My girlfriend and I are relative newbies to the world of boardgaming, and we have been playing a lot of "gateway games", trying to lead up to more "gamer games". Of course, many of these games have been reviewed to death, so I won't try and explain the rules over again, but try and give our perspective as a newbie couple trying out these new fangled boardgames.

Carcassonne has become one of the classic gateway games. It was our gateway game, and a game that we've taught to many friends. Moreover, it is also a great two player game that we still play together. Carcassonne itself has an incredible number of reviews, but we never play it without the first two expansions, Inns and Cathedrals and Traders and Builders. In this review, I'll try and explain what appeals to us about the first Carcassonne expansion, Inns and Cathedrals. I assume that you are already familiar with the basic Carcassonne rules.

Constructionism

Before we get to what Inns and Cathedrals adds, I should probably explain our two player approach to Carcassonne. One of the factors behind the great appeal of Carcassonne is that the game lends itself to many different styles of play. On one end of the spectrum, you can play extremely non-competitively with both players peacefully building their own cities and roads. On the other end of the spectrum, you can play extremely competitively, stealing and even cutting off people's features and stranding their meeples in a cutthroat game. Moreover, you can tailor your play to your opponent---introducing a newbie, you can easily play very simply and friendly, while playing with your expert ultra-competitive friend you can ratchet up the gameplay.

As a newbie couple, my girlfriend and I play somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. For us, the major attractive feature of Carcassonne is the sense of creating something---both figuratively building cities and roads but also literally building the game map in front of us. For lack of a better word, I'll call this, admittedly rather lamely, "constructionism." In fact, many times we'll even try to fill in a hole in the gameboard that is just not aesthetically pleasing even if it doesn't directly help us. Playing ultra-competitively by stranding meeples and blocking features has a screwage factor that is a little too high for us and for the light, building feeling of the game.

Constructionism does not mean that we play multiplayer solitaire and only work on own features. In fact, stealing becomes the primary mode of competition and is actually encouraged---while I may steal her city, the city will eventually get built. She, in turn, has to construct her city with an eye towards avoiding stealing. We are both competing to build the same features, and the city actually grows larger and benefits from this.

In contrast, "deconstructionism" involves the offensive tactic of blocking and stranding your opponent's meeple on the board. The building feature never gets completed, leaving the board with a hole and imprisoning the meeple for the rest of the game. While this is a perfectly valid way to play the game, we find this a little too competitive for us and offends our constructionist sensibilities. Instead of building something up, it feels like you're tearing something down. As a result, we have a friendly agreement to not engage in blocking or meeple stranding.

Now of course, you may not agree with this. In many cases, playing deconstructively may be the best move to make if you purely want to win the game. I would imagine in tournament play, I would play deconstructively. In fact, I do not want to start a debate on whether playing to win or playing to have fun is more philosophically true to gamesmanship. The beauty of Carcassonne is that you can play the way that you can have fun. In any case, the Inns and Cathedrals expansion greatly helps with the constructionist attitude and is why we never play Carcassonne without it.

Inns and Cathedrals Materials

Gray Sixth Player Pieces

This expansion includes meeples for a potential sixth player. Since this review is focusing on two player gameplay, I'll ignore it. It does give you another color to choose from (for those of you who like gray). As a side note, we did play one six player game with some friends before...and let us never speak of it again.

More Tiles

The expansion ships with eighteen new tiles made from the same thick and durable cardboard as the original. All of the art and markings match exactly with the original, which looks great, but which may be problematic if you ever want to separate the tiles (which we never do).

One of the common complaints with Carcassonne is that it has too much luck. Luckily (pun intended), as you add more tiles, the luck actually tends to decrease. With more tiles, there will be more features and more places to put your newly drawn tile, increasing the strategic possibilities. This also gives you a larger sampling size of tiles, decreasing the luck of the draw over the length of the game. Moreover, many of the new tiles help address the competitive deconstructionist problems of the original game. For example, there are more road/city tiles that can fit into spaces where previously your city meeple would have been stranded if your opponent played a road into the open space. This works to our liking, since we play constructively and helps to complete more features.

The Big Meeple

The most important feature of this expansion is actually not the self-titled Inns and Cathdrals, but the inclusion of the Big Meeple. Although we don't play with cutting off each other's features, we do actively try to steal cities and roads from each other. The Big Meeple provides exactly that sort of offensive capability. Placing a tile complete with Big Meeple diagonally from your opponent's city can result in an arms race of meeples focused on that city. This can be quite tense, but also results in much larger cities being built as each player attempts to merge more and more tiles into it. In a two player game, it is only the threat of completely stealing a city using the Big Meeple that creates this tension---merely tying the city using a regular meeple results in a stalemate with no major advantage (beyond taking away the points differential from your opponent).

Inns and Cathedrals

Of course in an expansion titled Inns and Cathedrals, some of the tiles include Inns and Cathedrals. Both act to increase the potential value of roads and cities by one point per tile (although no points are awarded if that feature is not completed). This works especially well with roads, since they were undervalued in the original game, making them now actually worth competing for. Both of these factors increase the competition for cities and roads---once a cathedral has been played, we both swoop in and try and claim ownership of the city, resulting a frantic arms race with building tiles and meeples flying everywhere. This ends up favoring fewer larger cities rather than many smaller cities, which we enjoy due to our constructionist attitude.

Scoring Tiles

These tiles act as scoring markers for 50 and 100 points. This is quite nice, since with the increased number of tiles for two players, it becomes quite easy to score a large number of points. These tiles help keep track as you do multiple laps around the original scoring track.

Conclusion

Inns and Cathedrals is an excellent expansion to the Carcassonne franchise. None of the changes are too drastic---the game still feels like Carcassonne. But the changes do ratchet up the intensity by increasing the values of the cities and roads and introducing the Big Meeple. The extra tiles included help to avoid the competitive strategy of blocking and stranding meepeles. Nevertheless, the Big Meeple increases the offensive capability of stealing each other's features. The added Inns and Cathedrals help to increase the tension as both players compete to try to claim larger valued roads and cities. We love that this "arms race" effect is emphasized and contributes to the feeling of building a world in this expansion. In fact, we no longer play without Inns and Cathedrals or Traders and Builders (but that will be another review).

However, if you are a Carcassonne purist and play extremely competitively, complete with blocking and stranding meeples, you will probably only appreciate the Big Meeple. The additional tiles favor building up more features and minimizing threat of the blocking tactic. In that case, you may find it better to pass this expansion.