Thoughts on Carcassonne (and its expansions)

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I must say, I am quite taken with Klaus-Jurgen Wrede's Carcassonne and all of it's add-ons. It's a nice, kind introduction to the world of German-style board games, and is refreshing after one too many games of Catan. Building a countryside piece by piece and capturing points for completed features manages to be both competitive and very gentle, due to almost no penalties in the scoring process. For a further description of the main game, go check out the link to the wiki-page at the beginning of this paragraph: from here on out, I'm going to give my thoughts on the many, many expansions.

Regular Expansions

1. Inns & Cathedrals

The first expansion to get if you're just starting out, the additional pieces are easy to understand and the additional rules are easy to follow. The inclusion of score markers helps for this and all other expansions, when it's very easy to score over 100 points and thus fly off the original score-board. ***

2. Traders & Builders

Here we start the tradition of additional play mechanics bringing nothing more than egregious point expanders (the Trade Goods and Pig being the main offenders), but the main draw of this expansion is the Builder, which can really shake things up by allowing people to take two turns in a row. Making it easier for players to aim for larger features, although once again being a point multiplier, definitely changes how one plays the game. *****

3. The Princess & The Dragon

Despite owning a copy, I still haven't had a chance to test this expansion out! From what I've read of the instructions, I'm liking the idea of a communally moved dragon that can remove followers (and the additional twist of knight-removing Princess tiles), but the Fairy mechanic seems like it would engender more of a tug-of-war than actual game play. I hope to try this one out this weekend.

4. Abbey & Mayor

This is the poster child for "new game mechanics designed solely to garner more points," but I like the mechanics none-the-less. The "wild-card" Abbey tile is an interesting addition, along with the farmer-shuffling "barn" and traveling "wheelbarrow" pieces. While this expansion might not do anything big in terms of changing game play, I've found enjoyment in it. ****

5. The Tower

Now here's a real game changer! While I found the premise to be interesting, I found the practice to be a bigger change than I thought: The ability to capture other player's pieces changed the whole tone of game play, and much of the easy, kindly nature of the game was replaced with a much more cautious and bitter outlook by the players. My main problem is how unbalanced it feels: it's far too easy to capture other players meeple. Towers can only be built on tower tiles, but the sheer number of these tiles makes the point almost moot. While the original emphasized clever tile placement to edge other players out of points, it seems that the Tower has more emphasis on yoinking meeple back and forth than building interesting features. The one time I played I found the whole affair to be much more spiteful than before, with the spirit of the original (rewarding clever players without penalizing others) almost non-existent. **

Mini Expansions

1. The River I and II

An interesting addition, the starts by laying down a river tile by tile, forming a bigger starting area. The second River expansion adds a split in the river (as well as support for the other expansions). Well worth it for some easy variety. ***

2. King

A sort of port-over of the "Longest Road" and "Largest Army" mechanic from Catan. Whoever builds the largest city gets control of the King, who nets them additional points from every completed city at the end of the game. Ditto for the Robber Baron with roads. More simple variety, but once again in the "earn more points" section. ***

3. Cult and Siege

Here are some interesting additions: Cults are Anti-Cloisters, scoring the same but considered "in contention" if each are placed within a certain distance of each other. Whichever one gets scored first deprives the other of earning points upon completion. Siege tiles, like the "Cathedrals" of the first expansion, deprive cities of any partial points at the end of the game if the city remains incomplete. Instead of knights being stuck, however, players have the option of removing a knight from a besieged city if a cloister is nearby. I'd pick this expansion over "King" if I wanted a more interesting game. ****

4. The Count of Carcassonne

By far my favorite of the mini expansions, this one also changes the nature of the game, but succeeds where The Tower fails. The game starts with a twelve-tile City of Carcassonne that everything gets built around, but players can choose to place one of their meeple in one of the four sections of the city instead of on features as normal, in addition to moving "The Count" to one of the four city sections. Whenever *any* feature is completed, players have the option of "paratrooping" any of their meeple in to the feature from the corresponding section of the city (unless The Count is in that section), forcing the sharing or stealing of points depending on the final meeple-count. Confusing, initially, but incredibly fun when people start using the mechanic. *****


There is a new expansion out called "The Wheel of Fate" that I hope to get my hands on, but it isn't quite an expansion because it can be played by itself in addition to the regular game.

Now, back to bed, I'm still recovering from some nasty bug. :(


Enough, More Later.
- James