues to unfold, these unexpected defeats serve as a reminder that in the world of Carcassonne, no one is invincible. With the stakes getting higher, every round promises more shocks and drama!
Thank you for reading, sharing & caring
szigfrid, manarori, JinaJina & Mingo 😘