Carcassonne extensions: first impressions

Hello. Mal here. Jack’s been kind enough to invite me to join the gaming party.

So, without further ado, and for a change, it’s Carcassonne. Specifically, the Carcassonne extension packs, The Count of Carcassonne and The King And Scout. I bought both of these packs yesterday and they seem to be of wildly different complexities. I’ve yet to play with them, but here are my first impressions from a skim through the rules.

The Count of Carcassonne

Muckle rock hard to understand! You get an extra 12 tiles to start the game, placed in a pre-ordained arrangement. These tiles form a large city, the city having 4 quarters (districts rather than literal quarters). The Count, a purplish meeple reminiscent of the "One! ah ah ah, Two! ah ah ah", Sesame Street character, is placed in one of these quarters and... oh, I don’t know... he, like, controls either cloisters or roads or farms or whatever.

I’ve probably got it completely wrong already, but suffice it to say your meeples can be placed in the city along with the Count and the position of said purple fella affects the scoring of the various ’trades’. As I said, it’s not a simple thing. Once I’ve had a game or three, I’ll write it up properly, but for now, I think I’m gonna ease myself in with...

The King and Scout

Or, more accurately, The King. This extension pack is actually 2 separate extensions: one for the original Carcassonne; and one for the Hunters & Gatherers edition. Given that neither Jack nor I have the latter, it’s the King part I’m interested in. To say that this extension is simple would be an understatement. All it boils down to is a few new tiles (just 5 of them!) and a couple more scoring mechanisms. These new scoring mechanisms are simply Longest Road and Largest City bonuses. In other words, the person with the longest completed road at the end of the game gets one extra point for every completed road in the game, regardless of who ’owned’ it. Same thing for the largest city. Whether I needed to buy the extension pack to get these variations in the game is a matter I’ll be chatting to my wallet about.

As I say, I’ll write up a proper review of these two once I’ve had a shot with them. Hopefully then I’ll actually be able to explain the Count, ah ah ah!