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 second Carcassonne expansion Traders and Builders. I assume that you are already familiar with the basic Carcassonne rules.

Constructionism

I explained our concept of "Constructionism" in my review of Inns and Cathedrals, so I won't repeat it here. Needless to say, one of the great appeals of Carcassonne to us is the sense of building and constructing a world in front of us. As a result, we tend to favor completing more features rather than playing to "deconstructively" block and strand the opponent meeples on the boards. Despite this, we still play very competitively by actively trying to steal each other's features and trying to rapidly build up our own features for scoring. Carcassonne to us feels more like an arms race as we add more and more meeples to try and control a single feature. Traders and Builders is the second Carcassonne expansion, and is also helps emphasize this style of play. As a result, we never play without this expansion.

Traders and Builders Materials

New Tiles

Similar to Inns and Cathedrals, this expansion ships with twenty-four 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 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. Moreover, many of the new tiles help address the competitive cutting people off problems of the original game. For example, there are more road/city tiles that can fit into spaces where previously your meeple would have been stranded. This works to our liking, since we don't like that strategy anyway, and helps to complete more features.

Trade Goods

One of the major innovations in this expansion is the introduction of trade goods. A number of city tiles now have an icon of a trade good on them, whether wheat, wine, or cloth. When the city is completed, the person completing the city gets the total number of goods, not the person who owns the city. At the end of the game, the player with the most of each of the trade goods gets an additional ten points. In a two player game, a swing of up to 30 points can often be the difference between winning and losing, making the trade goods a highly competitive feature. In addition, this helps to increase the chances of finishing city features---both players will aim to finish the city and obtain the desired trade goods. This feeds into our constructionist desires very well. Moreover, there is now an added decision-making tension to the game: do I make my city larger and add more trade goods tiles for my benefit, or will that simply lure my opponent into swiping those trade goods away?

Builder

The second major innovation in this expasion is the Builder piece. Not exactly a meeple, the Builder is a player token that can only be played on a city or road already owned by that player. The Builder does not count towards a player majority in that feature. Nevertheless, the benefit of having a Builder is that if the player builds onto that feature, they get an extra turn. For example, if you have a Builder in your city, playing another city tile onto that city results in you getting an extra turn (with a maximum of one extra turn). Since Carcassonne can be conceived of as a race to place the most tiles, if utilized properly, this advantage can be devastating. Moreover, this allows you to very rapidly build up a longer road or bigger city, which we enjoy greatly due to our constructionist leanings. Upon completing the feature, the Builder as well as the other meeples are returned to
your arsenal for future use.

The Pig

This expansion also includes the Pig token. Not exactly a meeple, like the Builder, the Pig can be placed in a farm that you already own. The benefit is that you obtain an extra point for every city scored in that farm (we use the Third Edition scoring, so with a pig, you score four points for every city that touches that farm). The Inns and Cathedrals expansion helped to increase the value of roads and cities, so the Pig seems like an attempt to do the same with farms. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem nearly as powerful, since you only have one Pig token and having placed it, it is stuck there forever. In addition, due to the increased number of cities and roads, we achieve smaller farms rather than one mega-farm, so the increased value of the Pig is not as great. We often tend to forget about the Pig until late in the end game, when it becomes a race to stick the Pig in the most valuable farm. We still play with the Pig, mostly because it is a pretty cute token.

Cloth Bag

Another addition in this expansion is the Cloth Bag. This works very nicely, since we now have a large number of tiles to keep track of. We can now just dump them into the cloth bag and pass the bag around rather than keeping a huge pile of tiles on the table. The tiles are thick enough cardboard that we have not experienced any damage like bent corners despite being jostled around in the bag. A very nice addition.

Conclusion

Traders and Builders is the second and also excellent expansion to Carcassonne. Most of the innovations help to emphasize the constructionist flavor of the game rather than the deconstructive strategy of blocking and stranding meeples---the building strategy is emphasized as both players try to complete not only more of their own features, but also their opponent's cities due to the trade goods bonus.

Most of the additions in this expansion work very well in a two player game, making it feel very strategic with each player focused in an arms race of building cities and roads, trying to optimize their Builder usage and trade goods tiles. We never play without the first two expansions. As a result, we have a lot more tiles and the length of the game is increased. However, the extra rules and features of the expansions add just enough strategy that the game never feels too long.

Interestingly, while the first two Carcassonne expansions focus on constructionist strategies, the next two expansions, The Princess and the Dragon and The Tower focus more on the deconstructive playing styles. For these reasons (among others), we are not big fans of them (and many of the rules additions do not really work well with two players anyway, in our opinion). Nevertheless, if you are a fan of more competitive and offensive play, the last two Carcassonne expansions may be a better bet than the first two.