So a couple of weeks ago they released the River II expansion for the Xbox Live edition of the beloved German game Carcassonne and that got me thinking that it might be a good idea to put the various expansions available for both that game and Settlers of Catan on parade for those of you who might not be aware that the physical counterparts of these titles aren’t just single, all-inclusive games- they’re veritable franchises.

Between Settlers and Carcassonne, these games are pretty much the top-selling brands in the hobby game industry and the closest thing the board game business has to something approaching the level of brand recognition and market penetration that Magic: The Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons enjoy. Given the relative success of these titles on Xbox Live I wouldn’t be surprised to see more expansions for either game pop up for download in the near future so consider this a sort of preview of potential expansions if you’re playing the online games or a “buyer’s guide” if you’ve already made the jump from ones and zeros to wood and cardboard. In this column, I’ll focus on Carcassonne and next week we’ll have a look at what’s available in the Settlers line.

Meet the meeples.

There are many in the board gaming hobby who don’t care for expansions. Some of these folks favor simplicity, some don’t like to dilute the supposed “purity” of a game system, and still others think they’re nothing but a cash-in designed to milk the success of a particular title. I am not one of these people. I love expansions. I love when a great game takes on a new scope or when a few rules changes and a handful of components provide more variety and replayability to my favorite games. Granted, sometimes expansions go either too far and jump the proverbial shark or some may not provide enough material to really make a difference. But a good expansion can be a great way to add value and longevity to a game and the upshot is that they’re always optional. Fortunately, both the Carcassonne and Settlers brands have been graced with some consistently excellent expansions that offer many new challenges and even dramatically change the way these games are played.

Carcassonne is a game I shouldn’t like—it’s fairly non-confrontational and has a cloyingly casual style of play that makes it more of a multiplayer puzzle than anything else. It’s definitely a light game, touching some of the same buttons that both Tetris and any given dominoes game do and it’s almost irritatingly accessible and frivolous. That being said, I think it’s a good 2-3 player game and with experienced players and a couple of expansions, it can be downright vicious.

Woo! We Love Zooloretto!

Carcassonne won the Spiel Des Jahres award back in 2001 and it is somewhat customary that the winners of these awards (which are analogous to the Academy Award for European game designs) to follow up the victory with a cavalcade of expansions. But with Carcassonne, there are not only expansions but entirely separate, standalone games—forget about those for now, they’re the real “cash-in”/”sellout” titles of the bunch. Don’t bother unless you’re an absolute Carcassonne fanatic.

The first Carcassonne expansion was simply The River, which is now included in the mix of tiles you get in every copy of the base game as well as in the Xbox Live version. Believe it or not, this simple addition is pretty significant to the game- particularly in the way farms are broken up by it. The River II puts a fork in the river and divides up the playfield even more. It’s a good example of a simple, small expansion that can dramatically change the key strategies in the game regarding farmer placement. I do find that both versions of the river, at least for the early part of the game, actually discourage direct competition between players as it provides “starter” tiles for castles and roads. Nonetheless, the long term effect is a larger, more expansive playfield.

Inns and Cathedrals adds several tiles that increase the value of castles and roads. Some castle tiles feature shields which provide double points and some roads have an inn that doubles the score of a completed road. The Cathedral tiles give you a huge bonus on a completed city but nothing if it’s not walled in by the end of the game. It’s a pretty simple addition overall, but the addition of bonuses and new scoring opportunities make it worthwhile. In all, it’s probably the best received and most commonly played expansion. There’s also big, “double” meeples that count for two of the little bastards and pieces for a sixth player. A quick word of advice: never, ever play this game or any incarnation of it with six players.

Traders and Builders

Things start to get a little wackier with the Traders and Builders add-on, which introduces tiles printed with one of several “trade goods” that are collected when a castle is completed. In an interesting twist, you get the trade good whether the completed feature is yours or not. At the end of the game, the player with the most of each item (which are really abstract, meaningless symbols) gets some extra points that can, sometimes, sway the game if a player really focuses on getting the most goods possible.

There is also a pig meeple that you can place once per game that doubles the value of a farm (which can be a huge bonus if you play it right). However, the best piece to me is this stupid looking meeple that is supposed to represent some kind of builder but I call him The Chef. If you build on to a feature containing your Chef, he’ll let you draw and play another tile—a great way to finally finish off one of those gigantic vanity project castles. In all, it’s a good expansion but it is where the series starts to veer from the simpler gameplay that made the game so popular in the first place.

Probably the two most “controversial” expansions are also, in my opinion, the best because they increase the level of competition and add some nasty, cutthroat tactics that make a nice, simple family game into something that elicits bad language and hurt feelings. The first of these is The Princess and the Dragon expansion, definitely the most complex piece of the Carcassonne series and the most radically divergent from the basic game. This piece brings a lot of particularly hateful, malicious tactics to the table that I’m particularly fond of; there’s Princess tiles that seduce your opponents’ knights right out of their posts guarding castles-in-progress. There are rule-breaking magic portals that let you teleport a meeple onto a previously played tile. And of course, there’s a big purple Dragon that flies out of volcanoes and devours previously placed meeples; only the Fairy offers any protection from this bloodthirsty monster. So really, what the expansion offers is a way to remove meeples and to directly interfere with other players’ best laid plans. That big farm you had planned? Gone. Huge castle? Gone. One tile away from completing a monastery? Gone.