Game: Carcassonne - Traders & Builders

Thread: 2 Player Session

Corbain — 2008-07-03T12:39:37+00:00

Today we tried our first expansion pack for Carcassonne after enjoying the basegame so much. We always had the nagging feeling that there was something lacking from Carcassonne out of the box, and from reading around on BGG it became clear that by adding a few expansion the game could be made more complex.

First up was Traders and Builders.

One of the criticisms of the basegame was that it often felt too "bitty", games were often completed with several unfinished cities or impasses. The "trader" part of this expansion goes some way towards combating that by allowing one player to recoup part of his loss from completing another players city. This isn't a full review, so I wont give details of the mechanic.

Needless to say, after a couple of rounds with T&B it was clear that making large cities was much easier, partly due to th increased number and flexibility of some of the new tiles, but also the new trade goods mechanic meant that your opponent could recover some points by placing the completing tile of a city. In some situations now, if you are waiting to complete a city, but need a specific tile which one of the other players draws (or pulls out of the bag) then you can "advise" the other player to use it to complete your city and gain the goods tokens, which means fewer uncompleted cities.

The builder makes it easier to rapidly expand your city, and is worthwhile trying to get in early where you see room for a large expansion of city. We did get confused about whether the builder counts as a follower when deciding city control for scoring, but apparently it does NOT count. Minus one point from RGG for not making this clear in the English rules.

I was able to win the the games we played 2-1 principally by way of quickly building up megacities with judicious use of my builder and by an huge piece of luck with my last tile enabling me to connect a farmer up to a megafarm and neutralize my opponent. The game I lost was a close run thing decided by the goods tokens.

Overall, this is a big improvement on base Carcassonne, and the addition of the tile bag was a nice touch as well.

Next stop Inns & Cathedrals.

Thread: Re: Builder rule question

mjharper — 2008-07-02T08:50:07+00:00

Ahem… that leads into the whole 1st edition/ 3rd edition / Big Box rules problem.

Basically, the RGG rules are not the latest rules. They're 8 years old. The latest rules are from HiG—who made the game originally. HiG keep updating the rules to streamline them and take account of subsequent expansions; RGG more or less decided to stick with the 'original' rules regardless.

At the risk of self promotion, I wrote a summary of the issue here: http://carc.mjharper.de/. You can also find the summary, along with the latest rules here on BGG (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/info/22896) or a still newer version over at http://carcassonnecentral.com.

Hope that helps a bit.

Thread: Re: Builder rule question

Corbain — 2008-07-02T08:38:38+00:00

Thanks for that. I'm a bit confused though, as the edition which I have (Rio Grande, English) makes no distinction about this point. It makes sense that builders would behave like pigs. You mention the latest rules make this crystal clear, but I bought this game today and it is decidedly vague!

Thread: Re: Builder rule question

mjharper — 2008-07-02T08:27:23+00:00

Tied. Neither builders nor pigs count towards the score.

That was always the case, and the latest rules even state that builders and pigs are not followers at all.

Thread: Re: Builder rule question

Darren_T — 2008-07-02T08:25:50+00:00

We've only just started playing with Traders & Builders, and I was convinced that the rules said that builders don't count as normal followers. But you're absolutely right, I've just checked the rules and I can't see where I got that from. So now I'm just as confused as you!

But we've played it with builders being ignored when counting meeples and it seemed to work well.

Thread: Builder rule question

Corbain — 2008-07-02T07:51:21+00:00

When scoring a completed city or road, does the builder count as one kinght/follower.

Eg Blue has a city with one knight and the bilder, red has 1 knight. When the city is completed, does blue win (because the builder counts as one follower) or is it tied (the builder does not count towards the total number of followers)?

The rules make it quite clear that a pig does not count when scoring farms, but does not make a similar distinction about the builder.

Thanks in advance.