Carcassonne: Bridges, Castles, and Bazaars (Second Edition)
This eighth expansion for Carcassonne gives players new options to acquire tiles and extend roads. Engineers continue roads over fields with the help of tall bridges. Building long roads has never been easier. Small cities can now become imposing castles that will benefit from their fief. However, each fief only represents the potential of a castle; it will be up to you to make it worth your while. Finally, peddlers are presenting their wares in grandiose bazaars. Make the most of their offers to pull ahead of the competition. Each tile from this expansion is marked with a special icon, allowing you to sort these tiles more quickly.
The base game Carcassonne is required to be able to play with this expansion.
User Reviews (1)
Add a Review for "Carcassonne: Bridges, Castles, and Bazaars (Second Edition)"
You must be logged in to add a review.
This expansion comes with 3 components-
– 12 castle tokens
– 12 bridges
– New tiles
Castles
The castle tokens allow you to score more points when you complete a small (two tile) city. You can either score 4 points for your city as normal, or place one of your castle tokens on the small city and wait for another feature to be completed in your fief. Your fief is comprised of the two tiles to the left and the two tiles to the right of your completed city. You score when (or if) another city, cloister, or road is completed that is part of your fief. Whatever the value of the completed feature, regardless of who completes or owns that feature, that is how many points you now score (along with whoever scores for the actual feature completed). If there is already a city, road, or cloister completed in your fief when you place a castle, it does not count- only items completed after you play your castle. If no other feature is ever completed in your fief, then you don’t score anything.
Bridges
The bridges are a nice addition. They are actual wooden bridges that you can place on the board to extend your road(s). The nice thing about the bridges is that they allow you to continue your road in areas that would normally be blocked. You can build roads over cities, cloisters, other roads, etc. They definitely add more options to your game play.
New Tiles
The new tiles are where the bazaar part of the expansion comes in. When a tile with a bazaar on it is drawn, it is played as normal, and the bazaar round triggered. In the bazaar round, more land tiles are drawn (one for each player) and players bid to see who gets which tile. Players lose or gain points depending on whether they buy or sell tiles that are auctioned off during the bazaar round.
This is one of the more recent expansions I have gotten, so I haven’t gotten as much play out of it yet. Overall, I think it’s a nice addition.
The bridges are definitely the best part in my opinion, because they add more placement options. The castles can you help you score a lot more points (or not), but I definitely have to remind myself to use them. Last time I played, we completely forgot about them and didn’t use them at all. Usually I only play Carcassonne with two people, so we leave out the bazaar part of the game. We just play the tiles as normal and leave out the bidding round. I find the bazaar round to be better with more players.