My wife and son love the mage and the witch, but they never really made a difference when we played with them. After going back and forth with Christopher about it in another thread, I decided to purchase a second set of tiles. We played 2 games with 16 mage and witch tiles and they made a bigger difference.
Game 1 (2X Mage & Witch, Wind Roses, new German Cathedrals)
My son used 2 wind rose tiles to score an extra 6 points and close a few cities. My wife used 1 wind rose tiles to score 3 extra points and start a new city. I got the last wind rose tile close to the game end and used it to complete a 12 point city, but didn't get the bonus 3 points. The wind rose bonus points were not a game changer by any means, but my wife seemed to enjoy them.
The German Cathedrals were played differently by each player. My wife never made an archbishop. She used the roads exclusively and because of that her meeple were never trapped. My son uses robbers a lot more than I do and he would close a decent sized road off with the Cathedral and then install an archbishop. If we ever play this with Abbey and Mayor, the wagon may be deadly with these. My son's best archbishop scored 22 points. I did not do a good job with the archbishops. Low on meeple after competing with my wife on farmland, I scored small numbers of points just trying to get my archbishops back.
The mage and witch tiles were used exclusively in cities. I thought the German Cathedral bonus may cause them to appear on roads, but it never happened. I was able to close 2 cities with the mage gaining a total of 20 bonus points. My wife and son fought each other with the witch. My wife lost at least 10 points to the witch whereas my son lost only 4. With 16 tiles, the mage only made a difference twice and the witch 3 times. That means there were 7 occasions where the tiles came out to spare a city from the witch or move the mage. I won this game by 19 points in part due to the feuding of the other players, but mainly to well placed farmers.
Game 2 (2X Mage & Witch, Corn Circles II, Halflings I)
The mage and witch were passed around and around. Like the previous game, they were used exclusively in cities. My son and I scored a bunch of extra points with the mage. My wife would move the witch to our cities and then close them for us. She finished far in last place, so I don't think this was a really good strategy. The mage and witch were a lot of fun, but were not the game changer that the other 2 expansions were.
The corn circles really changed the game. My wife wondered why cundco didn't create a little UFO/martian meeple for this expansion. I am sure if they did, we would all buy it. We never used them to add a meeple. The robber corn circle was used by my wife to steal and later close a 9 tile road my son was working on. I had the best field and my wife had the second best. My son played the farmer corn circle and kicked us off. I was able to get the best farm back on a subsequent turn. My wife was able to use the shield corn circle to steal a city that had the mage present. We thought that was the play of the game....
The halflings were used by me to close cities and cloisters to get meeple back. I used two of them to close a really big city that my son had run roads into. My wife used hers to do the same. My wife pulled the last pitch fork corn circle and placed it. She saw that I had a farm with 5 cities and one with 4 cities and her lone farm was only connected to 2 completed cities. She yanked her farmer and I chose to yank the 4 city farmer. My son then played the perfect Halfling to unite the 2 now vacant farms and place his farmer. He spent the rest of the game defending that farm and adding cities to it. He doesn't like farmers and he rarely wins because he never plays them. My wife thought she was going to compete with me to get the big farm back, she totally didn't see him doing that. That farm ended up with 8 completed cities for 24 points. He scored 189 points total beating me by 12.
Impressions:
Mage & Witch - 16 tiles is a big improvement.
Halflings - At first my wife and son thought they were stupid, but after one game they both really liked them. They are very powerful.
Corn Circles - My wife loves the theme, my son loves how they work, I think the pitchforks can be a bit too powerful depending on when they come out.
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