IntroductionWhen
Abbey and Mayor - the fifth 'large' expansion to
Carcassonne - was announced, several sites enticingly indicated that it was apparently an 'adult version'. This was most likely due to a misreading of the German abbreviation 'Erw.': normally it would mean 'Erweiterung' - meaning 'expansion' - but somebody seems to have taken it to mean 'Erwachsenenversion' - meaning 'adult version'. It should come as no surprise to learn that
Abbey and Mayor is still good, clean family entertainment; but in fact describing it as 'adult' may not be far wrong. The expansion adds a number of strategic elements to the game which, although much appreciated by the author, are almost certainly to be avoided when playing with the smaller members of the family.
Abbey and Mayor is a fan's expansion, deepening the strategy of the game, whilst at the same leaving the core strategy intact. It's probably the nearest Hans-in-Glück have come to an essential expansion to
Carcassonne since
Traders and Builders. But it's not for the kids.
New tilesThe 12 new tiles are what those of the
GQ expansion should have been (one of them is actually the same a tile from the
GQ)- new configurations which add an element of surprise when they come up in the deck. My favourite is a tile with a well in the centre, surrounded by a road, with three roads leading off that. These roads are actually unbroken, and can only be completed when all three branches are closed off, forcing the player to think a little more carefully than usual when the tile is drawn.
Helpfully, all the tiles are marked with a 'barn' symbol representing the expansion, in the way that all the tiles in the
Big Box were.
New meeplesSimilarly to
Princess and Dragon, the new expansion has several new game elements which can be used independently of each other. They are all variations on familiar elements, all are purely strategic (no luck whatsoever) and are added to the player's supply at the start of the game. This means that it's more difficult to run out of meeples than before, having strengthened your troops considerably; and also that the main game-play elements are not diluted as more expansions are added into the mix.
The four new elements break down as follows:
- Abbey - super cloister
- Mayor - super knight
- Barn - super farmer
- Wagon - super deployment
The abbeyMy initial impression was that this special tile was nothing more than a gap-filler - literally. Wherever the is a 'hole' in the playing field (a hole being defined as having one tile above, below, left and right) a player may choose to place this tile instead of drawing one from the deck. The tile may be placed in the hole no matter what the edges of the other tiles are - it finishes all the segments, be they road, city or farm. And you can deploy a monk to the abbey, just as you would to a cloister.
I had expected something a little more powerful than what is effectively a glorified cloister - maybe adding points to any future cloisters which are completed. But the real function of the abbey is to provide you with a tile at precisely the point when it would usually be most difficult to come by the right one. As such, it helps you to avoid being locked into a dead-end city, and speeds the game up a little. Still you have only one, so use wisely.
The mayorOnly able to be deployed to cities, and not quite as large as the big meeple, the mayor does nevertheless seem to be wearing enormous trousers. While the big meeple is 'worth' the same as two normal meeples when calculating the majority, the 'worth' of the mayor is dependent on the number of pennants in the city. So the mayor could well end up being worth no more than a usual meeple, or even nothing at all - while being potentially worth a dozen or more.
This variability means that the mayor is basically a strategic piece. More specifically, it seems tailor-made for the kind of cut-throat play which I enjoy - building onto other player's cities and, at the last minute depriving them of reaping the reward of all their hard work. The bigger the city, the more pennants it is likely to have, and the more powerful that mayor is likely to become. Like the abbey, the mayor is not likely to get much use in the average game, but will prove to be exactly the right piece every so often. And to increase the likelihood of that occurring, several of the new tiles have pennants - one of them even having two.
The barnWithout a doubt, the most powerful new game element. The barn can only be placed on the intersection of four farm segments, and immediately forces all farmers on the farm to be scored (3 points per adjacent city) and removed. No further farmer may be deployed to the farm, and if another farm containing farmers becomes connected to a farm with a barn, the farmers are again scored immediately, this time scoring only a single point for every adjacent city. The barn cannot be removed by the dragon or a tower, and scores 4 points per city at the end of the game.
So the barn allows you to secure a farm, and claim it for your own - the only antidote being for another player to connect a farm with a barn to your farm, and then you share the points equally. Now, while this seems perhaps overly powerful, placement of the barn is a little tricky, but it does actually simplify scoring, by effectively 'fixing' a farm - there'll be very little fighting over it later in the game, and probably fewer farmers around in any case. In a game of five or six players, there could easily be only barns in play, and no farmers at all.
Mind you, the barn will only help to simplify scoring if you're using 3rd edition rules - but more on that later.
The wagonThe special power of the wagon is that it can be redeployed to an adjacent feature after scoring. Imagine, for example, that you place a tile with a road (which completes another) which leads to a cloister: you can choose to deploy the wagon to the road, pick up a couple of points, and then immediately move the wagon to the cloister. This redeployment can only occur after scoring a feature; and otherwise, the wagon functions in exactly the same way as a normal meeple, except that it can't be deployed to farms at all. Still, like the abbey and the mayor, it's also likely to be exactly the piece you need on occasion.
The barn controversyWell, it was bound to happen. RGG have steadfastly clung to 1st edition farm scoring, and it was inevitable that at some point an expansion would come out which, being based on 3rd edition scoring, would prove incompatible. The only surprise is that it's taken this long.
Basically, the RGG rules use third edition scoring for barns. That is, when you place a barn and remove a farmer, the farmer scores three points for each adjacent city. At the end on the game, the barn scores three points for each adjacent city. But the RGG rules for Abbey and Mayor do not actually suggest that this is now the rule for how farms should be scored, but rather imply that it is an exception, only occurring when barns are involved. We'll have to wait until RGG republish the basic game or the Big Box to find out if they do indeed plan to abandon 1st edition scoring; at the moment, though, current adherents of 1st edition rules will have three choices:
- 1. use 1st edition for final scoring, and 3rd edition for barns (which will prove unbelievably complicated)
- 2. switch completely to 3rd edition rules, regardless of what RGG decide in the future
- 3. not use barns at all
If you're going to give barns a shot at all, my advice would be to try either 2. or 3.; going with 1. would be unfair and not give you a real basis on which to judge the expansion. It would hardly be surprising that barns don't work with rules they weren't intended to work with, kind of like putting diesel in a petrol car.
Final wordIf this review has been anything like successful, it should have made you think 'Aha - I know that situation! That tile/meeple would be perfect there!'. Because that's what this expansion is about. It provides solutions for situations which should be familiar, which should enhance game-play without dramatically changing it (the barn possibly excepted). Most of the elements are likely to come into play in the middle or late game, and then rarely. But the expansion succeeds where
Princess and Dragon failed - in offering us more of the game we love, but without including randomising or distracting features. It's not an expansion you'll want to bring out for noobs or kids, but seasoned players should definitely find it worthwhile.
Final Final WordFor anyone who's interested, I'm currently updating the Complete Annotated Rules to include all the feature and tiles for
Abbey and Mayor. HiG seem to be out of the office at the moment, but I should have a new version finished by the end of next week…
