Carcassonne Central

I just picked up the Princess and the Dragon yesterday, my wife and I tried it out along with Rivers 1 & 2, King and Phantom.  I think we played for almost 4 hours, and the final score was 265 to 251.
The extra dynamics of stealing the fairy, kicking knights out of cities and avoiding the dragon really slow things down.  I hope we get faster at it.

This is the only expansion I've decided to never play again. (No, I did not buy the catapult)

Was this a wrongful decision? Me boring?

P&D has it's merits.  Especially with the magic portal.  The princess can make things interesting.  The only real problem I find with the dragon is that it's very difficult to mix the tile sufficiently so as to avoid getting several dragons in a row.  Oh, and we always forget about the fairy.

We always forget the fairy too so we've declared that if the player doesn't remember it then he loses the point. He has to remember it on his turn. Then no one feels like they have to police it and make sure the points get allocated, etc. You either remember or you don't. Keeps it simple.

What we find is it is difficult to get the dragon to the interior of the board later in the game so he ends up hovering around the perimeter. So we play that whenever a volcano is drawn the player can move the dragon to any volcano. That allows the dragon to roam the whole board throughout the game.

We also play that the player who "eats" a follower or figure with the dragon is awarded 3 points, unless it is his own then no points. This gives the dragon some teeth. Nothing more frustrating than a toothless dragon.

I have found P&D as an very interesting exp. Good idea is to print Perky dragon exp (but I didn't printed yet) it gives some new tiles to play with P&D. I have to say that I have played with P&D only few games, so I don't have very vast experience with it, but dragon give some wood rotation and It's is a good mechanic. I would change nothing with that. The only thing with P&D is the fairy. It drives me crazy to remember to add a point on beginning of turn. Could use a good variant for that, but can't create such, or find such.

I could say that P&D is a good exp. I like it more than Count, or tower. Magic portals, princess, and the dragon are very nicely done rules, imo.

One variant we like to play with the fairy is if you place the fairy with your follower and fail (forget) to collect the extra point on your turn then you have to lose a point if someone calls you out (when the next player starts his turn by drawing a tile). This tends to bring the fairy to the forefront of the mind a little better and is a disincentive for some to even take the fairy to begin with.  :a8