Wagon movement on completion of a feature

Question

The rules for the Wagon state that when the feature it is placed on is completed, it can be move to an unclaimed, incomplete connected feature. To my reading, this means that the feature it is moved to does not need to be directly connected to the feature just completed, as it does not explicitly say this.

However, in the Annotated Rules, it says the wagon may only be moved to a feature directly connected. I'm wondering how this conclusion is reached, and whether my interpretation of the rules in the box is valid?

Answer 1

You are correct that the English translation of the rule says nothing about direct:

...move it to a connected incomplete and unoccupied road, city or monastery.

But this is just a (sadly typical) garbling of the original German rules which clearly state (emphasis added) that the feature must be directly connected

...oder in ein direkt angrenzendes Gebiet (Straße, Stadt oder Kloster) versetzen.

So the conclusion in the Annotated Rules is reached by referring to the original German rules for the game. Your interpretation of the English rules is fair, but the rules in the box are (as is often the case with the English rules for Carcassonne) wrong.

Answer 2

It seems logical that the wagon can only move to a directly connected unclaimed feature, since the example in the Abbey & Mayor rulebook only depicts this scenario and the annotated rules emphasize it.