Traders & Builders is the second "big" expansion for Carcassonne, and the third overall. Where Inns & Cathedrals tended to be a conservative expansion, little changing the basic game, Traders & Builders is the first expansion to really flex its muscles and add things that would change how the game was played. This was not to the extent that later sets would shake things up, but the groundwork had been laid...

So, what does Traders & Builders offer the Carcassonne player?

A Cloth Bag

It's odd, but perhaps the biggest benefit of the expansion is the cloth bag it gives you. Instead of placing the tiles in face-down stacks, you just throw them all in the bag and then draw tiles from it. While this does put a little more uncertainty into when the game will end, as you can't see how many tiles are left, it certainly improves the ability of the players to randomize the tiles, especially if there are several expansions in play.

Trade goods

The year before, in 2002, the first Carcassonne variant, Hunters & Gatherers had appeared. One of the improvements of that variant was a bonus for completing other people's "cities" (well, woods). With the Trade Goods, that idea came into regular Carcassonne.


The idea behind Trade Goods is rather simple. Certain new city tiles are marked with a trade good - either a barrel of wine, a bolt of cloth, or a sheaf of wheat. When the city is completed, whoever played the tile that completed it - not necessarily the player who gained the points for it! - gained trade good tokens from a supply near the board. At the end of the game, whoever had the most trade tokens in each type would gain 10 points. Thus, 30 extra points were up for grabs.

There are 5 cloth, 6 grain, and 9 wine trade goods available, thus making competition for them rather fierce. The desire to close cities early and thus claim the trade goods adds quite a bit to the game.

Builders

While Trade Goods are about you helping your opponents for some reward, and also creating a desire to close cities, the Builders provide the opposite tension. Once you have a Meeple on a road or city, you can, in a later turn, place a Builder on a tile that you used to extend your feature with. From now one, whenever you play another tile that extends (or finishes) that feature, you may immediately have another turn. And, no, you don't get yet another turn if you extend the city or road again!

The Builder gives you a desire to extend cities and roads much further than they originally might go, and makes doing so somewhat less risky. When used with the Inns & Cathedrals expansion, they also make the play of Cathedrals better as a positive tactics rather than a negative one.

The drawback of the Builder is that it makes the city or road a target for blocking strategies. There's nothing quite as frustrating as having your Builder trapped inside an uncompletable (and unextendable) city. The strategy and tension this adds to the game are wonderful.

Of all the additions to Carcassonne, the Builder is the one I enjoy the most. It's fun to be able to build bigger and bigger cities!

Pigs

The Pigs are probably the least effective feature of this expansion. As with the Builder, you place them in a terrain feature you already have a meeple in; in this case, in a farm. Like the Inns and Cathedrals of the previous expansion, they add an extra 1 point to the scoring of the farm for each city connected to it (or however you score your farms).

However, I've never really felt that a Pig made much difference in the long run to the game. Too often, someone else would take the points for the farm, or the small bonus the pig supplied wasn't actually worth the effort of placing it.

More Tiles
Apart from the trade good tiles, there are four other new tiles in the set, providing new ways that roads and cities (and cloisters) can interact. They're fun, and also help break up farms more, which is all to the good.

Conclusion
Carcassonne: Traders and Builders adds 24 new tiles, 18 trade good counters, 6 builder meeples (1 per player) and 6 pigs (1 per playeer) to the basic game. It can be played with or without any of the other expansions, but you still need the basic game to play.

Of all the expansions to Carcassonne, this is the one that I think is the most successful. It doesn't take the game too far from its original theme, but gives a number of new things to interest you during play. Later expansions would get more ambitious, but Traders and Builders is the one expansion you should get if you enjoy Carcassonne.