Overall opinion

[koolkat]

I was looking through the board games on a very well-know kid store trying to find out something appealing for new gameplay. Then I saw Carcassonne. What really made me buy its base set was the fact that the board is built throughout the game and is different for every game. And do I like variety! When I got home, I was alone, but I couldn't help myself playing out the game for myself after a read the basic rules and concept of the game.
After a few plays (also with my wife, friends and family - who adored the game also) I dicided to go out there in the shop trying to find expansions for the game. (Un)fortunatley I "only" got Inns and Cathedrals and "Dragon and Princess". Luckily, I bought "Merchants and Traders" on the internet on a shop near me. Now I'm also waiting for the post to deliever "The tower" which will happen next week, I hope. As you probably understood I got a real addict on this game. Now I play it online also, in spite of being a little frustrated because of one of the sites. You see the thing is, if I loose, it's ok, but if I'm winning all other players leave game, so I can't get points for the ranking. It's rather annoying!!! That's on ASOBRAIN.COM. Fortunately I play on another german site and there I can win till the end though there's no ranking.
Now for the base and expansion opinion.
The base set is great for learning game play and after a few plays with owning expansions it's allways nice to play with only the base set for a while, because it's quick and somehow it's easier to trick other players as there aren't a lot of different tile configurations to solve some tricky plays, if you know what I mean.
As for the "Inns and Cathedrals" set  I think it's a soft expansion although might be a little tricky to play. I like it, mostly because we got a funny way to frame other players, right?
Now for the "Dragon and Princess". Now some people don't like for the same reason that I do like it. It's mass meeple destructive. It's funny how we can track the dragon path after a few meeple eating turns. The fairy feature is also delightful. It makes it harder to think what the best move (play) should be. The princess feature is also nice because with it, we can take a city from some other player, and that's an interesting feature, now isn't it?
When I started to play online, I noticed that "Merchants and Builders" is the most successful expansion. May be it's because of the double turn feature. And perhaps the scoring rules. My opinion is that,though it's not my favourite, I think it adds a lot of game play because it opens a lot of new possible gameplay options. The pig deployment might be tricky, but that's another delightful add-on.
"though I haven't played "The tower" (not even online) I can hardly wait to get it at home for gameplay. I think the tower building and the prisioner features delicious. I'll post again after a few gameplays.
The river(s) expansion(s) adds some new landscape to the board and the lake/volcano tile is one of the best tiles of the game because it puts the dragon onto play just at the game start! Terrific! Wonderful!
The "Count" expansion did not make success becaus rules are complex, somehow hard to be understood and prooved not to be a real helpfull expansion. I don't like it and I guess most players don't either.
As for the other expansions I can't give my opinion because I didn't play them yet. But I think "Abbey and the Mayor" should be great because of the new items.
The other miniexpansions could also be a real add-on to the game.
As soon as I get ither expansion I'll be back to give my opinion abou them.

[Novelty]

Well, generally expansions that hinder (Princess & Dragon, Tower) or have difficult rules (Princess & Dragon, Count of Carcassonne) are generally those that are the least favourite by the players.  At least that's my opinion.

[Joff]

I do not like the Count (I do not like the rules). I have never played the Princess and the Dragon, mainly because I do not gel with the fairytale theme. However, reading through the rules today, I quite fancy giving this a go. I absolutely love The Tower though, but this must be mixed with at least 2 expansions, IMO. Don't give up if you try the Tower with vanilla Carc, it definately works better with more expansions.

Abbey and Mayor is a fantastic expansion. This is my favourite out of all the expansions.

Hope you have fun.

[koolkat]

Yes, Joff. So I read that "Abbey and the Mayor" is the best expansion. I can hardly wait to get get it through eBay.
I'll follow your advice and try "The Tower" with some other expansion(s).
Thanks for quick replies, guys. That makes me proud and evenmore addictive on Carc.

[Scott]

P&D definitely needs to be played with several other expansions too. With just vanilla Carc, hard to keep the dragon away from yourself.

[koolkat]

Yes, Scott. I agree with you. P&D needs to be played with other expansion. Even The River II goes well with it but Merchants & Traders as well. But the best combination so far (from the ones I know) is with the tower.

[Novelty]

Tower and P&D?  You might get a rather low scoring game if you add just those 2...

[koolkat]

Yeah, Novelty. That might be right: mass destruction, but I'm still a novice on this and I only play with some people which play less than me, so we're not too mean yet... 

[Tobias]

Tower and P&D?  You might get a rather low scoring game if you add just those 2...

Throw in Cathars and you are really close to Evil C

[koolkat]

Thanks, Tobias. As soon as I get my hands to The Cathars, I'll do that for sure.
After all what really matters is competition, not high scores, don't you agree?

[Novelty]

Good luck getting the Cathars.  It's out of print and is rather difficult to get unless you are willing to pay lots of money.

The siege tiles from Cult, Siege and Creativity works exactly the same, but has a slightly different image and is called differently.  You might want to get that instead.

[koolkat]

Well, thanks for the tip, Novelty. But perhaps I'll find it on eBay. No?
I'll give some feed back as soon as I know something, for the interested...

[Novelty]

If you find it for less than 20 euros, then it's a good price.  That's 5 euros for one of the Cathar tiles.  Have fun looking.

[koolkat]

You can bet on that. I'm more than a player, I make collections.

[Deatheux]

get the cahars, they are great and improve the value of the whole game, don't print out some poor lazylabel copies, this is not satisfying enough a REAL collector/game lover.