Carcassonne Big Box Review - Part 2 - Inns & Cathedrals

The first major expansion to Carcassonne is truly an excellent example of an expansion. Inns & Cathedrals adds 18 new tiles plus 2 new tile types, an extra player making the game playable with up to 6 people, and giant meeples.

These simple additions adds just enough to the game without overwhelming it and the players. After playing a few games you should realize the power of sharing a territory. Points for an area is awarded to the player with the most meeples on an area. If there is a tie, all players with a meeple in the area gets the score. This is where the giant meeples comes in. Giant meeples counts as 2 meeples adding an interesting layer of gaming to sharing an area.

Connecting a road tile near a city is almost always a death sentence for the city. Road/city tiles are few but with Inns & Cathedrals chances of getting one of these tile is increased. Cities now has more chances to be completed.

The two new tile types , as you might have guessed, are inns and cathedrals. Inns are for roads and cathedrals are for cities but they both have the same idea. Each city or road tiles connected to these gives one extra point if completed but none if it is not completed. This adds a risk element to the game.

These additions from the Inns & Cathedrals expansion adds elements that are much needed but would not be missed to a game of Carcassonne. An exelent first expansion.

Carcassone Big Box Review - Part 1

I am going to split my review of Carcassonne Big Box into 5. The main game and the 4 expansions individually. I will begin here with the main body of the game. Carcassonne.

Carcassonne is a tile laying game for 2 to 5 players. It plays within 45 to 60 minutes.

The game set up begins with a fixed starting tile placed on the gaming area. Each player is given 8 meeples one of witch would be used on the score board to keep track of their score. The 7 meeples will be used to score in the game.

Each tile may have one, some or all of the 4 different areas/elements 1 on each of the four sides of the tile. These are roads, cities, meadows and monastery. The monastery tile unlike other tiles has a monastery in the middle with a meadow surrounding it .

Placing tiles adds to the “map” of Carcassonne. Players may place their meeple on an empty area. If the area is completed then it scores immediately. Meadows only score at the end of the game equal to the number of completed cities, a monastery scores when it is surrounded by 8 tiles, a road as complete and scores then both its ends are blocked, and a city is completed when it is completely surrounded by walls. Incomplete areas also scores but comparatively little.

The game ends when there are no more tiles to be laid.

It sound complicated but it will all make sense when you play the game. This game is a must have. It could be played with adults and children. It is rare in a board game that the end result of a session is something beautiful in this case a map.

The actual game play is very simple and intuitive but scoring could be tricky at first. Playes have to make decisions on tile placement and manage their limited meeples. The rules are straight forward and easy to understand and the components are few and will not disappoint.

Of Smartness and Railroads

Of course i can spell smrt....it is spelled as smart! See? You can't fool a smrt person and I are smrt!

Now for the Railroad Tycoon (RRT) short review. Got it last Saturday, tried it on Sunday. Mind you, the box size is deceiving. It houses the most freaking biggest gameboard i have ever seen AND it needs to be separated into 3 different pieces with each piece big enough for any boardgame you have. This gives an epic feel to the game. All the accesories are also top notch. Only complaint is 3 of my engines come with broken chutes but nothing some super glue can't fix:)

Tried it out with a 2 player game with Joey. It was a typical 1st game experience. Play and refer to the rulebook at the same time. We...erm...I mean I made a few mistakes that we didn't realize until later that night when i read the rulebook "thoroughly" most notably the following:-

- The 1st player "MUST" bid. I realized this is not right after I paid 1k for like 6 consecutive rounds. Wasted all my money.
- Each player can only do "ONE" action during a turn. This is because I smrtly concluded the player can only do the following, 1st action: auction, 2nd action: one round of any one of the actions (instead of 3 rounds), 3rd action: income & dividends.
- The 2nd point make me conclude we can only build a link with a maximum of 4 tracks.

The worst thing was I won the game. I just pray/hope Joey doesn't think i did the above on purpose coz he can whoop my arse with one hand tied behind his back. Sorry Joey! But it was fun though. Can't wait to play it again after the pre-release of Magic:TG Time Spiral this weekend.

p.s. Dope...I will prove to you guys my Puerto Rico victory is no fluke. Till nextime "warehouse boy"!