I just played Darmstadt and I can confirm that the tiles are much darker than the normal Carcassonne tiles. Darker even than the Carc 2.0 tiles. I don't know why they can't get the contrast right on any of these things, but the two cloisters stood out terribly well against the normal green of my other tiles. And for the record, I have all my vanilla tiles mixed together right now, so there already is a slight rainbow of greens present. But nothing compares to these tiles.