Customer Reviews

Carcassonne Abbey & Mayor 5th Extension

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Abbey & Mayor is the 5th full expansion to Carcassonne. With this expansion, players add a power and influence aspect to their game in four different parts. I've listed them in order of enjoyment.

Mayor -- The mayor piece is focused on controlling cities. The mayor's power grows as the city gains more pennant tiles. This piece can play a major role in the struggle for control that frequently takes place in large, valuable cities. As someone who enjoys competing for cities, I like this aspect.

Wagon -- Played as a regular piece, the wagon can travel from a completed area to somewhere unclaimed. This creates continuity and requires some extra vision. So far, this piece has been fun to play.

Barns -- The barn allows players to set up a super farm that grows in size as the game progresses pushing other, usually smaller, farmers out. The barn makes farm strategy important from the beginning instead of its typical end game position. However, a common complaint about farms in general is that they tend to grow too big. Those who don't enjoy that aspect of the game may not like this piece.

Abbey -- Acting as a sort of super cloister, the Abbey can be used to fill in those hard to close map features. It's a great escape valve for those who get trapped and it is also a quick way to add points. However, I think this takes away from the tactical aspect of trying to trap an opponents valuable pieces. This piece is probably my least favorite part of the Abbey & Mayor expansion.

Overall, I think this is a good expansion to Carcassonne falling in behind Inns & Cathedrals and Traders & Builders but ahead of Princess & Dragon and The Tower. I think it will add the most to games with intermediate to experienced players.

First, let me say that once you're playing with three major expansions and three minor ones, Carcassonne takes up a lot of space!

This expansion adds a few new tiles, three new meeples, and the "abbey" tile (each player gets one, to use at their discretion instead of a normal turn).

First, let me say that I agree with the previous reviewer - the abbey tile takes away some of the strategy of blocking a city or road from being completed, and is definitely my least favorite expansion.

Now, the three new meeples. There is a mayor meeple, whose value depends on how many pennants are in a city. Useful for stealing a city from another player, or keeping yours from getting stolen, but we usually forget to use him. There is a wagon meeple, which can travel along a road from a completed feature to an uncompleted one. This adds some serious strategy, and is a valuable addition to your set. And there's the barn. The barn is a way of stealing farms, or of scoring farms twice. This has the potential to be a very powerful piece, but, honestly, we often forget to use it as well!

The tiles are interesting and deserve some mention. There are two tiles which feature cities "bridging" cities (though in practical use they often become one big city instead of two cities). There is also a three-point-road that doesn't end a road. Instead, the road has three ends, not two. And there is a road that starts dead in the middle of a field.

Honestly, this expansion is worth buying for the twelve new tiles alone, forget about the meeples and new expansion rules!

Anyone who enjoys Carcassonne will enjoy the flavor this expansion adds to the game. It is my third favorite expansion after Traders & Builders and Inns & Cathedrals.

New Tiles: The best thing about this expansion are the new tiles. Each one can be very helpfull if used well. For instance, there is a tile that terminates a road with farmland on three sides - great for increasing the size of a farm area. Another tile that has a similar effect has a road running through a city - however, it goes under ground so it does not split the farms. There is a three-way road which is great when added to an inn tile - of course its that much harder to finish if you pick it near the end of the game.

Abbey: I love the Abbey addition. The abbey works by allowing you to place it anywhere on the board where four sides (although not necessarily all four corners) surround an empty space. Sure it is fun to block other player's roads and citys. However, this can frusterate some of my friends who then give up. This tile gives them the ability to overcome this. They are much more willing to play! Even better finishing the abbey is the same as finishing a cloister - fun to get nine points for finishing someone else's city (or yours!) and claiming the city commodities as well!

Wagon: Have you ever added a cloister or city tile to the board and felt frusterated because you couldn't claim points on the now completed road leading to it? No problem now! Add the wagon to the road and move it onto the uncompleted item! The wagon is a very fun piece by helping a player stake out territory and claim points that would otherwise be lost.

Mayor: The mayor is a great piece for city struggles. The mayor has a meeple power equal to the number of shields in the city. (Two shields and a mayor is equal to having two meeples in the city) It really is fantastic when another player tries to bully in on your city with their X2 power meeple. You come back with the mayor and overwhelm them. It tends to scare off others from trying to capture one of your citys if your first piece has a shield and you place the mayor there.

Barn: The barn is a piece we don't use much. Since several of the players are a bit more casual the barn adds too much complexity for them. We just ignore it.

I highly recommend this addition for anyone who plays Carcassonne. It adds great new strategy to the game. Furthermore if a piece fails to please it is easy to set them aside and use the reast of the wonderful tiles and characters!

I won't go over the components in great details here. You receive high quality components consisting of 3 different types of new meeples, 12 high quality new castle tiles, and 6 new high quality abbey tiles.

The instructions seem a little more intense then previous expansions due to the 3 new meeples to place and their rules. It took us 2 play throughs to really use all of the new meeples and understand how they fit together. This is different from other expansions that are very quick to pick up and understand. Usually it's just a read through the instructions, a couple of turns, and you are more then good to go.

