Recommendations for expansions for 2 players?

[djdahmer]

Currently I have only ever played Carcassonne as a 2-player game (i.e. with my wife). We've bought a few expansions, but have noticed that not all of them seem to play that well with only 2 players. What expansions would you recommend that we get next? We currently have the following:

Always play with:
   The River
   Traders & Builders
   GQ11 Expansion (self-made)

Hardly ever use:
   Abbey & Mayor
   Cathars (self-made)


My apologies if this has already been covered; I spent a while browsing through old topics, but couldn't find anything that was specifically
for 2 players

[Gwommy]

I like them all(except for Catapult).  Many say that Princes & Dragon and Tower is too cut-throat because they remove followers from the board.  I'm surprised that you don't have Inns & Cathedrals on your list, that one is a pretty good one.

If you're asking about which fan-based expansions would be good to make for two players, I'd suggest Family Fued, Lavender Fields, or maybe Gold Mines.  Although, keep in mind that I've not yet played with any fan-made expansions yet, but I've read them all.

[Novelty]

I echo Inns & Cathedrals.  If you are playing with Rivers, Rivers 2 would probably fit in with you style of play as well.  As for the Fan-made expansions, you could try the Treasure Hunt/Chest expansions.  Those are fun but a bit complicated to learn.  If you're just looking for more tiles, all the Mathguy expansions, the Vanilla expansion and the Thanksgiving and Winter 2008 expansions are fun.  Which reminds me, I want to do a Halloween 2009 expansion

[Joff]

You hardly ever use Abbey and Mayor !!! I happen to think that Abbey and Mayor is possibly the best expansion for the basic game!

However, that said, if you haven't added Inns and Cathedrals to your base game as yet, then you really should do. It adds subtle differences to the base game without overcomplicating it too much. Some people (including me) feel that the base game is not really the basic game until Inns and Cathedrals has been added.

[djdahmer]

A couple of hours after my original post I had to go into town, so I took the opportunity to have a look in the local games store (well, comic shop that stocks games). When we first got Carcassonne they only had a couple of expansions: Traders & Builders (which we bought), and King & Scout. Since then it looks like they've expanded their range a lot - I managed to (finally) pick up Inns & Cathedrals, and they threw in the Games Quarterly 11 mag & expansion for free!

I think the problem we have with Abbey & Mayor is down to the way we play - generally there's not a lot of conflict over cities, and we'll sometimes compete over one large farm, but often the mayor & barn are left sitting in our stockpile virtually unused. We're getting the hang of the wagon (which I like), and the abbey tile is great for filling those otherwise impossible holes, but it just doesn't seem worth it if we're not using some of the pieces. Perhaps we just need more practise with it?

I've been thinking about making some of the fan-made expansions & will probably start with the Novelty tile sets, and some of the ones formerly available on the HiG website (mehrfluss, and the three Landschaften sets) as soon as I can get them looking like the official tiles (I'm a bit of a prefectionist when it comes to things like that). I'll have to have a better look at the others mentioned - I have to confess I haven't paid much attention to them as yet.

[Joff]

and they threw in the Games Quarterly 11 mag & expansion for free!

Nice one. Although we don't usually use the tiles from the GQ expansion, we have replaced the river 'spring' tile with the 'spring' from the GQ expansion.

I think the problem we have with Abbey & Mayor is down to the way we play - generally there's not a lot of conflict over cities, and we'll sometimes compete over one large farm, but often the mayor & barn are left sitting in our stockpile virtually unused. We're getting the hang of the wagon (which I like), and the abbey tile is great for filling those otherwise impossible holes, but it just doesn't seem worth it if we're not using some of the pieces. Perhaps we just need more practise with it?

We tend to play more of an aggressive game, in which we compete for large cities. The mayor comes in handy for this.

[CKorfmann]

I think the problem we have with Abbey & Mayor is down to the way we play - generally there's not a lot of conflict over cities, and we'll sometimes compete over one large farm, but often the mayor & barn are left sitting in our stockpile virtually unused. We're getting the hang of the wagon (which I like), and the abbey tile is great for filling those otherwise impossible holes, but it just doesn't seem worth it if we're not using some of the pieces. Perhaps we just need more practise with it?

We tend to play more of an aggressive game, in which we compete for large cities. The mayor comes in handy for this.

I agree.  The Mayor is like a city sniper.  If you play aggressively for cities, you should definitely use the Mayor more.  I found the Dragon part of P&D paritcularly difficult with 2 players.  You can too frequently move the dragon away from your followers.  

As for fan-made epxansions, I'm really most familiar with those I've had a hand in and I think you'd probably like The King's Gate, Shepherds, and The Missionary.  Some meeple-only expansons that are easy to incorporate are The Leper, Jester and Minstrel (if you own the Catapult), and Trading posts.  Joff's Medieval expansion and Scott's Lord of the Manor should be pretty easy too.  Really, when it comes to fan-mades, just read through them and find the ones you like. 

[Gwommy]

You may want to check out the variant I just created thanks to your inquiry of 2 player expansions.  You can use a follower of a color that you're not playing with as the extra piece required to use it.  Here's a shortcut to the thread:

http://www.carcassonnecentral.com/forum/index.php?topic=1123.msg14200#new

[djdahmer]

You may want to check out the variant I just created thanks to your inquiry of 2 player expansions.  You can use a follower of a color that you're not playing with as the extra piece required to use it.

Thanks Gwommy, I like the idea of this variant. We played a game last Monday where we ended up with a very large farm covering most of the board. We had the same number of followers on it, effectively nullifying any points for the farm (giving me a comfortable win), but using this variant it could have gone either way & ultimately decided who won. It's a nice, simple mechanic which adds a new strategic element to the game.