Carcassonne: Abbey & Mayor
Published by Rio Grande Games
Written by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede
Illustrated by Doris Matthäus
Translated by Jay Tummelson
12 Landscape Tiles, Six Abbey Tiles, Six Wooden Mayor Figures, Six Wooden Barns, Six Wooden Wagon Figures, & a four page full-colour Rule Booklet; $14.95

Carcassonne: Abbey & Mayor is the fifth expansion for Carcassonne, the Spiel des Jahres award winning game based on the Roman and Medieval architecture of the town of the same name in South Western France. Players take turns to place tiles to recreate this architecture, building cities, cloisters, farms, and roads, and claiming with their followers or “meeples” (as they have become known) to score points. The previous expansions have added meeples for a sixth player, numerous new means of scoring, several attempts to diffuse the core game’s one weakness (that by careful placing of Farmer meeples, a player will invariably win the game), and given the players lots of new tiles to place. Carcassonne is an area control game in which the areas are built in a jigsaw puzzle fashion that many find appealing.

Carcassonne: Abbey & Mayor continues the game’s medieval theme. Now wealthy merchants ship goods along the roads between the cities and the cloisters, whilst cities can grow large enough to elect their own Mayors. Farmers build larger and wealthier farms, whilst the church strengthens its position and prestige by building Abbeys. If this expansion has its own theme, it is that of growing wealth and prosperity reflected in the increased influence a player can bring to bear with its new rules.

As with previous expansions, the components of Carcassonne: Abbey & Mayor are of an excellent quality. The wooden Barn, Mayor, and Wagon figures, one for each player, come in standard six colours and are easily to identify. The twelve new ordinary tiles give slight variations upon tiles in previous expansions and will be welcome additions. The rules sheet is easy to read and illustrated with plenty of examples. At game’s start, the ordinary tiles go into the stacks to be drawn and played, whilst the players each receive one Abbey tile, and one Barn, one Mayor, and one Wagon figure.

The first of the expansion’s new additions is the Abbey, a new tile depicting this building enclosed entirely by a red tiled wall. It can only be placed into an empty space surrounded by the four tiles on its orthogonal sides, but does not have to match these surrounding tiles. If such a space does not exist, it cannot be placed. The placing player can also place a meeple on the Abbey and when it is completed, it scores as a Cloister. The primary effect of placing an Abbey is to complete and score the features it touches on those four sides, the result being that it can complete several difficult to finish features at once. This can also be used as a blocking move to prevent features from growing too large and another player from scoring them. The secondary effect is aesthetic, simply filling in an ugly hole in the map.

The Mayor is the first of three new playing pieces, this one looking a larger, fat pantalooned meeple. He can only be placed in a city with no other meeples, but works with the pennants on city tiles, counting for as many followers in the city as there are pennants when the city is completed and scored. This makes him very effective in larger cities which will have more pennants and thus increase his influence over who has more followers for scoring purposes.

The second new piece is the Barn, which is only played onto a new junction created by four field tiles. It immediately forces the farm to be scored as if it were the end of the game, the farmer meeples being returned to their respective players. Further, the Barn prevents any more Farmers from being placed on its field and it forces other Farms to be scored if they are connected to the field it is in. At game’s end, the Barn is scored just like a normal farm, although the points awarded for each city is connected to, are not as much. Where previous expansions have diffused the scoring potential for the Farmer, the Barn goes some way to restore this imbalance, not only by returning Farmers in play to their respective players, but also by the fact that the Barn scores a farm twice! This could be too powerful, but considering the difficulty of building these large farms, it is not as powerful as it might have been.

The last new piece is the Wagon, which is placed as normal on an incomplete city, cloister, or road, but unlike other pieces, it can move. When the feature the Wagon is on is completed and scored, the Wagon can either be returned to a player’s hand, or it can be moved to a connected, but incomplete feature. The Wagon thus allows a player to keep a piece on the board and continue scoring from it.

The four additions in Carcassonne: Abbey & Mayor are situational -- they only come into play when certain situations arise on a player’s turn. The Abbey fills in a hole, the Mayor is placed in an empty city, the Barn on a field junction, and the Wagon on an incomplete feature. When they do come into play, each in its own way is quite powerful, the Barn more so, which restores much of the balance if and when it can come into play. In addition, these additions are not as fiddly as those of the previous expansions -- The Princess & The Dragon and The Tower, nor do they run counter to the core game’s medieval theme. Overall, Carcassonne: Abbey & Mayor gives the players powerful new options that will happily sit alongside the core game and its first two expansions, making it the expansion to have after Inns & Cathedrals and Traders & Builders.