Carcassonne Big Box 5 Review

[Hounk]

I thought Carcassonne II was the product aimed at new players of the game, maybe BB5 was aimed at brand new players who had a longing to play it the old way?   

BB5 was released before the new edition, not parallel.

My point is that wagon, mayor, barn, and Phantom!!! are fully playable even if you are using just the base game. Admittedly The Abbey tiles do have several pennants but so does the base game.  But it was very disappoining for them to introduce new colours with no way to get a full set without perhaps a relatively expensive mail order option and even then - no phantoms in pink or purple.   

Yes, you could, if they would have included the extra wood and you would have wanted to play 2P games just with pink and purple and d/l the CAR. But that would have been quite a strange offer for a professional game release. Normally games are released with all the material intended to play with, and not more. Or they could have included the A&M wood for all colors, plus the rules, and keep it a secret on the cover, that they included more or less "half an extra expansion", but why should they do that?

Like Dan wrote, the set can be extended through CundCo. I'm not sure, if you are much cheaper off, than if you would have bought complete extra color sets there. I actually suggested a few weeks ago in the "suggestions to CundCo" thread, that they should offer special "pink & purple upgrade sets" for owners of BB5.

EDIT: here's the link to my post:

Anyway, to get back to the topic: this might be an idea interesting for CundCo as well: a "Big Box 5 Upgrade Kit" with wood from A&M and the numbered minis in pink and purple.

Note, that I do find it absolute logical, that they did not included the Abbey, Mayor, Robber, etc. into the BB5, but I think, they should offer this through support.

[loki]

Or they could have included the A&M wood for all colors, plus the rules, and keep it a secret on the cover, that they included more or less "half an extra expansion", but why should they do that?

Probably because, if they had advertised BB5 with full sets of all Meeples (including phantoms) in all 8 colours then they could have reasonably have charged more and sold more copies.

[kettlefish]

since 2006 we have BigBoxes. All two years we have a new BigBox for Carcassonne.
in each BigBox comes the newest expansion (mostly big expansions - and one time the Minis 1-6+7), the base game, 1st + 2nd expansion.

The 3rd expansion (Princess&Dragon) was in the BigBoxes 1-3 included.
The 5th expansion (Bridges,Castles,Bazaars) was in the the BigBoxes 2-3 included.

The River I and the Wheel of Fortune were never a part of a BigBox (1-4). HiG deceided to put them into the BigBox 5 and also two more players colours (pink and violet) for that expansions which are included in the BigBox 5.

[danisthirty]

The River I and the Wheel of Fortune were never a part of a BigBox (1-4). HiG deceided to put them into the BigBox 5 and also two more players colours (pink and violet) for that expansions which are included in the BigBox 5.

I know it isn't a "Big Box" as such but there is the "collectors edition" which RGG released (in a gold-coloured box) which included River 1 along with Inns & Cathedrals and Traders & Builders.

[Decar]

EDIT: I’ll try to contact the Queen via Twitter to see what colour meeples she usually prefers to have. I might even send her a Dan meeple and a CarcC business card if she responds! 

I can see it now:
Carcassonne Central

by Appointment to Her Majesty The Queen Supply of Carcassonne News.