Carcassonne: The Princess and the Dragon
2-6
8+
30+
In this expansion for the prize-winning Carcassonne, we move into the realm of fantasy. The land around Carcassonne is being visited by a dragon, making life very difficult for the followers. Brave heroes venture forth to face the danger, but without the aid of the fairies, their chances are not good.In the city, the princess seeks help from the knights, and farmers build secret passages to move about undetected by the dragon.We hope you enjoy this special trip into the land of Carcassonne!
The Princess and The Dragon is not a complete game, but must be played with Carcassonne.
User Reviews (11)
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Carcassonne — The Princess & The Dragon is the third boxed expansion for the game, after Inns & Cathedrals and Builders & Traders. As the title suggests, it adds an element of fantasy to the game, with the city beset by a dragon, volcanoes, magical portals, an amorous princess, and a protective fairy. Besides the cute wooden dragon and fairy pieces, the expansion includes thirty new tiles, which are mostly mixed in as usual.
The first new tile is the Volcano, which does not have a follower placed on it, but the Dragon. When a Volcano is first drawn, the Dragon tiles are then added to the tile mix. The Dragon is moved to the next Volcano tile when it is placed. The Dragon tiles are each marked with a Dragon icon, and when one is placed, the Dragon immediately launches itself into the air and goes hunting. From its current location the players take it in turn to move the Dragon one tile each until the beast has moved a total of six. If the Dragon flies over a tile with a follower, it feeds on him and the follower is returned to his player. The only tile that the Dragon will not visit is one protected by the Fairy.
The Princess tiles each add to a city and when placed, target a Knight present in the city. He is removed to attend to the Princess’ whims and returned to his player. The Magical Portal tile lets a player place a follower on it or any previously placed tile. It must otherwise adhere to normal tile placement rules, but does allow a player to return a follower to a location it was previously removed from!
The Fairy piece only comes into play when a player does not put a follower down on a new tile. Instead, he can move and place the Fairy on any tile where he already has a follower, thus protecting the follower from the predations of the Dragon. In addition, the player scores a point if the Fairy is still there on the next and subsequent turns. Bonus points are scored if the Fairy is present when the feature that the follower is on, is completed and scored.
Of course, you can easily ignore all of these new rules and just add the thirty tiles into the mix. In that case, enjoy, as new tiles are always a good thing in Carcassonne. But two of the tiles are different enough to affect the ordinary play of the game. One adds a tunnel, letting a road run under a city, whilst the second locates a cloister within the walls of a city. With this, the player chooses to place his follower on either the city or the cloister.
Previous expansions have concentrated upon giving new methods of scoring within the game’s historical context. Carcassonne — The Princess & The Dragon instead focuses upon removing followers (and thus opportunities to score) from the game, the Princess specifically from cities, and the Dragon from anywhere it can reach. The point is, where followers were perfectly safe in Carcassonne, with this expansion, they are no longer.
Unfortunately the overall effect is very pendulum-like in a two-player game, and the addition of more players is necessary break up the action/reaction nature of these new rules. This is their only real downside, apart from the fantasy elements that might not appeal to the purists. Otherwise Carcassonne — The Princess & The Dragon is a solid expansion for what is still the perfect introduction to Eurogames.
Two first big expansions (“Inns and Cathedrals” and “Traders and Builders”) moved the game of Carcassonne to its zenith of glory. Then a slow decline started. The third big expansion “The Princess and the Dragon” was not bad by itself but it was not good either.
The expansion adds 30 new terrain tiles to the game, more than any of the two previous ones. All of the new tiles are connected to new mechanics added by the expansion:
* The volcano and dragon symbol tiles let the players move the dragon who scares their followers out of the board.
* The magic path tiles let the followers return to unclaimed uncompleted structures.
* The Princess symbol tiles let players to withdraw followers from the cities.
There are two wooden figurines in the box. One is the terrifying dragon and the second is… No, not a princess! It’s a fairy who can protect tiles from the dragon and who adds value to structures. Players can move the fairy each turn instead of playing their followers and score one point for her presence… and this makes most of the turns last much, much longer. Uff.
I’ve tried playing according to the rules several times and always the reaction of my co-players was something like: “The game is too slow now! Let’s invent new rules to use these cool figurines!” So we did.
I can say that “The Princess and the Dragon” is worth getting. But I don’t recommend playing it according to its official rules but use any of the variants available online or… make your own one!
The Princess and the Dragon really does change the feel of Carcassonne but if you’re in the mood for a little more confrontation in your game (as well as increasing the luck-factor) adding this expansion might just hit the spot. Watching the big, red dragon figure appear in a location near tiles you’re currently sitting on will change your long-term strategy and its inclusion generally makes for a lower-scoring game as your minions get munched by the mighty beast.
We’ve always had a good laugh with this expansion when playing light-hearted games but for serious, more-strategic games of Carc I would probably leave it out.
Although the magic portals add a nice new element to the game, I’m generally less excited about the princess who tends to just really annoy knights that she kicks out of their castles. The dragon is the real stand-out here and for a good night of fun with Carcassonne I’d recommend including it in your mix!
I enjoy this expansion for what it is. It adds a layer of chaos to this game and it’s where Carcassone went from being strategic to chaotic. I don’t recommend this expansion for people that don’t like getting their toes stepped on, but for anyone else that doesn’t mind a bit of conflict, this is the way to go. It’s definitely not something that gets played that often when we play Carcassone, but it really does mix it up every now and than. Plus the dragon meeple is awesome!
This expansion adds a lot of fun player interaction to carcassonne. The princess castle tiles allow you to remove a knight from an adjoining castle tile. This makes it easier to steal castles from opponents, but adds randomness due to being unsure of if you can keep the castle you worked to build. The other fun addition is the dragon which, whenever a dragon tile appears, players take turns moving the dragon. For each space the dragon lands on, all meeples on that tile are eaten.
Princess and Dragon is suited for players who want to play a somewhat “lighter” version of Carcassonne: having the dragon flying around and munching meeples assures some laugh and interesting moves.
Suggested for 5+ players games, and not for “too serious” gamers.
While controversial, the Dragon expansion is quite enjoyable… if you’re not on the part of the map that hosts the dragon. 😉
I’ve played games where the dragon took out a peasant and two knights of the same player in the same round, I’ve seen 50-points citadels being closed off by 3 players, 30 point cities closed by a singe player, that only placed one tile in that compound etc.
In one word: utter chaos. It’s a lot of fun, but it can ruin friendships. 😀
My friends always debate whether we should introduce the dragon into our game. Some love it, others don’t. It certainly messes up much of the strategy of the game, since you never know when the dragon will be moved near your valuable, yet incomplete assets, and then whether it will move toward your meeple.
The fairy’s repulsive effect is nice, but it’s “gain one point whenever you start a turn with the fairy” feature is frustrating. Players often forget.
I’ve only played this one online at Brettspielwelt.de and I have to say that I dislike it intensely. Not only does it deviate from Carcassonne’s otherwise straightforward rules, the way in which the dragon can semi-randomly trounce across the board and put paid to hard laid strategy is frustrating at best. Not one for me.
As awesome as the dragon meeple is, I tend to play without the rules for this expansion, just the new tiles. I find farm and city politicking tedious enough as it is without the addition of being able to remove followers.
I’ve tried adding this expansion before, and I find that not only does its somewhat vague or poorly-worded rules confuse us, but that the gameplay the new tiles and tokens add detracts from the elegance of the game. Seeing as Carcassonne’s consistency and simplicity is a driving factor in deciding to play the game, this expansion remains in the box almost every time I play.