My copy of the Gingerbread Man (Carcassonne Winter Edition expansion) arrived today and I was very excited! Although there were just six new tiles I couldn't wait to play with them as they featured some really interesting configurations of city segments between them. There's usually a lot of competition for cities between my wife and I, and the inclusion of these tiles balanced this out quite nicely as the possibility of shutting each other out of our cities increased from "slim" to "reasonable". As a further consequence of this, we soon found that we completed far more cities (about half of them being two-tilers) and spent much less time patiently waiting for the "right tile" to come along.The game itself got off to a particularly bad start for me when my wife completed a city for 26 points and received a further 20 points for having had two knights and the Gingerbread Man in it when it was completed. I almost lost interest in the game altogether after this, as it was difficult to stay motivated after very nearly being lapped whilst still on my first time round the score track! But fortunately I was soon able to reduce the gap (slightly) thanks to a 14 point city, also with the Gingerbread Man in it, which netted me 21 points and kept me in the game.A few roads and a couple of cloisters helped me to draw level by the halfway point but we then found ourselves in the unusual situation whereby one of us closed a city and there were no incomplete cities left to move the Gingerbread Man into. In this situation we took the Gingerbread Man off the board and should have waited for a Gingerbread Man tile to be played before bringing him back (as per the official rules). Because we both enjoyed the difference that he made to the game though, we immediately placed him in the first incomplete city that became available a tile or two later.Because the Gingerbread Man is moved either when one of the six new tiles is placed or when the city he's currently in is closed, he tended to move around quite a lot in our game and this generated a lot of bonus points. These points tended to be split quite equally between us but there was one city in particular that became rather overcrowded in order to maintain this. We weren't necessarily fighting for control of the city as it didn't look likely that it would ever be closed, but its size combined with the fact that the Gingerbread Man was in it meant that every knight either of us could get into the city was well worth it for the eventual bonus.After placing the final tile I leant back in my chair to admire the view (photo attached)! There was a long road running from east to west which separated the landscape into a north farm and a south farm. I'd placed a farmer on the south farm quite early in the game and my wife didn't make any effort to share these points as it only touched three complete cities. The north farm however ended up being worth 27 points but we shared these at a cost of three farmers each. What ultimately (and incorrectly as it later transpired) made the difference was deciding to let the Gingerbread Man dish out his bonus one last time even though he hadn't left the city he was in. This was worth 20 points for my wife but 30 for me and this was just enough to tip the final scores in my favour by just three points!Most of the expansions I've played for Carcassonne bring something new and vaguely exciting to the game, but this excitement can sometimes be rather short-lived if there's nothing else to look forward to once the new tiles have run out. Contrary to this, I felt that the Gingerbread Man was an excellent expansion as the new tiles alone added to my enjoyment of the game and the extra mechanic of how the Gingerbread Man himself works seem to be well thought out and in keeping with the general spirit of the game. In summary, it's difficult to imagine future games of Carcassonne Winter Edition without the Gingerbread Man and this is certainly a sign of a worthwhile expansion as far as I'm concerned!
My copy of the winter edition came with the gingerbread expansion. Is this unusual? I assumed it was standard until I read this.
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