Curiosities week 2 - 2026
World Team Carcassonne Online Championship
2026
Greetings fellow Carcassonnians,
Week two of WTCOC 2026 is already behind us, and once again it delivered thrilling duels, surprising upsets, record-breaking performances and plenty of curious moments for Mr. Curiossonne to investigate.
“Another Week, Another Champion”
…thought Bluste (Croatia) as he faced the two-time world champion dark_passenger84 from Greece in week 2—having already encountered the reigning world champion in week 1: China’s qazxswedc.
Now officially out of world champions to battle within his group, Bluste may have to turn his attention to the runners-up. That opportunity could come as early as Week 3, when Croatia faces Hungary—the squad of 2024 world vice-champion szigfrid.
Speaking of world champions and runners-up… one of the most anticipated matches of Round 2 featured the 2023 World Championship finalists: statmatt (UK) and Alexey_LV (Lat). Back then, the British player prevailed—but this time Alexey flipped the script, winning 2:1 and securing a crucial 3:2 victory for Team Latvia.
In total, no fewer than 10 world champions are competing in this year’s WTCOC. The highest concentration sits in Group D, which features three of them. All three appeared in the Catalonia vs Romania match this week—but without giving us a direct clash. That leaves one final chance for a world champion showdown in the group stage: China vs Greece in Round 4. Will we finally get it?
Week in review
- Number of games played: 198.
- Number of duels played: 80.
- 42 duels had 2 games played (84 games total).
- 38 duels had 3 games played (114 games total).
- Only one match (out of 16) ended in a 5:0 sweep, while 9 finished with a tight 3:2 scoreline.
- 3 games ended in a draw.
- 0 games were lost due to no-shows. Yay! Can we keep it this way for the rest of this year?
- Just like last week, 5 games were lost on time.
- 5 tiles were discarded across 5 different games (CCCC ×4 and RRRR ×1), still the only two tile types discarded so far in this WTCOC.
Weekly records
- The highest winning scores in a game:
- 146 Muzhachello (Ltu) (new season record)
- 133 King_Deded4d5 (Aus)
- 133 maxi8830 (Arg)
- The game with the highest combined score:
- 277 Muzhachello (Ltu) vs Natpeera-ch (Tha) at table #841983030 (new season record)
- The lowest winning score:
- 63 UY_Scuti (Pol) at table #842531946 (new season record)
- The game with the lowest combined score:
- 114 Tatan D (Col) vs portgard (Vnm) at table #841950023 (new season record)
- The highest losing score:
- The longest road:
- 16 ComplixVandh (Mex) helping secure the win with an incomplete road at table #842011794.
- The largest completed city:
- 40 Niangoflow (Cat), in a winning WTCOC debut (table #840650533).
- The largest ruin:
- 30 Megot Noskill (Aus)… but not enough for the win (table #842369281) (new season record)
- The largest field:
- 33 Shared by danita91 (Ecu) and FEIFER90 (Esp) shared the field in their game at table #842482679. Meanwhile, fields proved decisive for chonps (Cze) and Lichidakiller (Mex) in their respective wins at tables #842356217 and #842005965
- Monastery points:
- 41 zacbell (USA) (3 completed and 2 incomplete) with a win at table #842546827. (new season record)
- Latest first point scoring:
- 29th tile TerranPL (Pol) opened the scoring after more than a third of the game had passed without a single completed feature at table #842538846, (new WTCOC record? Last week’s 24th tile record already topped 2025 records)
Fun facts
- Three matches ended with an equal number of game wins for each team—but only one winning team.
- Greece (won) vs Croatia (7-7)
- Netherlands (won) vs Italy (7-7)
- Thailand (won) vs Lithuania (6-6)
- Helge_H (Swe) must have taken inspiration from Australia’s Megot Noskill (aka “Megot Allcurves” after drawing all 9 curves in one game last week). This week Helge discovered that all (8) straight roads lead straight to Hell_ge (claiming the first “Straight to Hell” achievement at table #842426441). Will anyone ever claim the mythical “All Caps” achievement?
- This week, two more players earned the “Megot Allcurves” achievement: martypartyouje (Cze) at table #842355006 and FanaticalLime93 (UK) at table #842542016.
