Carcassonne: The Tower

Carcassonne is a fun and gorgeous tile-laying game by Klaus Jurgen Wrede (Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers, Mesopotamia and many more). After the huge success of the original game Carcassonne Wrede has followed up with a veritable mountain expansions, there is Inns and Cathedrals, Traders and Builders, Princess and Dragon, King and Scout, The River II, as well as these there are a bunch of variant games including The Castle (a clever two player designed with Reiner Knizia), Ark of the Covenant, The City, The Discovery, & Hunters and Gatherers.

The key question for people who own Carcassonne is, do I need Carcassonne: The Tower? If you enjoy Carcassonne, or like the game, but would appreciate it more if it were more tactical, then The Tower is for you. This is one of the best expansions for Carcassonne that money can buy.

The Tower adds a new flavour to a well-used game and just as importantly, it is great fun. The Tower increases the choices that a player can make on their turn; a player may now place a tile and perform one of four actions. These four actions are: place a meeple as usual, place a tower segment, add a tower segment to an already extant tower, and place a meeple on top of a tower to prevent it from getting any higher.

When a player places a tower segment, either beginning or extending a tower, they may also take any meeple prisoner that is within range of the tower. For example: if the player adds the second tower piece they may take a meeple from any tile within two tiles (orthogonally), if the third piece the captured meeple could be from any tile within three tiles.

The fun, and amusing, aspect to the capturing of other player’s meeples are the two ways the meeple can be returned to it’s fellows. A meeple can be repatriated by paying a bounty to the capturing player, the player attempting to get their meeple back must pay three points, reducing their score by three and increasing that of the capturer by three. The second way to have a meeple returned to the fold is by capturing a meeple belonging to the player who took yours, if this is the case the two players neatly arrange a prisoner exchange and both get their meeples back.

The Tower adds in a ton of tactical thought when it comes to placing tiles and meeples, running out of meeples is now a very serious problem, and placing tower tiles, normal tiles, and the meeples you do have is often the subject of much thought and some anxiety.

The question is ....

Should you reduce/increase the number of Tower Tiles in the game, depending on how many expansions you play with ?

We have the lot (and so the 2p game now takes a good 90 minutes), and the distribution of Tower Foundations seemed about right.

However, I was talking to someone who had the original game plus the tower expansion.

In this case, about 1 in 6 tiles are towers, and that made the map waaaay too tower-heavy, with no safe places to start anything.

I'd be interested to know what you think .... ?


N.

Good question Nick, I have everything bar Traders and Builders and the game seems about right for me too (when using it all). I guess you're right about the 'no safe places' if you were just using it and the base game???
Maybe the publishers/designer assumed that people who bought and played with The Tower would have the other expansions too?

Maybe your friend should reduce the number of tower tiles by half and see how that plays (with just the base Carcassonne).
If they are willing I'd suggest playing a couple of games with different amounts of tiles used - half, three quarters etc. and see what works best and what doesn't.

I think The Tower is a great expansion - so working out a way to make it work well given the amount of tiles you're drawing from is a worthwhile excercise in my opinion!

Thanks!

Giles.

The tower also removes tactics, especially when it comes down to placing farmers. Because meeples can be removed so easily with the tower, even easier than with the dragon, there's no sense in making long term decisions. The result is that scoring becomes much more random which is just the opposite of tactical play.

I also think the additional wooden towers, together with the meeples, give you too many options for playing a piece. Without the tower you have to carefully weight your decision of playing a piece/meeple if you dont wanna run out of pieces. Now that gets lost because you have an additional 6-10 tower pieces. Next, the large number of tower tiles extends the game too much for what it does. All this also applies to the dragon: too many tiles, scoring becomes too random...



I do agree though that the basic game misses a way to harass the opponent, especially attacking enemy cities because these score the most points. But in that respect I believe the princess and katharer succeed much better. There are only 4-6 pieces of these (which hardly extends the game length) and they primarily attack the big point scoring cities.

I agree with some of your points x X, I maintain however that the tower adds tactics. There are a lot of tower tiles, again my assumption would be that the expansion was designed for use by people who would be using the 'full' set so to speak.

If you're not happy with the amount of tower tiles in the mix I would suggest:

Removing some,

Allowing players to place tower pieces only on tower tiles they have drawn (though extant towers can be added to by all), or

Changing the range of the towers slightly by saying - a level 1 tower may remove a meeple from any orthogonally adjacent tile to the tower (or the tower tile itself), a level 2 tower may take a meeple from a 2nd (a tile 2 tiles out from the tower tile) orthogonally adjacent tile only, a level 3 tower from the 3rd orthogonally adjacent tile only etc.

Certainly for the base set and one or two of the expansions I would suggest removing some of the tiles. The other ideas here are just suggestions.

I agree with you to a certain extent on the Princess and Dragon expansion, although I have a problem with the princess more than the dragon, in a two player game there are very few situations I have come across where moving the dragon is actually important (ie: it will never be able to get a meeple), in multi-player games however it does become more of a serious danger, although the fairy can help to a limited extent.

Cheers and thanks for the opinions! It is always great to hear what others think so thanks for commenting!

Giles.