IGN is covering board games new and old all month long. If you enjoy these articles, let us know! Note that if you click on one of these links to buy the product, IGN may get a share of the sale. For more, read our Terms of Use.
The much-loved Carcassonne has been a feature of hobbyists’ collections and family homes for almost 20 years. The sheer amount of expansions, mini-expansions and stand-alone games can take over your shelves just as easily as the game takes over your table.
An attempt was made in 2014 to tidy up the product line when new publisher Z-Man Games released a new edition of Carcassonne with updated artwork. This tidy up is still ongoing, and as a result it has made the product line a bit of a mess thanks to a mismatch of artwork between various editions. Expansions are slowly being re-released back into the world, so ultimately Carcassonne will feature variety of easy-to-track, numbered expansions. But in the meantime, it can be hard to keep up with what's new, what's old, and that's been re-released. To simplify matters, here’s a guide to everything that you can buy at the moment:
- 2 to 5 players
- Best with 2 players
- 30 - 45 minutes
Carcassonne is a simple game. You pick up a tile, you place the tile and you may claim that tile with a meeple. What features are on the tiles meeples claim decide if they’re knights, highwaymen, farmers or monks with each role scoring differently. As you place more tiles, features grow and meeples have the opportunity to score you points but your friends could find a way to contest that feature and claim the points for themselves. Eventually you run out of tiles and the table is covered with a wonderful landscape.
The current edition of Carcassonne includes two mini-expansions: the River and the Abbot. The River replaces the starting tile and quickly opens up the board to make the start of games more interesting. Meanwhile the Abbot balances out the high-value monastery tiles by giving everyone a better shot of using them.
Expansions
Each of the following expansions require the base game to play and will add approximately 10-15 minutes to the game length, as they add new tiles to the draw pile. Note that most of the expansions are modular, meaning you can choose some features to add into your game while leaving others out. For example, you can feel free to add the big meeple from Inns & Cathedrals to your game while leaving out its new tiles, should you want to.
Carcassonne’s first expansion raises the stakes with inns that double the value of roads and cathedrals that double the value of cities. There are even large meeples that count double on contested features. This well-regarded expansion also includes a set of meeples for a sixth player.
Traders & Builders is an essential expansion of Carcassonne with a number of great additions to an already great game. If you expand a feature with one of your builders in it, you can take another turn and place another tile. This is particularly helpful in cities, where the person who completes a city can claim a good for potential bonuses at the end of the game. These two new rules mean there will be fewer, larger and more hotly-contested cities in games played with this expansion. The downside is that fewer cities make farmers less appealing but fortunately the pig meeples can make farmers more valuable. To top it all off, the expansion also includes a handy linen bag to keep your tiles in.
Big box collections are a great starting point for people looking to buy a lot of Carcassonne at once and the current big box includes the base game, Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders and nine (!!) mini-expansions not currently for sale individually. Mini-expansions — much like regular expansions — are a way to add variety to your games but can create a rules headaches if you try and add too many at once. There’s nothing exceptional about the mini-expansions found in the big box, but they’ll kickstart your collection and offer good enough replacements for other expansions that you’re on the fence about.
You’ll fight for the protection of the fairy in this expansion where a dragon can rampage across the board, devouring all the meeples in its path. Meeples move around far more often as the magic portal lets you place meeples on unclaimed tiles and the princess steals knights away.
A mish-mash of ideas with a mayor that’s less interesting than the large meeples from Inns & Cathedrals and abbey tiles that fill in gaps between tiles, often scoring their owner quite a few points. Barns that score farmers immediately — bringing the otherwise stranded meeples back home — and wagons move about after their features complete round out this expansion.
The circus is in town with a travelling big top and acrobatic meeples in this expansion that doesn’t quite stack up compared to earlier expansions.
Stand-Alone Games
- 2 to 4 players
- 20 min
- Ages 4 and up
My First Carcassonne tries to make the game more child-friendly by taking away the spacial reasoning and scoring. The result is a game that young children can enjoy but a questionable way to introduce them to Carcassonne. You should consider waiting for your children to be ready for the original Carcassonne instead.
