If you’ve watched the review you’ll know that Liv loves the Traders and Builders Expansion set. Unfortunately she didn’t have time to write a review herself, so I volunteered to do it for her, and make sure I hit the important points she enjoys. So, here we go.
The Traders and Buiilders expansion comes with 24 new tiles, a couple new Meeples and some new pieces with images of supplies; Wheat, Bolts of Cloth, and Barrels on them. Some of the new city tiles have these same images on them as well, but I’ll get back to that in a bit.
The new Meeples are a Pig and a Trader. The Pig can be placed in a field the user already owns to score an additional point per city at the end of the game. This is the Pig’s only power and isn’t all that impressive during the game. It can be a great boon at end game, especially if you’re barely losing to your opponents.
The Trader, on the other hand, is an exciting Meeple when used properly. Traders can be played on either a Road or a City and they give the player an extra turn any time they add to that feature.
That’s right! The player gets to go again and play another full turn including drawing, placing, setting another Meeple (if desired,) and scoring. One note, you only get one (1) additional turn. If you play on the feature with the Trader again, you don’t get a third turn. Another note, you only get an additional turn if your adding to your own feature. If someone else plays on the road or city with the Trader, you don’t get another turn.
Liv and I have found that playing the Trader on a road is probably your best option in a 2 player game. There is a lot more opportunity to play roads than there are to build cities throughout the game play. Speaking about cities though, let’s get back to those new pieces I mentioned earlier.
As I said there are new city tiles with images of the supplies: Wheat, Bolts of Cloth and Barrels on them. (See the image to the left for an example.) When you win and score a city with one of these images on a tile, you get one of the small token tiles. You receive one token tile for each city tile with an image, so it’s important to get as many image tiles as possible in your city.
There are six Wheat tiles, five Bolts of Cloth, and nine Barrel tiles with tokens for each. At the end of the game the player with the most tokens for any type gets an additional 10 points. If two players happen to tie on any given supply, they each get 10 points. A real boost to your points at end game.
So that’s it for the Traders and Builders expansion. Another one we would suggest picking up to add to your Carcassonne sets. Happy gaming!
