Topics

16

Reviews & Session Reports / Fan made expansions - I would like to hear more about them

« on: October 17, 2017, 12:08:01 PM »

I am currently putting together a collection of Fan-made expansions, and I am finding it difficult to find much on this forum that tells me how good they are, what other expansions they work well with and any tactics for their use (and any clever tricks that they bring with them).

Over the last couple of weeks I have play-tested a few and, to be honest, they are very impressive when used with other expansions.

The main one that I considered was the enormous Forest expansion, which I put together over a few nights. I must admit that I was a bit disappointed with it at first, as all I kept getting was a map full of 4 point cities and not much else. I then added The Green Dragon expansion (to cure the problem of the lack of CCXX tiles) and this improved things greatly, but the board was still 'forest heavy' and finding places to put the 'regular' tiles was always difficult.

The problem was solved as soon as I added in The Princess & Dragon and Inns & Cathedrals, where the balance of the tiles righted itself. I then tried Bridges, Castles and Bazaars and Traders & Builders with the 2 forest expansions and this proved an even bigger success.

I would be very pleased to hear from anyone that has played these fan expansions who has useful advice, even if it is "don't bother, it is boring". At least this would make me think twice before spending many hours making up tiles and playing, only to come to the same conclusion.

It would also be interesting to see photos of the tiles 'in action' as, once again, they do not appear on this forum very often. There are plenty of pdf files of tiles to print, but I have not seen many actually printed and in use.

I have added one of my photos of my last game to get the ball rolling, and another photo of my newest addition to the fan made collection that I finished about an hour ago.

17

General / Best functioning combinations of Expansions

« on: May 03, 2017, 10:16:44 AM »

I hope that I am not necroposting here, but I would be very interested to know what expansions of Carcassonne work well together. I play virtually every day with the tiles in various combinations, and I have found that some of the expansions complement each other quite well and lead to a game which is even better than the sum of the parts. Recently we have been playing The CII base game with the abbot, the river, Inns and Cathederals, The Abbey and Mayor and The Watchtowers, and this really appears to be a satisfying combination that produces close and interesting games. I have also tried other combinations which do not work so well together. I would very much like to try out the Bridges, Castles and Bazaars with the tunnels, as this gives an almost 3D aspect to the game, especially if we were to include the fan expansion of tunnels 2.

If anyone has a favourite set of expansions that they know complement each other, I, for one, would like to try it out.

By way of illustration of what I mean, I have added this recent photo showing the finished board with lots of cities, roads, farms and other features evenly distributed. This, for me, is preferably to games which end up fighting over a large city or a single large farm. Here, everyone has a chance to win several little "battles", which is what makes the game both interesting and addictive.