Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great expansion to an already great game , 18 Jan 2008
Durability:4.0 out of 5 stars Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars Educational:3.0 out of 5 stars
This review is going to assume that you already own the original Carcassonne game, or that you at least already understand the basic rules - after all, like most 'expansions', this cannot be played on its own. So if you do not fall into either of the above categories, I suggest you instantly go and get Carcassonne itself, and when (not if!) you fall in love with it, then please come back and read this review later.
This is an almost essential add-on to the game. It adds new elements to the game which are fun, and actually enhance the game, without detracting from what attracted you to it in the first place. Ever since we bought this expansion, no-one has even suggested that we should play the game without it.
So what do you get for your money? Well, some more tiles for a start. The most important ones, as far as this expansion is concerned, are the new city pieces which may have a little symbol printed on them, representing wine, cloth or wheat. This relates to the 'traders' in the title. The player who completes a city gets a token for each symbol within it - so they might get 2 wine tokens and a wheat one, for example. At the end of the game, the player with the most tokens in each of the three trades gets 10 bonus points - which can obviously be a significant factor in the final reckoning. Notice that it is the player who completes the city that gets the tokens, rather than the player who actually owns it. This is obviously deliberate, to encourage players to complete other people's cities - and leads to some interesting decision making, as you could be giving points away to an opponent in the hope of benefitting at the end.
Next comes the builder. This is a tall thin 'meeple', and you get one of them in each of the six colours, so every player is given their appropriate piece at the start of the game. The way it works is as follows. Suppose you place one of your followers on a road. At some later point you will extend that road, and you can then choose to place your builder on the tile that you have just laid - this counts as the end of your turn, by the way - you cannot also place a follower in the field or city on the same tile. At a later time still, you will eventually add to the road again. This is when the builder comes in - once you have done everything you would normally do from placing that tile, you get to draw and play another one. Note, however, that, if this 2nd tile is used to extend the road again, you don't get to draw a 3rd tile. But with this one exception, you will get an extra go every time you extend the road.
Builders are obviously very useful. Everything that I have said about 'roads' in the previous paragraph applies equally to cities, though you cannot add a builder to a farm or a cloister. They behave exactly the same as other followers, in that they cannot be moved once played, and you only get them back when the feature is complete. Once again, it adds an interesting element to the game - if someone is profiting too much from their extra goes, is it worth completing their feature for them, even though they will score from it, in order to slow them down a bit?
The last element in this expansion is the pig. Not known for being either traders or builders, this is a slightly odd thing to include in this set, but serves a useful purpose nonetheless. Like the builder, each player is given the pig of their own colour at the start of the game. When you expand a farm that you already own, you can choose to play your pig on the tile you have just laid. In the final reckoning, the pig adds 1 point for every city served by that farm. Of course, you need to play this piece wisely. You only have one, and, once laid, it cannot be moved, so if an opponent manages to link up with your farm, and outnumber you, then you have effectively wasted the pig completely.
So, are there any downsides to this expansion? Well, if you want to be really picky, the trade tokens are fairly small pieces of cardboard, and look as if you could easily lose one or two (we haven't, by the way, but I'm always conscious that we might!). But this is a really minor point. Basically, if you love playing Carcassonne, this expansion can only increase your enjoyment, and comes heartily recommended.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not a disapointment!, 2 Oct 2008
Durability:4.0 out of 5 stars Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars Educational:3.0 out of 5 stars
After 'Inns and Cathedrals' comes an essential expansion. There are 24 new tiles, depicting trade goods: Wine; Cloth; Grain. Players who complete cities containing trade goods icons recieve a trade goods counter. These are totalled at the end of the game for extra bonuses. Also included is the pig, which increses the farmers score when played in a field and the builder piece that allows a player to have an extra tile from the bag (which is also included). There is plenty of room in the bag for quite a few expansions (certainly for the base set, Inns and Cathedrals, Traders and Builders, Abbey and Mayor, The Tower, King). How do I know... because we play them all in our games and use the bag all the time!
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Rather a disappointment, 9 April 2008
Durability:4.0 out of 5 stars Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars Educational:3.0 out of 5 stars
A game like Carcassonne needs to keep on finding new upgrades if it is to keep us motivated on spending more money to get more features. Unfortunately, this upgrade adds much less additional interest than Expansion 1, and its new features do not integrate with the rest of the game as well as those of Expansion 1. Sometimes we use them, sometimes not.
The tile bag is annoying because it cannot properly hold the number of tiles that you end up with once you have bought a few expansion sets.
The new tiles are, of course, most welcome.
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