Carcassonne Expansion Review – Inns and Cathedrals
The first expansion for Carcassonne might be the easiest one to fold into your base game of Carcassonne, and one you’ll probably never play without. Inns and Cathedrals adds more tiles to use and more points to be earned, without complicating the formula of the game too much. It’s a rules light expansion that is definitely worth picking up!
What’s in the Box?
The Inns and Cathedrals expansion includes 24 new land tiles, 6 score tiles for when you cross 50 or 100 points in the game, 6 large meeples, and a set of new pink figures so another player can join the Carcassonne fun!
Review
As you will see in a few of the other expansions we are reviewing, I absolutely love that they included an extra tile for the Rivers Expansion in this box. The Rivers Expansion is now included in all base copies of Carcassonne, so to see extra tiles being offered for that specific expansion is really cool. After all, who doesn’t just play with Rivers at this point? The big change in this game is the brand new large worker. This large Meeple, separate from your other meeples, counts as two when seeing who scores a city, road, etc. If you join your large meeple up to a road with another players smaller meeple, you “win that fight” 2-1, which means you score the points! This large meeple makes this expansion worth it in my opinion. Having hte option to have a slightly stronger meeple to place out on the board adds a little strategic element, without a huge rules addition. It’s a great way to make the game more strategic, without making it more complicated.
The other half of this expansion is inns and cathedrals. These new features allow you to score additional points when added to roads (inns) or cities (cathedrals). Inns along a road score you 2 points per road segment instead of one, and cathedrals in a completed city give you three points per city tile, as opposed to two. There is obviously a decent amount of luck here as you need to draw these tiles from the bag, ideally when you have a road or city to place them in. Still, it adds another layer to the game that doesn’t make teaching the game too much more difficult!
Conclusion
In my opinion, there is no reason to not fold Inns and Cathedrals into your main box to use every time you play. I think this is almost an essential expansion that provides a few unique tiles you won’t find in the base game, and a few nice additional ways to score points. It’s doesn’t overly complicate the game by adding new features to score, which makes this an ideal way for new board game players to get a bit more out of their Carcassonne experience!
Article By Adam
