Carcassonne: Expansion 8 – Bridges, Castles and Bazaars

Bought in Toronto 2012.

2010-04-14 (rating 9):

Great expansion. All the new mechanics are excellent and add much to the game.

Bridges ease meadow expanding/stealing. They can be used to escape blocked position however in our games this happens rarely. Mostly we use them for meadows.

Castles are not easy to use (due to 2 tiles city requirement) but are a fine way of protection against opponent building too large city. Thanks to castle you can assure that both you and opponent will score the same amount of points.

Bazaars are also fun. But not as much as the first two features. But my opinion may be caused by the fact that I have played this expansion (for now!) only with my wife in 2-players games. Also I think that normal auction would be better than current rules. Maybe I will try such variant some day.

Also it is interesting how Bazaars interact with [gameid=45748]. Now you see how the Wheel will turn and you may try to influence order of turns (by auctioning appropriate tiles) for your benefit.

good expansion

Carcassonne Big Box