Carcassonne Expansion Review – Towers and Thieves
Of all the Carcassonne expansions we have reviewed so far, Towers and Thieves might be my least favourite. That said, it’s still an expansion I enjoy playing, which means even if it’s my least favourite, it’s still a good time!
What’s in the Box?
One of the major features of this expansion is a tower that you can build out of cardboard that will hold land tiles. If you prefer to draw land tiles from a stack instead of taking them out of the bag, you can definitely do that using this included tower. This tower will not fit in your expansion box once built – if you are playing with the new released expansions – but should fight nicely in your base Carcassonne box assembled! This expansion, like all the others, includes a river tile for the Rivers Expansion, 13 new land tiles, 5 tower tiles, and 20 tower floors.
Review
Explaining the towers portion of the expansion is a bit difficult, but essentially with some restrictions, instead of placing a meeple on a tile you just placed, you can place them on a watchtower within range instead. In the future, when a thief tile is placed, you add a floor to all towers without watchmen (meeples) on them and then you score the watchmen. Each watchmen on a tower scores points equal to the value of the thief tile that was just pulled from the bag. In certain situations, there may be no watchmen on any towers when a thief tile is placed. The thief then “steals” the tile meaning you don’t get to place it and your turn is over; in the future, when watchmen are scored, they will earn points for the drawn thief tile AS WELL AS points equal to the stolen tiles.
I’m more hesitant to play this one because of the added teach. Nothing here is inherently difficult, but it can be hard to explain to people when a tower is within range of their tile, and when they can place a watchman on the tower.
Conclusion
I’m not a huge fan of the included tower for the tiles, so it’s something I don’t use. The towers idea is fine, but not something I’ll often look to add into my games of Carcassonne. I’m happy this expansion exists as it provides yet another way to score points, but it’s a bit much to add onto other expansions that I would rather play with at this point.
Article By Adam
