Introduction
When Abbey and Mayor - the fifth 'large' expansion to Carcassonne - was announced, several sites enticingly indicated that it was apparently an 'adult version'. This was most likely due to a misreading of the German abbreviation 'Erw.': normally it would mean 'Erweiterung' - meaning 'expansion' - but somebody seems to have taken it to mean 'Erwachsenenversion' - meaning 'adult version'. It should come as no surprise to learn that Abbey and Mayor is still good, clean family entertainment; but in fact describing it as 'adult' may not be far wrong. The expansion adds a number of strategic elements to the game which, although much appreciated by the author, are almost certainly to be avoided when playing with the smaller members of the family.
Abbey and Mayor is a fan's expansion, deepening the strategy of the game, whilst at the same leaving the core strategy intact. It's probably the nearest Hans-in-Glück have come to an essential expansion to Carcassonne since Traders and Builders. But it's not for the kids.
New tiles
The 12 new tiles are what those of the GQ expansion should have been (one of them is actually the same a tile from the GQ)- new configurations which add an element of surprise when they come up in the deck. My favourite is a tile with a well in the centre, surrounded by a road, with three roads leading off that. These roads are actually unbroken, and can only be completed when all three branches are closed off, forcing the player to think a little more carefully than usual when the tile is drawn.
Helpfully, all the tiles are marked with a 'barn' symbol representing the expansion, in the way that all the tiles in the Big Box were.
New meeples
Similarly to Princess and Dragon, the new expansion has several new game elements which can be used independently of each other. They are all variations on familiar elements, all are purely strategic (no luck whatsoever) and are added to the player's supply at the start of the game. This means that it's more difficult to run out of meeples than before, having strengthened your troops considerably; and also that the main game-play elements are not diluted as more expansions are added into the mix.
The four new elements break down as follows:
- Abbey - super cloister
- Mayor - super knight
- Barn - super farmer
- Wagon - super deployment
The abbey
My initial impression was that this special tile was nothing more than a gap-filler - literally. Wherever the is a 'hole' in the playing field (a hole being defined as having one tile above, below, left and right) a player may choose to place this tile instead of drawing one from the deck. 893
The tile may be placed in the hole no matter what the edges of the other tiles are - it finishes all the segments, be they road, city or farm. And you can deploy a monk to the abbey, just as you would to a cloister.
I had expected something a little more powerful than what is effectively a glorified cloister - maybe adding points to any future cloisters which are completed. But the real function of the abbey is to provide you with a tile at precisely the point when it would usually be most difficult to come by the right one. As such, it helps you to avoid being locked into a dead-end city, and speeds the game up a little. Still you have only one, so use wisely.
The mayor
Only able to be deployed to cities, and not quite as large as the big meeple, the mayor does nevertheless seem to be wearing enormous trousers. While the big meeple is 'worth' the same as two normal meeples when calculating the majority, the 'worth' of the mayor is dependent on the number of pennants in the city. So the mayor could well end up being worth no more than a usual meeple, or even nothing at all - while being potentially worth a dozen or more.
This variability means that the mayor is basically a strategic piece. More specifically, it seems tailor-made for the kind of cut-throat play which I enjoy - building onto other player's cities and, at the last minute depriving them of reaping the reward of all their hard work. The bigger the city, the more pennants it is likely to have, and the more powerful that mayor is likely to become. Like the abbey, the mayor is not likely to get much use in the average game, but will prove to be exactly the right piece every so often. And to increase the likelihood of that occurring, several of the new tiles have pennants - one of them even having two.
The barn
Without a doubt, the most powerful new game element. 893