Carcassonne!

If you know me and my family, you know we love, love, love playing board games.
It just runs through our blood.
Hence, we created a game room to house our many games, and supply us with a quaint room just to enjoy our hobby. {aka: Heaven}

Though there are many games I enjoy, such as Scrabble, Clue, Colosseum, Ticket to Ride, Pit, and Bunco, just to name a few, there is none like Carcassonne. Oh, how I love thee...

We started playing Carcassonne a few years back. Warren found it at a thrift store, just like he does many of our games.
I loved it from the start.

What is Carcassonne all about? Well... It's a clever tile-laying game. The southern French city of Carcassonne is famous for its unique Roman and Medieval fortifications. {A real city in France!}
The players develop the area around Carcassonne and deploy their followers on the roads, in the cities, in the cloisters, and in the fields. The skill of the players to develop the area will determine who is victorious.


We were happily playing along for awhile, then something beautiful happened...

I found expansions! My heart jumped for joy!

I found that currently, there are:

  7 full expansions,
11 mini expansions,
13 Spin offs/ stand alone games, and
  4 compilations of these games/expansions

And more are being created. Joy!

We have several expansions- they are marked in red.
However, my goal is to get all of the expansions and stand alone games, one day. FUN!!


Full Expansions:

1- Carcassonne - Inns and Cathedrals

Adds some new tiles, and one new figure.
A large figure that counts as two followers.
Special tiles with Inns and Cathedrals can be placed as part of roads and cities to enhance their value—provided they are completed by the end of the game. Inns double each road segment's value, while Cathedrals add one point per tile or pennant in a city. However if the city or road is not completed, it has zero value.
Followers that allow a sixth player to play.

2- Carcassonne — Traders and Builders


Adds additional tile types, two new followers, and trade good tiles.
Trade goods appear in cities and are collected by the player who completes the city, even if they are not the one who scores it (thus encouraging the completion of other people's cities).
A "pig" follower which increases the value of a field it's placed in
A "builder" follower which grants an extra turn to the owning player whenever the feature is extended.
A cloth bag which players can use while drawing tiles.

3- Carcassonne — The Princess and the Dragon

Adds new tiles and figures.
Tiles with "magic gates" allow players to place followers on previously played tiles
Princess tiles and Dragon figure allow for followers to be removed.
A Fairy figure also allows protection to a follower and its tile from time to time.

4- Carcassonne — The Tower



Adds a vertical element to Carcassonne, adding new tiles and tower pieces.
Eighteen tiles with tower foundations, which allow a player to add a tower section and capture nearby followers belonging to another player
Tower pieces to build with
A cardboard tile tower for easy tile storage, also acting as a mechanism from which tiles are drawn.

5- Carcassonne — Abbey and Mayor


Abbey tiles that can complete features
Mayors who score cities
A barn that forces field scoring
Wagons that can score features.
Additional tiles that, in response to fan feedback, fix specific situations that have been previously impossible to complete.

6- Carcassonne — The Catapult

A physical catapult
12 fair ground tiles that initiate a round using the catapult.
Tokens to be launched by the catapult.

7- Carcassonne – Bridges, Castles, and Bazaars


12 Bridge pieces enabling players to bridge roads over field tiles
12 Castle tokens so players can gain additional points from 2-tile cities
12 new tiles, eight featuring bazaars which introduce a new auction element to the game and four miscellaneous tiles.

Mini Expansions:

1- Carcassonne — The River

12 River tiles that replace the single initial tile.

2- Carcassonne — King and Scout

'King and Scout' is two expansions; King for Carcassonne and Scout for Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers.
King and Robber Baron tiles used to keep track of who built the largest road and city.
5 additional tiles, with combinations that were previously missing

3- Carcassonne — The Count

The Count of Carcassonne Via new tiles, provides an incentive to complete other players' features: when a player does so, she may place a follower in the city of Carcassonne, and then later move that follower in to a feature as it completed (commonly known as "paratrooping").

12 tiles depicting the city of Carcassonne itself. These replace the initial starting tile and support new game mechanics.
A count figure, which can block paratrooping.

4- Carcassonne- The Cathars

4 siege tiles where Cathars break city walls. These halve the value of the city but double its contribution to field scores. Monasteries allow followers in cities to escape and come back to their players.

5- Carcassonne — The River II

Similar to the original River expansion, The River II tiles include features from previous expansions, for example a volcano to invoke the dragon.
New tiles to create a larger, forked river

6- Carcassonne — The Mini-Expansion

A new spring with a road, which separates a field, thereby preventing some very large fields as allowed by the original River.
11 additional tiles.

7- Carcassonne — The Cult, Siege, and Creativity

5 tiles depicting heretical shrines that can be used in rivalries with cloisters and abbeys
Cult (with one additional tile)
Siege (an adaptation of the Cather expansion)
2 blank white tiles for use in making custom expansions. {I like our version of the 2 'creative' tiles!  Warren drew on them, and they're super cool!}

8- Carcassonne — Tunnels

4 new tiles and twelve chips to create underground tunnels
Tunnels can also be built with The Princess and the Dragon tunnel entrances.

