All Carcassonne’s main expansions ranked

Carcassonne is a firm favorite in our house. It was one of the first “proper” board games my daughter learned to play, and it’s my partner’s first pick every time. I like it because I like any game that I can convince them to play without too much begging and cajoling. It’s easy to teach, quick to set up, and the base game takes about 45 minutes to play.

There are nine readily available Carcassonne expansions available. Adding them all at once makes for a hot mess of a game, but they all have their benefits and are great in their own right.

Below, you can find all nine major expansions, ranked by my preference, although everybody will have their own ideas.

I haven’t included The Catapult because it’s out of print and pretty awful. And you won’t see The River. Although The River is great, it’s really only a mini-expansion and usually found in the base game box anyway. 

1. Traders & Builders

We rarely play a game of Carcassonne without including the Traders & Builders expansion. The expansion includes 24 new land tiles, two new player tokens for every color, and Goods tokens.

Instead of laying a meeple down, a player can add their builder to an existing road or city they already have a meeple on. If they then expand this feature at a later turn, they will get to lay an extra tile. 

The pig can be placed, instead of a meeple, in a field where a player already has a farmer down, adding an extra point for each completed city in the farmer’s field.

The expansion also introduces goods. Some of the new city tiles have pictures of wine, grain, and cloth. When a person places the final tile to finish a city, they get all the goods displayed on tiles in that city, and points are awarded for the most of each produce.

2. The Tower

Carcassonne involves some player interaction but not too much aggression. It’s quite challenging to mess with another player’s strategy. For some, that’s part of the appeal. For others, there are certain expansions.

With The Tower, players can place a tower base tile. They can then add a tower piece, rather than a meeple, in later turns. The tower captures meeples within range of the tower, with the range being a number of tiles equal to the height of the tower. Captured meeples can be bought back for 3 victory points or exchanged for another prisoner.

Buyers also get a tower-shaped tile dispenser that is more convenient than the bag.

3. Inns & Cathedrals

Inns & Cathedrals adds some passive nastiness to the game. Inns are found on some road tiles and cathedrals in some cities. These features double the points of the feature if it gets completed. But no points are awarded if it is incomplete at the end of the game.

Players will end up with other players adding inns and cathedrals to their features to make them harder to complete.

Inns & Cathedrals also comes with a giant meeple. The giant meeple doesn’t score extra points but counts as two meeples on contested features.

4. Abbey And Mayor

There are quite a lot of new pieces and rules in The Abbey And Mayor expansion and it is one of the more complex expansions:

The Abbey tile lets you fill particularly difficult holes and can be a savior for some city layouts and it scores in the same as a Monastery.

Mayors can only be placed in cities, and they score just like standard meeples. However, their power is equal to the number of coats of arms. If there are no coats of arms, the mayor is worth 0 meeples, and the city won’t score any points. This can prove very useful in congested cities.

The Barn is a wooden building piece. If you place a tile so that four tiles create a single field in the center, you can place the barn. If there are farmers already in that field, they are scored immediately and returned to their respective players, but the player with the most farmers only scores one point per completed city. The barn remains until the end of the game and prevents players from placing farmers.

The Wagon can be placed anywhere a meeple can be placed, except in a field. It is scored when the feature it resides in is complete and can then be moved to an adjacent incomplete feature.

5. The Princess & The Dragon

In The Princess & The Dragon, there are new tiles that move the dragon around the map. The dragon eats any meeples it encounters. The princess protects any meeples in her features and enables you to remove meeples from her tile.

There’s also a fairy that rewards a point to any meeple in the same tile as the fairy at the start of their turn.

6. Hills & Sheep

Hills & Sheep adds a push-your-luck mechanic to the game.

Once you have a shepherd in a field, you can attract new sheep to the herd by drawing from the sheep bag. If you draw a sheep, it gets added to the flock. If you draw a wolf, the flock gets eaten, and you score no points. You can stop at any time after you draw a sheep.

7. The Count, Robber & King

The Count, Robber & King includes several mini-expansions, including The River, which is included in most base games now anyway.

By completing a feature where somebody else scores points and you don’t, you can place a meeple in a large starting city. Later, these meeples can be used to bolster your meeple power in features or deny other players scoring.

The Count can be used to prevent the meeples being moved back out of the city.

The King and Robber offer bonus scoring for the biggest city and longest completed road. And The Shrine works the same as a monastery but if you place a shrine next to a monastery only the first one completed scores points.

8. Under The Big Top

Under The Big Top adds circus tiles and acrobats. The Big Top gives extra points to any features that are next to it when it moves on. Acrobats can stand on one another’s shoulders and earn bonus points when they form pyramids. And The Ringmaster works like a standard meeple, except they score extra points if they are near other circus tiles.

There are many new rules, especially to determine when the acrobats can be played, which adds a degree of complexity.

9. Bridges, Castles & Bazaar

Bridges, Castles, & Bazaar is another collection of mini-expansions. You can play with any number of them, as they aren’t dependent on one another.

Bridges can be placed over other feature tiles to continue a road, although both ends of the bridge must be placed in fields.

Castles can be placed instead of finishing a two-tile, four-point city. The castle doesn’t score points immediately but when a feature is completed in a tile adjacent to the castle, the castle scores the same number of points as the player that owns the feature.

The Bazaar enables the player to start a tile auction after their turn has finished. It’s not the best in-game auction feature but some people do enjoy it.

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