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The Barbarian Report: Little Houses Review

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Whaleyland:
The Little Buildings, Carcassonne's second attempt at creating an expansion that doesn't introduce any new tiles (2012's The Phantom was the first), has created a strange conundrum compared to most other expansions. Whereas most expansions scale poorly as more players are increased, Little Buildings does just the opposite. Let me explain...

Life without Tiles
* Differentiation Is Not a Bad Thing - The 18 new tokens introduced with Little Buildings are not the best designed things on Earth. While the quality is Spielbox superior, the size of these tokens is massive in comparison to the landscape they are intended to be set upon. The tower tokens, if any, are the closest to scale, while the sheds are downright gigantic in scale. To make matters worse, the houses and sheds look fairly similar in shape and size, and the images aren't exactly so different that people couldn't get confused. Considering Spielbox has made rather small tokens in the past (Tunnels, Fleas), it is a wonder why they decided to place such monstrous tokens in this expansion and then have the nerve to recommend placing these tokens in such a way that features are not obscured. Ha!
* Three Tokens for Every Player - Scaling becomes an issue with this expansion. In a six-player game, three tokens for each player is fine or even too much. But for a two-player game, three tokens equals six at the end of the game, and the points earned from six of these tokens, even when playing with the expanded rules, is negligible. The rules should have two or three players use two sets of tokens (like in Tunnels) to better scale.
* Your Usual Spielbox Rules - Spielbox has always had fun with their exclusive expansions, but I've never liked their rules translations. They just lack a certain something in polish and clarity. For this expansion, it really regards the scoring of Farms. For all other features, the rules are clear: score for the building when it is touching the feature. But for farms, the entire green area is a feature, does the building add points to that? That doesn't really follow the logic of scoring fields, which are usually linked only to completed cities. In our game, we scored them when they touched a field, but it didn't quite feel right for some reason, though we could not think of another way to score them.

Broadening Horizons
* "Expanded" Rules - I admit, when I first read the rules for this expansion, I was caught off guard that the "Expanded Rules" were not the standard rules. Carcassonne hasn't had separate rule sets before except when it comes to number of players in a game. These extra rules regarding points (Towers = 3, Houses = 2, Sheds = 1) are much better than the standard rules (All Buildings = 1). Why would anyone play any other way? The bonus points are already fairly negligible unless there are many players in the game, so why not make the buildings have a more strategic value by upping the values? Silly Spielbox. But when playing with the expanded rules, this expansion deepens the Carcassonne game tremendously.
* Using Tiles for Tiles' Sake - The Little Buildings bring a somewhat new concept to Carcassonne: scoring tiles for their own sake. No previous expansion has allowed players to score for a single tile, regardless of owner or features. In the simplest terms, if this tile is on something that is scoring, then its bonus points get added to the total. The building keeps on scoring until the end of the game, and that is pretty cool. In fact, I rather wish these Little Buildings had been made as tiles instead of tokens, so that the special features could just be placed immediately instead of taking a player's turn (though I have argued against this before). Sure it provides the occassional rules concern, but overall it adds a fun change to the usual "place your wood" actions of the game.
* Maximizing Building Placement - Alongside the new concept (and with the expanded rules especially), this expansion gives a fun strategic bonus that can have long-term effects. During my first play-through, I placed a House on a tile with a road, city, and farm. I already owned the Farm and City, and the road I claimed the next turn. I scored 6 points for that one house throughout the game (I wish I had placed the Tower instead!). While a single building is not worth a lot overall, eighteen buildings will definitely change up the game.

Inconclusion
This expansion isn't for everybody. If you play only in small groups of less than four, I wouldn't really recommend it without making some changes to the overall rules. It also may not play well with other expansions, though I don't see any specific conflicts, just because it adds quite a bit of time to end-of-game scoring with the Farms. If you play with large groups up to six, this expansion will have a lot to add to the overall game and I'd definitely recommend it. Like most Carcassonne expansions, it may get watered down when mixed, but I don't see that overly effecting this expansion. As a final thought, I still wish this expansion had been tile, rather than token, based, but it will definitely come out again soon. I like it better than a few of the Minis, for sure.

Playability: B
Affordability: B-
Compatibility (with other expansions): B
Aethetics: C
Learning Curve: B
FINAL GRADE: B-

Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=189.0

Carcking:
Nice review Whaleyland. And I agree with pretty much all of it. I was also puzzled at the scale but I figured they wanted to make sure they were visible since they are to be included in scoring.

MrNumbers:

--- Quote from: whaleyland on March 06, 2013, 01:46:31 PM ---Carcassonne hasn't had separate rule sets before except when it comes to number of players in a game.

--- End quote ---

But what about bazaars? They also have rules variations.
As for my experience in playing Little Houses, they really add many points to farms, especially playing only with basic game. In our 4-players game we had only 2 farms, and ALL placed tokens were connected to one of them, giving the owner extra ~23 points! As a house rule, you can place token to a specific part of the farm, giving extra point only to that farm, leaving rules about other structure scoring unchanged.

kettlefish:
I didn't found mistakes in the english rules.
The German rules are in the same way a little bit confused.

Ratz65:
@kettlefish...where are the german rules?

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