WHT IS THE "silver lining" ?
(You know the phrase, 'Every cloud has a silver lining'? It means that there's always something positive to see, even when everything looks dark.)
This release is without doubt the single worst release for
Carcassonne to date (previously that position was held by the
GQ11 expansion). It adds absolutely nothing new to the game apart from five tiles we already had. But the only good thing about it—and this is the silver lining—is that it
is still a new official expansion.
In a game of mega-Carc you should use ONE copy of every expansion. There isn't a written rule for this, it just makes sense. Every new expansion that's released gets mixed in with the other tiles and makes the game bigger, more complex, and less predictable. But you shouldn't mix in two copies of the same set—that would just be adding more tiles for the sake of it, and when you talked about 'mega-Carc' you would mean something different to everybody else. Now, if the new expansion came with the same 'crown' logo that
Count, King and Consorts did, then I think most people would agree that it was just a reprint of the
Shrines and Heretics part of that collection. As such it would be nothing but a duplicate, just like buying two copies of
The Count of Carcassonne or
The River II would be. Like this—with the 'pentagon' log—even though all of the tiles are identical to old ones, at least it can legitimately be used in mega-Carc.
I think there will be a lot of disappointed people out there when this expansion arrives in the post. It feels like a cynical rip-off, capitalising on the demand for
The Cathars (oh, how awesome five new Cathar tiles would have been!) and providing us with rubbish instead. I personally would not advise anyone to buy it.
But at least with the 'pentagon' logos to distinguish the tiles, it isn't completely useless. Just nearly.
