Curiosities — Round of 16

World Team Carcassonne Online Championship
2026
(Week 7)

Hello fellow Carcassonnians,

This week's Curiosities has a little bit of everything: rookies defeating established stars, national champions being crowned, records quietly falling, and reports of an unsettling new dimension to getting "Raf'd."

As teams prepare for the final knockout stages, Mr. Curiossonne took a final stroll through the group-stage stories that might otherwise have slipped under the radar.

Week in review

• 22 duels had 2 games played (44 games total)
• 18 duels had 3 games played (54 games total)
• Of the 8 matches, 5 matches ended with close 3-2 scores, and 3 ended 4-1
• 1 game ended in a draw.
• 5 games were lost on time.
• 4 tiles were discarded in 4 different games (CCCC ×4)

Weekly records

Score records

• The highest winning scores in a game:
  • 131 Someone_you_know (RCP)
• The game with the highest combined score:
  • 240 Littlesmallsmall (HK) vs Mars15 (Rom) at table #860655249
• The lowest winning score:
  • 66 Should (Jap) at table #859909764
• The game with the lowest combined score:
  • 127 Should (Jap) vs K_yuuki (Twn)

Feature records

• The longest incomplete road:
  • 13 tomatoken (Chn) and TRojasHenao (Col) at table #859957574
• The largest city:
  • 36 herchu (Arg) #860977363
• The largest ruin:
  • 21 Hellkkitte (Arg) at #860979048
• The largest field:
  • 30 HotlyHotly (Twn) at table #859881308
• Monastery points:
  • 44 giulioTm (Ita) (4 completed and 1 incomplete) at table #858205652.
• Tiles discarded
  • 4 CCCC was discarded 4 times

Game play records

• Latest first point scoring:
  • 16th tile: trinidadec (Ukr) vs Someone_you_know (RCP) at table #860788937
• Most meeples placed:
  • Kithara (Jap) placed meeples 23 times on table #859881308

Time records

• Shortest game:
  • 8:30 tomatoken (Chn) and TRojasHenao (Col) at table #859963305
• Longest game without time penalties:
  • 28:31 should (Jap) and K_Yuuki (Twn) at table #859888308
• Shortest duel:
  • 23:39 mejuto1408 (Bra) and Asx3t0s (Gre) at table #859884208
• Longest duel without time penalties:
  • 1:18:21 mitaocat (Chn) and Pechitoz (Col) at table #859945151
• Shortest winning think time:
  • 3:11 Smile- (Ukr) at table #860780937
• Longest winning think time (tie):
  • 14:51 Pechitoz (Col) at table #859958786
  • 14:51 Pechitoz (Col) at table #859974923
  • No, you aren’t seeing double. Pechitoz actually managed to duplicate his weekly record…to the second.

Tile Carcanopoly achievements

• All 6 monasteries (1/88 odds) - webbi (Arg) was the only player to draw all 6 monasteries this week. This surely must have been appreciated, especially when playing against viv- (France).
• All 7 ‘big city’ tiles (1/352 odds) - Santiblader (Arg) got this “boom or bust” combo.
• Quasi-Carcanopoly: 17 of 22 endcap tiles (1/727 odds) - UY_Scuti (Pol)

Rookies of the Week

A total of 10 rookies played this week, but only 4 won their duels. But which rookie achievement was the most meaningful? Once again, we couldn't bring ourselves to award Rookie of the Week to just one player.

f kenta (Jap)

Helped their team qualify for the quarterfinals with a flawless victory over former Japanese player ezitakuto_TRAPS (Twn). So far, f kenta remains unbeaten in their debut season, winning all three of their duels by a 2-0 scoreline. Great job!

Hellkkitte & maxi8830 (Arg)

Entrusted with the challenge of facing a strong French team, both stood their ground and won their duels, helping Argentina secure a place in the last eight. Very well done!

Spotlight on…

Squallus (Fra)

We overlooked a noteworthy moment a few weeks ago… but better honoured late than never!

In the final round of the group stage, France faced Romania. In that match, squallus defeated former World Champion Marian Curcan (aka Mars15). It was squallus's fourth WTCOC victory against a World Champion, having previously beaten senglar earlier this season, statmatt in 2024, and Mars15 back in 2022.

This makes squallus the clear leader in WTCOC victories against World Champions!

• 4x squallus (Fra)
• 3x manarori (Mex) & UY_Scuti (Pol)
• 2x RamboPang43200 (Mal), Someone_you_know, 71st & Mikhail_rus (all RCP) & HotlyHotly (Twn)

Team Fun Stuff

Celebrating somewhere new

Photo of JinaJina celebrating another Belgian playoff victory. Any guesses where he is this week? Hint: it’s not the same country as last week.

National Championships

Meanwhile, the Icelandic National Championship was held in Reykjavik. Icelandic star players bobondi and Narfi had to step aside this year as two female players took over the tournament and faced off in the final to determine the new National Champion. The honor ultimately went to Eyrùn Halla Kristjánsdóttir. Is there an Icelandic team in the making?

• Other recent National Championship winners that we are aware of:
  • Greece - JohnMav (highlighted in Week 3)
  • Germany - Leuschi
  • Italy - giulioTm
  • Lithuania - Liudeselis
  • United Kingdom - Lord Terrycloth

Frustrating luck

Tarakanov28 (RCP) lost a tiebreaker this week against adrear (Ukr)... and to make matters worse, adrear discarded the CCCC tile during the game, depriving Tarakanov28 of an anticipated final turn (table #860804220).

This was the second such occurrence this season. Carcharoth 9 (Bel) suffered the exact same fate against KR_Knight_Realm (Bra) in Round 3.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term "getting Raf'd" (the topic of last week's Fake News bulletin)...

What is “Getting Raf’d”?

Getting “Raf’d” (or “Raffed”) is what happens when a starting player loses a Carcassonne tiebreaker.

Here’s the backstory:

CraftyRaf (Bel) met with a BGA representative a couple years ago to present a list of suggestions from the International Carcassonne Community on how to improve the platform for competitive Carcassonne players (and WTCOC in particular).

One of those suggestions was to implement an optional Carcassonne tiebreaker for elimination tournaments and WTCOC games. Then, one day, players suddenly found themselves winning—or more memorably, losing—ties in all Carcassonne games!

Discussions about possible BGA changes had taken place in various forums and in the Carcassonne WhatsApp group. Many players also knew that Raf had personally met with a BGA representative and that a tiebreaker system was among the topics discussed. Even so, it came as a shock when ties suddenly started being broken automatically. Many players who, upon reflection, agreed that the change made sense still couldn't resist "blaming" Raf whenever they found themselves on the wrong end of a tiebreaker.

And thus, the expression “getting Raf’d” was born.

Thank you for reading, sharing & caring,
szigfrid, JinaJina, Mingo, kaika87, posij118  😘