- 2 to 5 players
- Best with 2 players
- 35 minutes
A bright and colorful game where you collect different goods for completing different features instead of scoring points. These goods can be traded in for ship tokens in a scoring system that is much easier for young players to grasp.
- 2 to 5 players
- Best with 4 players
- 35 minutes
A runaway leader can easily spoil the fun in this jungle themed reskin of Carcassonne where you race down the Amazon river on top of the usual game.
- 2 to 5 players
- Best with 3 players
- 35 minutes
Overcomplicating matters by letting you pitch tents to collect mining tokens from mountains (replacing cities in the original game) in the search for points, this game is a poor prospect that strays too far from what makes Carcassonne great.
Currently Unavailable Content
These stand-alone and add-on Carcassonne products have been stranded since the 2014 re-released and updated version of the base game. They haven’t been reprinted with the updated artwork, are out of print, or licensing issues have stopped widespread reprints. Copies are likely to be available in the next few years at varying price ranges, but you can buy them now if you’re willing to pay a premium. Some, like Carcassonne Star Wars, seem destined to fade away. Others, like The Tower, will likely be reprinted at some point by new publisher Z-Man Games, although no specific news has been announced.
- 2 to 5 players
- Best with 3 players
- 35 minutes
Moving the tile-laying gameplay of Carcassonne to a galaxy far, far away, Carcassonne: Star Wars introduces a dice-based combat system to change how you contest features. Combat is encouraged with planets to conquer and points rewarded to players even when they lose a fight. There’s even a team variant that pits the Rebel Alliance against the Empire in this surprisingly enjoyable use of the Star Wars license.
A collection of mini-expansions that have been bundled together, you can be the king of Carcassonne if you build the biggest city or the greatest robber if you build the longest road. Meeples can be stored in the City of Carcassonne, waiting to pounce on unclaimed features and heretics occupy Shrines as religious tension flares up. The River II improves on the original River mini-expansion with a fork in the river that creates an even more sprawling start to the game as well as a number of tiles with elements from other expansions.
Shepherds grow their flock as their field expands but get greedy and a wolf may undo all of your hard work. Meanwhile the hill tiles give you a high-ground advantage to break ties on contested features while removing other tiles to speed up the game and vineyards give bonus points to completed monasteries.
Claim neighboring features by turning a city into a castle, build bridges to connect roads over fields and use your points to buy upcoming tiles to place in an auction that fires whenever a bazaar is placed.
Build a tower to imprison your friends’ meeples unless they pay a penalty. This expansion offers direct way to interact with other players that’s less aggressive than the Princess & the Dragon.
The much-maligned Catapult expansion has you flinging tokens across the table to move and remove meeples or score points with a well-aimed shot.
Carcassonne All the Way Down
Carcassonne's modular, tile-based design has made it a perfect candidate for ultra-tiny themed expansions, often sold or given away at small board game shows. They are many, many of these tiny sets of tiles, which makes the already-complicated Carcassonne lineup appear more complex than it actually is. An ultra-tiny expansion featuring a few shrine tiles? Sure. Another featuring tunnels, or schools? Why not! Many of these promo tiles and tiny expansions were never released in English. They may eventually make their way back into print via a Big Box expansion (and indeed several, like the Crop Circles mini-expansion, already have).
But ultimately, they're oddities and outliers in the Carcassonne lineup. They aren't considered part of the product line. It can be fun for hardcore completionists to track them down on Ebay or board game swaps, but no one else needs to pay them any mind.
Final Thoughts
A game of Carcassonne is like a sandwich. You can be perfectly satisfied with a few simple ingredients like the base game with the Inns & Cathedrals or Traders & Builders expansions. The other option is to pile on every ingredient you have and hope that it doesn’t turn into a sloppy mess. There’s a happy middle ground where you can mix and match various expansions as you please — it’s just a matter of deciding when you’ve struck the perfect balance.
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire