Carcassonne: Traders and Builders
2-6
8+
30+
This 2nd expansion takes Carcassonne to new dimensions of fun and excitement. Traders can earn players extra points and builders enable players to place extra tiles, allowing the cities and roads to grow faster. A pig, properly placed, can enrich the value of a farm. Also included is a small cloth bag for the tiles, making it easier to shuffle and draw them during the game.
Traders & Builders is not a complete game, but must be played with Carcassonne.
User Reviews (9)
Add a Review for "Carcassonne: Traders and Builders"
You must be logged in to add a review.
“Traders and Builders” is the second expansion for Carcassonne. In my opinion the best one, although not perfect thus my rating for it is 9/10.
First of all it adds 24 more terrain tiles to the game. Along with the base game tiles and the tiles included in the first big expansion (“Inns and Cathedrals”) it makes the game last as long as it should. The basic game seems to me to be too short while throwing more big expansions in makes it somewhat too long.
There are three additions to the game mechanics:
Traders: 20 city tiles produce goods. The bonuses from these tiles come not to the player with the majority of the followers in the given city (as the points do) but to the very player who finished that city. This causes more interaction between the players.
Builders: A new type of followers, one for each player, that allow players make two turns in order. They speed the game up and add a nice strategic option. But beware! If your builder gets stuck somewhere for a longer time you lose all chances to win against players with active builders. This is the main drawback of this expansion: a single blunder (or bad luck) with the builder may ruin the whole game session for an unlucky player.
Pigs: They increase the value of the farms they are placed on. And they add some fun factor to the game.
And one more nice thing: the expansion contains a bag to draw tiles from. Very useful!
I recommend playing Carcassonne with “Traders and Builders” and “Inns and Cathedrals” together. You could also add a few small expansions if you want, but think twice before adding another big one.
Dear Carcafriend, if you are here to decide which expansion to buy, please read! Some of the reviews here may get you confused about this expansion in particular, but let me tell you what I think about it, okay?
FIRST THINGS FIRST
First of all, let me clarify some of the arguments I’ve seen around regarding Traders and Builders (T&B).
“The goods feel a bit random”
Well, it is Carcassonne after all. This is a game based on luck, no expansion can change that. But when playing B&T, drawing a tile with a given resource doesn’t mean you got lucky. Only the person who completes the city, even if he/she doesn’t own it, is going to get the corresponding resources. So there’s always this strategies to be made:
“If I add this cloth tile to my city, then maybe people will finish it for me”.
Or maybe the opposite thought:
“If I put one more cloth tile to my city, the person who finishes it is going to score a lot of points. I better put it somewhere else.”
Bottom line is, Resource Tiles can add SO MUCH depth to Carcassonne that even if you got bored with the base game, you will feel thrilled again! Randomness is part of Carcassonne nature, but the goods actually adds a bit of strategy to the game! Excellent addition!
“No aspect of trading added to the game”
I’m sorry to disagree, but when I played B&T, I actually found myself in this situation:
“Dude, if you finish my city, you get the resources and we both score! What do you say?”
This expansion gave Carcassonne a slight aspect of negotiations. Subtle, but real.
NOW THE OTHER STUFF
Although Resource Tiles added A LOT of tension to the game, Builders and Pigs are a much more controlled feature.
Pigs may be placed into a field/farm you own, increasing thus the value of each city in that field/farm.
Builders may be placed into a city or road you own. Now everytime you add a tile to that city or road, you may draw another tile and put it anywhere you want. This is a GREAT addition that helps you finishing those gigantic cities or stubborn roads. Really simple and fun.
I must mention that this expansion comes with a bag, so you can put all the tiles inside and draw directly from the bag. WOW SUCH USEFUL! VERY BAG!
CONCLUSION
This is a great and fun expansion. Gives Carcassonne depth but keeping it simple. Although I don’t think it is a necessary expansion to the game (specially for noobs), it is a good expansion for experienced players who needs a bit more of a challenge.
This is one of my favorite expansions for Carcassonne. It comes with five components-
– A bag
– A builder in each color
– A pig in each color
– Trade good tokens (wheat, barrels, and cloth)
– New tiles
Bag
By far my favorite component of this expansion is the bag. It makes setup even easier, because you just throw in all your tiles (from the base game and the expansion), mix them in the bag, and pass it around the table during play.
Builder
The builder allows you to take an extra turn! How does this work? First you place a follower in a city or on a road as normal. Whenever you add a new tile to that road or city (where you already placed a follower previously), you can place your builder. Any time you add a new tile to that feature, you will get to draw a second tile to play as normal. This gives you a lot more options and scoring opportunities. When placing a builder initially, that counts as your turn, and you cannot place another follower anywhere on that tile during that turn.
Pig
The pig allows you to score more points for each city in your farm. You place the pig on a tile that is connected to a farm you’ve previously claimed with one or more followers. The pig doesn’t count when determining who claims a farm- it just makes your farm worth more. At the end of the game, you score each city as 4 points instead of three.
Trade Goods
Some of the tiles for this expansions have goods printed on them (barrels, cloth, or wheat). Whenever a person completes a city, they also receive any goods that were in that city. The person who gets the goods is the person who plays the finishing tile. The scoring for the city is separate from the goods. The goods are scored at the end of the game. The person with the most wheat (or barrels or cloth) gets 10 points.
New Tiles
There are also 24 new tiles (some with trade goods and some without). All the tiles have tiny little pigs on them to differentiate them from the base tile set and other expansions.
The bag and the builder are my favorite parts of this expansions. The pig is nice, but it doesn’t really add too much to the game, just a few more points. The goods can add a little extra strategy to the game, depending how you play, but don’t normally make a huge difference unless one person collects the most of all three or it’s a really close game.
Traders and Builders is the second expansion for Carcassonne after Inns and Cathedrals. It adds a bag, new meeples for all of the players in the form of a builder and a pig, Trade Good tokens (cloth, grain, and wine), and a selection of new tiles.
The bag is the first and simplest of the additions in Traders and Builders. At game’s start all of the tiles are placed in the bag and mixed up, and then drawn title by tile from one player to the next. The bag keeps the tiles—some of which can be identified by their different coloured backs—hidden in a simple, elegant fashion.
The Traders aspect of the expansion does not actually add trading to Carcassonne. What it does is add tiles marked with the Trade Goods—cloth, grain, and wine—and whoever completes the city is awarded tokens equal to the number on the tiles in the city. No points are awarded for this, although the player with the most meeples on the city will score points for completing it. At game’s end, the player who has the most of each Trade Good is awarded points. Trade Goods add another means to score points and gives players more impetus to complete cities. This impetus can because a player wants more Trade Goods or deny another player the Trade Goods, or even to tempt another player to complete a city that you started and help you score!
The Pigs simply enhance the points scored by Farmers at the end of the game. A Pig needs to be placed in a field that a player already has a Farmer and wins the field at game’s end. It increases the points value of each city from four to five.
The Builder allows a player to take a second turn. A player needs to have a meeple already on a city or road before he can add the Builder, but if he has, then when he adds a new tile to that city or road, he gets to take another turn, drawing and placing a second tile. The Builder remains on the city or road until it is completed, but as long as it does, a player can keep adding tiles to it and gaining a second on subsequent turns. Of course, if a player cannot add more tiles to a feature with a Builder on it, then the Builder is stuck until he can…
Lastly, Traders and Builders add a solid selection of new tiles to Carcassonne. Many of these are marked with the Trade Goods symbols, whilst all of them add variety to the core game.
Traders and Builders adds a solid selection of expansions to Carcassonne. From a simply aesthetic stance, the Bag is the best of the selection, whilst the Pig is the cutest. That said, the Pig is not actually an all that interesting expansion, simply providing more points with a player not having to do very much. Builders is decent enough, but Traders does much more than the rest. It adds more competition and another tactical aspect to the game, making the construction of cities of so much more importance to the play of Carcassonne.
