Carcassonne

[shynra]

Hi Everyone,

I didn't see a Carcassonne thread - not sure if it needs one - but I just heard that its under a new publisher now! Who so far has only committed to re-releasing 2 of the old expansions (I have not looked into it - just news from the local board game store + saw the Dragon expansion is going for ££ at the mo! )

I have only played with the based set as the winter edition and was gonna grab the carcassonne dragon and princess expansion as the sound of dragons destroying stuff so you may switch to a quick scoring tactic sounded fun.

I am getting tired of the base set + gingerbread - Is there any expansions you recommend?

This Big box looks good for a cheap boost (in German) I assume its fine - ill just print off English instructions.

edit: Reading a little more - it seems most people expect the new publisher to re-release most of the old stuff with a few exceptions. The back of the tiles are identical to the old ones but has new art on the front. But is expect to release and no announcement/guarantee. Anyway any tips?

[MakingUpTheNumbers]

Worth chipping in that the iOS version of this is great, I'm always up for a game, my tag is MakingUpNumbers.

I also hear the Star Wars version is supposed to be good/interesting.

[Alexlotl]

Cognoscenti opinion used to be that the Inns & Cathederals, Traders and Builders and (to a lesser extent) Abbey & Mayor expansions were the only ones worth bothering with. I have the first two, in old Rio Grande form, but admit I've never played with the Traders & Builders bit. Nice thing about the expansions is that they'll typically add 3 new things, but you can just pick which ones you want to use. The Inns part of Inns & Cathederals is pretty much essential for my money, as it makes finishing roads worthwhile. Pigs bit is quite fun too, although farms are frankly strong enough.

I'd like to play my set more, but it doesn't get much play with my wife, as the optimum strategy is to be an utter bastard and crash roads into your opponents' castles, which causes a bit of bad feeling. You can play around it, but then you're not really playing the game as designed. I'd like to get some people together for proper cut-throat Carc one day. It's possible that the Abbey tiles from Abbey & Mayor could solve this problem, so I'm keeping an eye out for an old RG set. Come to think of it, mixing in the trade goods from Traders & Builders might fix this, as they provide an incentive to finish other people's castles.

One thing I would say is don't play with The River expansion by default, especially with low player numbers. It spreads everyone out too much, making the early game a bit of a solitaire, and tends to lead to enormous farms which dominate late-game efforts and end scoring.

[jonathanhoey]

After many years of playing the mostly excellent Xbox 360 version of Carcassonne, I've finally taken the plunge and bought a physical set.

 

I bought new, so it's the Z-Man standard edition (of course as soon as I bought it I realised there's an Anniversary edition that looks a bit nicer and has extra stuff, but hey ho). 

 

Anyway what's the situation with expansions nowadays? 

 

We're so used to playing with the ones that were represented in the 360 game: 

 

(Wikipedia)

 

Quote

The River

If The River expansion is used, a river is first built with 12 extra tiles before main gameplay begins. This serves to add some element of randomness to the board configuration before normal tiles are played. The river acts as a divider between two halves of the land (separating farms), but otherwise does not affect scoring. This expansion was included with the main game download.

 

The River II

On August 8, 2007, The River II expansion was released. This expansion adds additional river tile pieces, including a fork in the river. The Windows Phone version of the game includes the River II expansion at no additional charge.

 

King & Baron

On October 3, 2007, the King & Baron expansion pack was released, based on the King & Scout board game expansion. In this expansion, the player who builds the biggest city becomes King of Carcassonne, and at the end of the game receives extra points for every completed city; likewise, the player who builds the biggest road becomes Robber Baron and receives points for every completed road. It also adds 7 new tiles, including a special tile that bridges two cities over one another.

 

So I'd like to make sure we have all of those at first, just so we can play the exact game we're used to before branching out further into the different rules and stuff. 

 

But it seems like there's been a million expansion packs, across different publishers and languages and whatnot. 

 

I think the base set I've bought includes River I, and I've figured out that the King bits are included in Expansion 6: Count, King & Robber so I'll buy that. 

 

Does anyone happen to know if River II is currently in print? 

 

The OOP ones go for massive money on eBay, it seems. 

[Aluco]

Another good expansion is the Inns and Cathedrals one.

Like the rivers one, it is a simple addition. An Inn tile increases the value of a road, a cathedral tile increases the value of a city.

 

There are loads of expansions, but the only ones I actually like are the ones that mix in simply with the basic set, like the above. All the stuff that adds extra counters and objectives etc. just ruins the games paired back elegance.

[And]

we like

River

Traders and builders

inns and cathedrals 

king and robber

all those make a good long game.  More than that and it gets too much. 
 

of the other expansions 

dragon and princess is rubbish 

cultists are ok

never bothered trying the count