The Boardgames Thread / Board games

Also What are your thoughts on game expansions? Are they any good or is money better spent on new games?

If a good game has expansions, I would generally get them all. I tend to get stuck on one game more than play lots of different, simpler games. It really depends on whether you and your players like making games more complex. Some people actively dislike that.

My son loves Carcassonne so I was thinking about an expansion to that. There are quite a few so I’m not sure which one.

They're all worth getting just because they contain extra tiles, which is, of course, the number one bait. I think some of them are duds, though. 'Catapult' is just daft--perhaps good for very small children, but otherwise to be avoided. I also don't like 'The Princess and the Dragon'--I don't think the extra rules add anything interesting to the game, and they're cumbersome and only slow it down. Finally, 'The Tower' is good just because you get the card storage tower, which is very useful (with all the expansions, there are now more cards than fit in it, but it's still very good), although I find the extra rules end up taking over the game a little and we rarely use them.

(I think many of the expansions are aimed at giving weaker players a shot at freeing stuck figures or breaking open a game situation (a weakness of the original Carcassonne was a lack of flexibility--once you had placed a figure, it could be stuck until the end of the game), but at the price of introducing what to them will feel like undue complexity. I like that, too, but I've never found it to work in the way that it seems to me has to be the intention. Instead, better players love it because it just adds and adds rules and gives a considerable advantage to a player who can remember and apply them all.)

I think the best expansions are 'Inns and Cathedrals', 'Traders and Builders', 'Abbey and Mayor', and 'Count, King, and Robber'. I'd consider all of those 'essential' in the way that non-essential things can be. :)

I don't know all of the mini-expansions (there are so many now, people seem to be producing them all the time), but of those I know, apart from the ones collected in 'Count, King, and Robber', I don't consider any 'essential'. Most of them give you new tiles, so may be worth getting just for that. I don't like the fact that they all have very different designs on them (e.g., the 'Corn Circles' designs) that you then don't end up using, though.

Have fun!

https://boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Carcassonne_series