I did discover the true power of the Quarry. I went in thinking that the Quarry's use would be to block off other players, but that would be tricky to use since you can only place walls adjacent to your own pieces, so you would be potentially screwing yourself as well.
Then I realized that if I place walls in my spaces, that makes it more likely that when I draw that terrain card, I have to go somewhere else, which really helps for capturing locations and playing up to the scoring cards that favor diversity. In a sense, it'd be like playing five buildings into a region, but it only costs you three.
I do like the game (and only played the expansion once), but I do have a couple of nitpicks.
The scoring method where you count the vertical rows is just so fidgety for me. I've only played this scoring card once, and I think there is a better way to count than what the owner of the game did (this was before I bought my own). He went through each row and added a point to each player who had something in that row. I'd have to think it'd be easier to just count for each player…probably have the player do it. So, maybe this nitpick is more about the chosen method, but it still was a bit of a chore to count the vertical rows.
In fact, I found it generally easy to get lost in the scoring. This may actually be my inexperience. Not being used to Nomads probably didn't help. I accidentally counted Nomad spaces as City spaces. In any case, I found it fidgety in general to count the different scoring methods. I don't really know how to improve that. I don't begrudge the rule, because that's what makes the game more interesting. This would make a really awesome computer game, though, especially if you are shown how a particular placement can improve your score.
There seems to be a lot of waste in the game. This isn't Donald's fault at all. This is how they shipped it. This wouldn't be the first game where I had four or five translations of the rule book, but I think this is the first time I've seen multiple translations of the cards. I even had two copies of the English translation. I can see why they did that, since some cards have the flag on the back and some don't. Still, I have an entire deck of cards that are all useless to me. I feel like I paid for something that will never see the light of day. I guess I can offer to ship them to anyone who needs replacement cards in that language.
But, it's still a fun game. I only hope that experience will help me score games more easily and quickly.
I kind of wonder if there is a variant (I haven't seen one, but that doesn't mean anything) where you actually have a hand of terrain cards. Maybe you keep two cards handy. Maybe you go crazy with three. Would that improve on the tactical side of the game when you have the opportunity to plan two or three turns ahead? I'll have to master the game first before I try that out.