I love the new tiles. They have some interesting shapes and are fun to play with. The abbey tiles can be helpful to finish some of those crazy castles that are huge and might otherwise not be finished... IF you can work it in to get a spot for the tile or someone just accidentally gives it to you. But this has some strategy and I like this part.

The part that I do not like is the meeples. This expansion adds only 12 new tiles for guaranteed play and it adds 3 new meeples. The mayor can only be placed on cities, the wagon can be placed on anything except a farm, and the barn makes a super farm.

When you take into consideration that you receive 7 regular meeples in any given game... adding 3 more meeples to such a small expansion is crazy! I find it especially crazy because the barn removes farming meeples... making management of your meeples pretty much a non-issue. The fact that a barn allows farms to be counted twice by the owner of the farm, makes farming extremely lucrative with little risk.

Each time we've played this expansion, no one has lacked meeples. We each have a neat little pile next to us because we just can't find enough places to use them.

Perhaps this would be more difficult if you added 3 or 4 other expansions as well... allowing more tiles into the game... but I don't think so.

At my house, we've decided we very much like the tiles and will use those in the game but will likely not use the meeples for this expansion because we feel it makes the game too easy in some ways, and too overpowered in others.

Our family had a lot of apprehension about this expansion, but ended up buying it for (if nothing else) the tiles. Our fear was that the wildcard Abbeys, and powerful Barns would unbalance the game and kill strategy. To our surprise, it seems pretty balanced.

First, the new tiles: The new tiles in this expansion does a lot to cut-up farms. This means that if you play with The River, the first to claim a farm won't necessarily win, and if you don't play with The River, you'll have more smaller farms. Depending on your family's stile of play, this is either a plus (we found farm wars to determine the winner before getting this set), or a minus (if your family enjoys winning via well played farm wars.

Speaking of farm wars, the barn makes these "interesting". Again, this all depends on how you play. Barns, in certain circumstances, allow for someone to permanently steal a field out from someone else (though the kicked-out farmer does score full points for the farm as it is now). But between the generally smaller farm sizes, and the ability to use barns to get tied-up meeples out of bad farms, these turn out to be far more interesting (and less powerful) than one might initially think.

The last big change to game play is the addition of the abbey. Each player gets a single abbey, which is a wildcard that can be played in a hole in the map. It also is claimable as a cloister by the person that places it. We are still undecided as to if this card is too powerful. On one hand, a lot of cut-throat strategy is around crafting unfillable holes. On the other hand, we found that people usually adjust and make the holes bigger so that most abbeys aren't used anyway. Thus, again, they turn out to be less unbalancing than one might initially think.

Regardless of if you play with the Abbey or Barns (you can always ignore those rules!), the addition of the Mayor and Wagon are useful--if you have a few of the expansions. These work out to be special meeples that can only be played on certain kinds of features and in certain ways.

In the end, I think that the tiles in and of themselves make it worthwhile to own. We are still undecided on if we will play with barns and abbeys in the long run, but for those finding themselves short on meeples due to having several expansions (like us), having the mayor and wagon is really nice.

I really like playing Carcassonne with my brothers and our wives and this expansion makes the game that much more fun. The point tallies can really sky-rocket as you add expansions. This one adds in the increased profit to be had from those towns and monasteries and farms. Barns can help score farms earlier than usual which can be useful in racking up some points early on and refocus your strategy.

We've played most Carcassonne expansion sets, and love how each one changes the game so much. In the past, we had always played house rules where you can't leave "holes," but in order to really use this expansion, you have to leave holes. To play your one Abbey tile, you must find a hole that is surrounded on the four sides (corners can be blank). But don't just play in any hole, because it completes whatever is around it. If all you'll complete is a measly two point road, it's better than not playing the Abbey at all, but if you can complete your own city, or keep an opponents city small by ending it the Abbey is a great piece. After you play it, you may also claim it as use it as a cloister.

We have had some confusion and disagreement about scoring the Abbey at the end of the game. Be careful to check the rules on how to count cities. And, although it gets points like a cloister, we count it as a city when tallying farmer points. I haven't been able to find clarification on this in the rules. In any case, it's still a great addition.

They mayor can make for fun competition for city ownership, and the wagon is a nice piece - a traveler that can move on rather than go back to you when it scores. We have been a little confused about exactly how far a wagon can travel, and have kept it to only the very next feature. So if it finishes a road, it moves to the next road or city, but not a city on the other side of another completed road. Not sure if we're doing it "right" or not.


The barn changes the game most! I believe other reviewers have explained it well, but they can make for overwhelmingly powerful farms if you're not careful. Used at the right time, they can really payoff big-time. If farms at the end of the game frustrate you, you will HATE the barn. I, personally, love it.

Like most expansion sets, this slightly alters your strategy. I would recommend it as an expansion if you're new to the game or also if you are seasoned and own other expansions.

We love this game! Kids ages 7 and 11 and we can all play and have a great time!

My wife & I were introduced to the game of Carcassonnne, by our older son and his girlfried during this past Christmas. It is a fun and intriguing game, and since everyone stays in the game until the end, it's great playing with several friends. This addition to it makes it even more fun.

This expansion set is worth it just to have the additional tiles. Usually its just my wife and I playing. We don't get super competitive so we don't use the the Mayor or the Barn much. But those would come in handy with more player. We do use the Wagon and the Abbey sometimes.