Carcassonne: Abbey & Mayor Expansion #5

New pieces offer tremendous strategic flexibility in this Carcassonne expansion.

With a new tile type and three new pieces, the Abbey & Mayor expansion for Carcassonne gives players more options than ever.Abbey tiles act as monasteries, but you can use them to plug holes in the board by filling spaces surrounded by tiles.Mayors help you control cities by using coats of arms to determine their strength. Outside the city walls, Barns synergize with farmers to enhance the value of fields they occupy, while wagons can be placed like followers but then moved from one feature to the next after scoring. Such avariety of tiles and pieces creates numerous opportunities to employcunning strategies that can outwit opponents.

Clever follower placementis a hallmark of Carcassonne.With the components in Abbey & Mayor, you can devise new ways toget the most out of each piece. A well-placed Mayor can override other players' followers and even circumventlarge meeples. Also, since the Mayor's strength is equal to the number of coats of arms in their city, this increased strength also nets them the extra points those same coats of arms provide. You can also use wagons to swoop in and take over features before your opponents can get to them. While first placedlike a normal follower, you can movea wagon immediately to an adjacent, uninhabited feature once the original placement isscored. Finally, Barns score any farmers in the field they're placed in and bestowextra points at the end of the game. Played on their own with the base game or combined with other Carcassonne expansions, Abbey & Mayor provides plenty of new paths to victory.