Today I won Carcassonne by one point.
Tim actually had a huge 22 point town early on in the game, and I thought I’d lost it.
However, I think a sneaky two-men-in-a-field meant I caught up.
We played with the River expansion, which I feel makes the start of the game more interesting: forcing a shape and many options.
We also properly read the Abbot rules this time and realised that you can optionally pick up the Abbot on turns where you’ve not played a meeple. That adds an additional ‘push your luck’ excitement when deciding if you should stick with your investment or pull out early.