1238: Inns and Cathedrals and Traders (and Builders), Oh My!

(Aside: I usually hate it when people use the “x and y and z, oh my!” trope for titles, but I couldn’t resist this time. “Keep Calm and [insert humorous thing here]” can still fuck off, though.)

Andie and I played a game of Carcassonne this evening. It’s one of our favourite games, both in physical format and on iOS, and it’s probably the one we play together most, with Ticket to Ride being a close second.

Recently, I picked up two of the expansions to Carcassonne as I’d heard that they added some interest to the base game. Not that there’s anything wrong with the base game as is, but it can sometimes be interesting to add some additional mechanics, or change a few things around. And sure enough, Inns & Cathedrals and Traders & Builders both change Carcassonne to a noticeable degree — and, for my money, make it a considerably better, more interesting game in the process — without breaking what makes the original game so good.

For the uninitiated, Carcassonne is a tile-laying game in which you and up to five other players take it in turns to draw tiles representing areas of French countryside out of a bag, then place them in such a manner that you gradually build up a map. When you place a tile, you can put one of your little wooden “followers” (affectionately referred to as “meeples” by most board game geeks) on one of the tile’s features to “claim” it. When you finish the feature in question — making a completely enclosed wall for a city, having something at both ends for a road, completely surrounding it with other tiles for a monastery — you score points. At the end of the game, you score additional points for any half-finished features, and also for any “farms” you have claimed — these are fields in which you’ve placed a follower, in which you gain an additional 3 points for every completed city that borders that field.

The fun in Carcassonne is in strategically placing the tiles in such a manner that you can complete features while simultaneously screwing over your opponents. The “farmers” mechanic in particular is highly competitive, but focusing too much attention on it can cost you the game.

What Inns & Cathedrals and Traders & Builders do is add a few little twists on these basic mechanics.

Inns & Cathedrals is the simpler of the two expansions. In the additional tiles that make up the expansion, there are several road tiles that have an inn on them. If you add an inn to a road that you’ve claimed, you get 2 points per tile instead of the usual 1 when you complete it, but to balance out the increased reward, there’s an additional risk: if you fail to complete it, at the end of the game, you get nothing for that road instead of the usual 1 point per tile. Similarly, if you place a cathedral in a city, you get 3 points per tile and flag in that city when you complete it instead of the usual 2, but nothing at the end of the game if you fail to complete it. Starting one of these features can be a gamble — particularly as the cathedral pieces are among the most awkward city tiles available — but can be enormously lucrative. Alongside these new tiles, there’s also a “big meeple” piece for each player that has the strength of two normal followers — great for aggressively stealing territory from other players.

Traders & Builders, meanwhile, adds three distinct mechanics. Firstly, the “trader” mechanic means that if you finish a city (by laying the last tile), you claim all the “goods” represented on the various city tiles, even if you don’t have any followers in the city. At the end of the game, the player who has the most of a type of good gains 10 bonus points, and there are three different types of goods, allowing for a potential bonus of up to 30 points for a savvy trader.

Meanwhile, a new “builder” piece can be placed in a city or on a road that you’ve already claimed. On subsequent turns, if you add to the city or road the builder is on, you immediately get an extra turn. Careful placement of the builder is a must, as it’s quite easy to get him “stuck” and be unable to enjoy his benefits.

Finally, a new “pig” piece can be added to a farm you already control, and this means that if you’re still in control of that farm at the end of the game, you’ll gain 4 points per city in that field instead of 3. This can potentially be quite a big difference.

Both expansions also include a selection of new tiles with interesting new designs that add intriguing strategic possibilities.

What we found with the two expansions was a much higher-scoring game than usual, with much bigger “swings”. In other words, the fact that things like the inns and cathedrals let you score considerably more points than usual meant that it was much more possible to “catch up” to a player who is seemingly screaming ahead in the points stakes; at the same time, the “goods” mechanic can completely change the standings at the very end of the game, as happened this evening, when I was all set to win and then Andie’s monopoly on all the goods in the kingdom caused her to snatch victory from my clutches by a measly two points. Dammit!

Anyway, I’m glad I picked up these expansions; they add a lot to the base game, and I can see why a lot of board game geeks out there never play without them. I’m interested to try it out with more than two people — with the expansion, the game now supports up to six players altogether, which sounds like a recipe for disaster in the best possible way.

Anyway. E3 starts tomorrow, and I’m spending the day with the fine folks at Eurogamer, so I’m looking forward to that. I’m also proud to announce that USgamer, my new professional home, will be launching tomorrow, so watch this space! That space. Whatever.