Carcassonne Abbey & Mayor Board Game Expansion - Unleash New Strategies and Characters! Medieval Strategy Game for Kids and Adults, Ages 7+, 2-6 Players, 45 Minute Playtime, Made by Z-Man Games

Pretty cool expansion, it's not my favorite of the many expansions Carcassonne has to offer, but that isn't a bad thing by any means. There are some pretty imaginative additions here, but my favorite has to be the inclusion of the abbey tiles, which is great for those of us who hate leaving empty spaces in the middle of the board. I would only recommend to Carcassonne enthusiasts though. I wouldn't recommend this one unless you already own the Trader's and Builders, Innes and Cathedrals, The Tower, Bridges Castles and Bazaars, The Princess and the Dragon, and Count King and Robber, which happen to by my personal favorites. But if you happen to already play with all of those and want to add this one to your collection, I highly recommend.

love the expansion

The Abbey is a fun addition. You can fill in a hole in the board with an Abbey, finishing off the surrounding features and scoring the Abbey like a cloister. You get one Abbey for the entire game. The interesting strategies that come from this are significant enough that I include the Abbey in most games now...which is why I'm going to give this expansion 4 stars. Even though that's a small part of this expansion, it was worth it to me. Possibly the best part about this expansion, though, are the new tiles. While they don't quite match the other tiles I have (the color saturation is noticeably off, which was probably a printing error), the tiles are interesting and new, including a tile that has two shields on it! Other fun tiles include a city-ender with a shield, additional weird city-over-city tiles (see picture; it's hard to describe), and a roundabout road that turns your road into three continuous prongs and make for absurdly long roads and fun competition over Inns (if combining this with the Inns & Cathedrals expansion). I'm really into diversity of tiles, so that bops this expansion right up to 5 stars for me. I'm including a picture of most of the landscape tiles so that anyone else interested in diverse tiles can see what I mean. The wagons are interesting, too. You can use a wagon to claim a feature like a meeple, and once that feature finishes, the wagon can be moved to an adjacent, unclaimed feature. A simple, but sometimes fun mechanism. That said, I just didn't get into the Mayor or the barns, which create city and farm complications, respectively. (I'll let other reviewers explain these mechanisms, so that you can decide for yourself on these.)

This is a good expansion if you play Carcassonne with multiple players (4+) often. You will really enjoy both Barns and the Mayor as they will help you with rivals in large cities and fields. However, if you play Carcassonne with just 2 or 3 players, you may find that Abbeys and Wagons are more your favorite weapons in this expansion. Abbeys allow you to fill in holes in the board--sometimes trapping an opponent's Meeple for the remainder of the game. In addition, the Wagons can give you an extra move--which when you only have 1 or 2 opponents, can be very important. With only 2 players, we rarely, if ever, find a use for the Mayor or the Barn. Either way, the expansions tiles are a great extension of the game and add a lot of new dimension to the base game. This is one of the better expansions, though it benefits players in different ways depending on how many players are playing. Sometimes, some of the components are useless in games with less players.

This is Z-Man Games 5th official expansion for Carcassonne. The game comes with 12 new land tiles, Abbey tiles for each player, as well as Mayor, Barn, and Wagon maples for each player. This expansion adds 4 new and interesting mechanics to the game: ABBEY. Each player is given an "Abbey" tile. It is essentially a monastery tile accept that all 4 sides are walled. This tile can only be placed when their is a "hole" in the board, i.e. an empty space surrounded by all 4 sides orthogonally. It matters not what structures are around it, it fills in the space. You can place a follower on it and it is scored the same way as a monastery. It solves the problem of what to do with those annoying empty spots. MAYOR. This is a slightly larger meeple, whose shape has earned him the nickname of Mayor Fattypants. on many websites. It can be placed in a city like any other follower, however, the mayor is equivalent to how many banners are in the city, e.g. if there are 3 banners in the city the mayor is equal to 3 meeples. BARN. This meeple can be placed where 4 field corners meet. Upon placing, all farmers in the adjoining fields are scored immediately. At the end of the game, the barn receives 4 points per completed city that the fields touch. WAGON. This meeple can be placed like any other meeple with the added ability that once the feature is completed, instead of being removed, it can "roll" to the next adjacent uncompleted feature. All in all, this expansion adds some useful and neat tricks that help add to the enjoyment of the game.

Carcassonne is absolutely one of my favorite games and I've got about 20 mini and full expansions... This one is quite fun, great to add to the collection!! Super easy to learn but always interesting to play.

Fun expansion. The mayor counts as a knight for every shield on a city piece. The abbey piece allow you to fill in that one piece that is completely surrounded and you know you will never get the exact one that fits! The wagon meeple allows you to roll into an available adjacent city, road or monastery when you complete one. Fun!

Quick shipping and the pieces look well made!