Best played with Inn and Cathedrals. The first two expansions for Carcassonne are definitely worth adding to your game. The rest is your choice only…
The “goods” feature of this expansion is pretty, ahem, good, but the builder is priceless. The builder lets you take extra turns. How cool is that? Players who take advantage of their builders end up way ahead.
The bag is a nice addition to the game. It’s a lot easier to pass around the bag than to draw from a pile, the box lid or the tower. We now use the tower and the bag for our big games because the number of tiles has expanded beyond what the bag will hold.
The pig? Meh. If you can get it on a huge farm, then it’s fantastic.
Carcassonne is the granddaddy of tile laying games. Chances are most of us here have played it at some point, either way back in the ethers of time if we’re long time gamers, or more recently if we’re new to the hobby. It’s one of those games that we use to trick our friends into joining us in this lifestyle of ours. And there are indeed longtime gamers who love this game, now almost 20 years old and still in print, and still pull it out regularly, along with newer, more complex, and highly produced games. No mean feat in the time of the cult of the new. That being said, it can at times be a little repetitive, and any means to spice it up and throw new mechanics into the game are welcome. So how does this expansion stack up?
The first part of this expansion is the 24 new tiles. For the most part, it has the standard terrain of farms, roads, cities, and monasteries. Many of them, however, are in weird shapes. VERY weird shapes. Many times playing with this set a player holding some of these tiles have been left wracking their brains trying to fit them into their pre-existing cities. This isn’t necessarily a bad that, as the game needs something to be just more of the same tiles that come in the base box. In fact, I actually consider this a good challenge to throw into the game, instead of making it easy to fit any tile almost anywhere on the table.
Many of the city tiles that come in the new set have goods on them. The three goods are cloth, wine, and wheat. The advantage of these tiles is that it gives players a reason to place city tiles and finish cities that they don’t have a meeple/knight in. In the base game, once one person has a meeple in a city, they get all the points, unless someone is lucky enough to be able to join their city with someone else’s. The only reason someone might add to another person’s city is to prevent them from growing too big and zooming ahead in points. Now, with the trade goods, there’s a reason to finish cities that you have no other point stake in. And don’t knock it. I’ve seen plenty of games that turned on those goods tokens. Players have been distant seconds and jumped out to win the game handily once we counted the goods.
The other big pieces are the builder and the pig. The builder is one of the most useful pieces one can have. The ability to place two tiles at a time is invaluable and allows that player to place more tiles than others, which obviously means more points. It gives you a little edge in using it, and a different piece to place, besides just another standard meeple, adding to the strategy. Do I claim this tile I just placed to claim it or put the builder for a possible payoff next turn? The downside is that if he gets put in a city that ends up being unfinishable, then you lose him for the game.
The pig is another augmentation piece. Now, most of the times I’ve played Carcassonne, both the base game and with any number of expansions, farmers aren’t that popular. People aren’t that keen on losing a piece for the whole game, especially when any given city may or may not be finished by the end of the game. However, the last game I played with this expansion someone decided to give it a shot, and the field with the pig in it went from 12 to 16 points! Needless to say, that person is a convert to using farmers in the game!
Bottom line, this is an excellent addition to the base game. Carcassonne is always fun when I just want to play a hobby game that doesn’t require too much thinking. This expansion adds a little bit of flavor to the base game to make you think a bit and keeps it from being too repetitive. I recommend this to anyone who owns the game.
This expansion opens up possibilities in the Carcassonne world. It offers an incentive for completing opponents’ cities and makes the game more interactive. Great expansion.
I would rather recommend the second expansion other than this one.
The goods feel a bit random, since having luck in the draw can give you 10 or 20 more points (there are so few cloth tiles that the winner will be whoever has more luck and gets the card to close the city). Also, adding so many tiles extends the length of the game.
The builder meeple is a nice addition, but I do not think it is worth the price
It’s interesting but for me doesn’t really seem to do much other than give a couple of extra ways to score points. Based on the name I was hoping there we be an aspect of actual, you know, *trading* added to the game. Honestly I usually find the base game more fun.