- Let’s put the “Megot Allcurves” achievement into perspective. So far this year, we’ve seen all 9 curves drawn by one player in 3 of the 385 games played—something that should only occur about once every 452 games on average.
- martypartyouje wasn’t done there—he also drew all 6 monasteries in his second game this week (no win, though, at table #842364649). Meanwhile, guguguleader (Chn) did win after drawing all 6 at table #841956410.
- maister35 (Col) drew all 8 “big city” tiles at table #841947199—and won..
- Average meeples placed: 16.83 (virtually identical to Round 1) Average points per meeple: 5.03
- King_Deded4d5 (Aus) not only posted the 2nd-highest score of this week (133) but also completed their duel in just 4 minutes and 4 seconds—already matching the blistering pace of Ervin_G (Rom) and Matej_11 (Slo) from last year.
- The shortest game of the round? Not Australian this time. That honor goes to portgard (Vie) vs Tatan D (Col), finished in 8:15.
- Meanwhile, Chile continues its love affair with long games. After last week’s 29:41 long nailbiting decider with Chile’s ChrisRamirez, Vainiria (Chl) and Berna1871 (Bra) pushed it even further—29:54. Both players finished with almost no time left (4 and 2 seconds). An extra scoring animation on either player’s last turn could easily have caused the other to lose on time!
- Three games ended with a draw:
- guguguleader (Chn) vs SANAQUI (Per)
- AnnenMay (RCP) vs danielayala94 (Mex)
- JohnMav (Gre) vs Tompa99 (Cro)
- The latter game was crucial for Team Greece in their 3:2 success over Croatia.
- Argentina, China, and Spain started first in fewer than one-third of their games—yet all three still won their matchups. Overall, though, first-player advantage held strong at 56.5%.
- Biggest ELO upset: stealdogfood (Vie) won a game with a -428 ELO difference.
- Mr. Curiossonne had to do a double take this week when checking out the Vietnamese players. Did you know that they have players named stealdogfood and stealcatfood on their team? We hope they are feeding their 😿&🐶 with that food.
Rookies of the Week
Niangoflow & ErDeivit (Cat)
After last week’s breakout performance from Steam4206, Catalonia doubled down—fielding two new rookies against Romania. And they delivered. In style. One defeated CCL finalist Ervin_G. The other took down former world champion g3rappa 😲
Catalonia has now introduced four rookies—three of whom have already made a massive impact, beating the world’s highest ELO-ranked player, a former world champion, and a CCL finalist.
No pressure, Mademova 😅 (Catalonia’s 4th rookie)
A few honorable mentions:
Japan’s debutants are matching that level, with 4 out of 5 winning all their duels so far. Now all eyes turn to the fifth: marusingfire.
Three debutants played and won both of their teams’ duels.
- KingDeded4d5 (Aus) 2x 2-0
- f kenta (Jap) 2x 2-0
- Temrak (Esp) 2-0 / 2-1
Both danita91 (Ecu) and Helge_H (Swe) made history by making the first point ever for their respective teams.
32 rookies played this week—15 won their duels. Congrats to all!
Mr. Curiossonne presents…
Mr. Curiossonne needs your help training for his nationals
Watching all these WTCOC games has gotten Mr. Curiossonne hyped up about his own national qualifiers to the World Championship. He really should start training more intensively for that. Fellow WTCOC Lithuanian player Liudeselis even contacted us this past week to share that he won the Lithuanian national championship, defeating his fellow team-mate KurKestutis (Ltu) barely 24 hours after winning his duel 2-0 vs GUN007 (Tha). It was surely an eventful and memorable couple of days for the Lithuanian player.
On the topic of national qualifiers… Mr. Curiossonne is excited to learn more about any memorable moments from your own events. Maybe it would help with his training. Do share these stories with us for possible inclusion in future editions of the Curiosities. To get the meeple tumbling, a little birdie (ahem – the one writing this) informed us that no time limit was set during his country’s very first national qualifiers back in 2014, and the final game ended up taking almost two hours, late into the night – and the players (and organizer) were close to being chased out from the event venue. Can you guess which country this is?
Thank you for reading, sharing & caring,
szigfrid, JinaJina, Mingo, kaika87, posij118 😘