9- Carcassonne – Crop Circles

6 new tiles depicting three pairs of symbols allowing players to add or remove followers from other tiles.


The player who draws a landscape map "crop circle" sets the card to the usual.

 He then determined that all players, starting with the player next to him, either ...
A) a follower of their stock to own, already on a landscape map
set to follower set may.
OR
B) Remove a separate follower on a landscape map and put it in their Stocks have to put.

10- Carcassonne – The Plague

6 new tiles depicting plague zones allowing players to remove followers from tiles.

A plague tile with an active plagueland and all adjacent dark red fleas form an active plague area. Also, an active plagueland without bordering fleas is considered as active plague area.

Contiguous pale pink fleas form a latent plague area.
Plague tiles with the passive flea-chip (grassland side) is safe from the plague. It is not part of a Plague area.

11- Carcassonne – The Entourage

6 transparent followers (one of each color)
Each player receives one Phantom follower in their color which can be placed like a usual follower but at the same time as a normal follower placement.

Spin offs/ Stand alone games:

1- Travel Carcassonne

2- Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers

Hunters and Gatherers is a stand-alone game that involves the building of forests, rivers and wildlife rather than cities and roads. This game attempted to rectify some perceived faults in the original by eliminating cloisters, introducing a "special tile" system to encourage players to complete cities (now forests) owned by other players, and making the value of meadows vary both up and down with animals that appear on the tiles.

3- Carcassonne- Wheel of Fortune


A full replacement for the base game and/or expansion, featuring:
72 tiles from the base game, Inns & Cathedrals, Traders & Builders, and King & Scout
40 followers (in 5 colors) and a scoreboard
A new start-tile which depicts the Wheel of Fortune

The Wheel of Fortune – a new mechanic based on icons on 16 tiles allowing an element of "fate" into the game. Events that can be triggered include famine, plague, and fortune, among others
A large pink pig animeeple that moves along the rim of the wheel.

4- The Ark of the Covenant

Ark is a biblical-themed version of Carcassonne based on the Old Testament, which includes the animal feature found in Hunters and Gatherers, as well as the Ark itself which may be moved in lieu of follower placement, scoring points for followers that they pass through.

5- Carcassonne: The Castle

The Castle is a two-player spin-off, where the game is played within the confines of a fixed castle.
Players gain extra abilities by scoring an exact number of points, and tile placement rules are relaxed.

6- Carcassonne: The City

The City is a "deluxe-style" stand-alone game similar to The Castle, where tile placement is relaxed. The significant new rules involve the addition of city walls when the city grows beyond a certain size.

7- Carcassonne: The City 2

In a cardboard, rather than wooden, box at a new lower price!

8- Carcassonne: The Discovery

An exploration-themed stand-alone game that involves mountains, seas and meadows. The significant change in this game is that followers are no longer automatically removed when a terrain feature is completed: they must be removed as a game action, in lieu of placing a new follower that turn. Players may choose to remove a follower from, and score for, a terrain feature before it is completed, albeit for fewer points; followers remaining on the map at the end of the game also suffer a score penalty even if the features they are standing on are completed.

9- New World: A Carcassonne Game

New World is a stand-alone game that allows players to play Carcassonne in the New World, aka America. Players begin the basic tile-laying from a coastal edge and move westward, creating towns, hunting, farming, and trail blazing as they go along. Although terminology has changed, this game follows the basic rules of Carcassonne very closely but is more restricted than the basic game.

10- The Kids of Carcassonne

This is a short game for younger children inspired by Carcassonne.

11- Cardcassonne

This is a card game based on Carcassonne.

12- Carcassonne Dice

13- Carcassonne Celebration

10 tiles depicting fireworks
If a player reveals a tile with the Celebration symbol, they place the tile as usual. Now they must decide to either:
• Place one follower on the tile per the usual rules; or
• Remove one of their own followers from the board and return it to their supply.

Compilations:


1- Carcassonne Big Box

The original game,
Inns and Cathedrals
Traders and Builders
Princess and the Dragon
Tower
River (only in Rio Grande version)

2- Carcassonne — Count, King and Cult

A compilation of mini-expansions:
Count of Carcassonne
King and Scout
River II
Cult

3- Carcassonne Big Box 2

This Big Box is the same size as the previous Big Box, but with a slightly different component mix.

The original game
Inns and Cathedrals
Traders and Builders
The Princess and the Dragon
Abbey and Mayor
Count, King and Cult
River II (only in 2008 Rio Grande release)

4- Carcassonne Big Box 3

Original Carcassonne,
Inns and Cathedrals,
Traders and Builders,
The Princess and the Dragon,
Abbey and Mayor,
Bridges, Castles and Bazaars.

5- Also, the Carcassonne game has spawned several PC and console versions.
I like to play on the phone!!