Carcassonne Maps: Great Britain

The Game

Carcassonne Maps is a series of Carcassonne expansions. Carcassonne is a boardgame with no board, and Carcassonne Maps turns it back to a game with a board. You will need not only the base game but also at least one more expansion with tiles. Every Carcassonne Maps expansion requires a certain number of tiles, and those in the base game are not enough. There are some common rules across the Carcassonne Maps series, and each map has some unique rules too. Although you use tiles from other Carcassonne expansions, you won't use the rules associated with them. 

Let's first talk about the common rules across the different maps. Each map has several starting positions. You place the standard starting tile on one of these positions, and draw random tiles for the others. When placing tiles, they must expand out from these starting positions, similar to standard Carcassonne. You don't place tiles anywhere you like. Squares have been drawn on the map, and you can only place tiles in these squares. The concept of a border is introduced - borders as in the edges of the playable areas. When you place a tile on a border space, any feature touching the border is considered closed off. For example you still have an open-ended castle, but the only remaining open end is on the border. In this case the castle is considered complete and you score it. The same goes for roads and monasteries. The borders on the maps help players complete features. 

Those face-down round tokens have point values. They come in three colours, and they are worth 1 or 2 points. Not all the maps use these tokens, but quite many do. They are used in different ways on different maps. Generally when you place a tile on a space with a round token, you claim that token and score the points on it. As you collect tokens, you will be able to use them in some other way. 

The Isle of Man is the unique mechanism on the Great Britain map. At the end of your turn, you may place a meeple here to take an additional turn. Your meeples here are temporarily unavailable to you. They are freed when you have three round tokens of different colours or three round tokens of the same point value. When either of these happen, you must turn in the combination and retrieve all your meeples. You know the colour distribution of the round tokens up front - blue in the north, purple in the south, and orange in the west. So you can somewhat plan to collect the right colours at the right time. 

The maps have towns, and they are an optional variant. If you use the town variant, you lose 2 points for covering a town, but you get to take an extra turn. Also when completing a road, every town next to the road gives you 2 points. 

The Play

Most of the elements in Carcassonne have not changed. The biggest difference to me is the impact of the borders. Completing features becomes a bit easier. However since the maps do come with some features, these introduce a new challenge. When you lay tiles, your tiles must match these features. Overall I find Carcassonne Maps slightly more challenging. The features on the map include major cities which appear as partial castles. They tend to be lucrative and they entice players to expand towards and claim them. 

Our London did not grow to become a large castle, only a chubby camel. 

The point tokens and Isle of Man are simple variants. It's nice to have some alternative ways of playing, but these are not something radically different from the original. I find the existence of the map itself is the main attraction which introduces a new play experience. 

In our game, despite using the recommended number of tiles, by the time we were done, about 20% of the spaces was still not yet filled. 

The Thoughts

Well, this is an expansion, so it is for people who already like Carcassonne. If that's you, then the maps will offer a fun and new experience. It's different enough to be interesting. Before playing I had imagined gameplay to be more restrictive, since the play area is fixed. Now that I have played it, I find that you often still have many options on your turn. The concept of the borders gives you a new tool to complete features. The features on the map also give some context and create objectives you strive for.