Carcassonne: King and Scout (Hans Im Gluck and Rio Grande Games, 2003 - Klaus-Jergen Wrede) is one of the only expansions I’ve gotten that is for two different games: the original Carcassonne and Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers. The expansion is simply twelve tiles that come in a very small box - five for H&G, and seven for the original game.

The “Scout” part of the expansion - all five tiles - are taken and shuffled face down, with each player drawing one of them . (Two tiles each in a two-player game.) Each tile has a special ability:

Farmer’s Hut - This tile is placed in a meadow and scores one point for each tile that makes up that meadow for the player. (The player must place a hut on the tile). This one is okay, but I haven’t seen it do much good during the game.

Dugout Canoe - This tile gives the player control over the river system in which it is placed. The player scores points for the larger lake in every river connected to that system. I found this tile fairly weak, and only worthwhile if a player decides to build their river system up, which can be hard in a multi-player game.

Hunter on a Footbridge: This tile basically allows a player to place a hunter that straddles two meadows, allowing them to score both. This tile I found fairly weak - it’s not nearly as good as the others, unless the player gets an optimal placement with it, which is rare.

Scout: This is the best tile of the five. It allows the player who has played it to redraw tiles for the rest of the game, but they must take the redraw. I see no reason why a player who has this doesn’t play it the first chance they get. The ability to redraw tiles is HUGE, and far outweighs the measly points the other tiles give out.

Shaman: This tile is almost as good as the Scout. Instead of being played as part of the board, like the other four, it is simply placed in front of the player. This tile allows the player to take back followers from incomplete rivers and forests. This is a useful thing, especially when you have many of your followers tied up and are unable to put them where you want to.

The “King” part of the expansion is much more interesting - for the original Carcassonne. Five of the seven tiles are simply different combinations of city/road/abbey but are very nice additions. My favorite is a tile that has two cities crossing over one another; it’s a neat twist to throw down on some cities.

More importantly, however, are the “King” and the “Robber Knight” tiles. Both of them function the same way, with the “King” associated with cities and the “Robber Knight” with roads. Whenever a player plays a tile that completes the first city or road, they take the associated tile, placing it in front of them. Later on in the game, other players may take these tiles if they play a tile that completes a feature that is larger than any other (i.e. complete the longest road up to that point). At the end of the game, the player with the “King” scores one point for every completed city on the board; the player with the “Robber Knight” scores one point for every completed road on the board. A few people have criticized these as game-breaking, but I really think they add a lot to the game. If combined with the Builders and Traders set or the Count set, players now have a lot of incentive to finish other player’s cities and roads. If someone is going to score a huge city and there’s not much way to stop them, then why not do it for them, taking the “King” tile in the process?

I think that it’s neat that this expansion covers two games, but frankly I could have lived with the Hunters and Gatherers expansion. I’ve never been a big fan of Hunters and Gatherers to begin with, and these tiles are absolutely unbalanced. I don’t understand why two of them are so much more useful than the other three - and how one of them isn’t added to the board, but the other four are. Fortunately, the “King” expansion is tremendous - adding some great tiles to the mix, and some new ways for players to score. Considering the inexpensive price, I would have to say that while I think the “Scout” part of the expansion is a dud, the rest of it makes the little set worth picking up.

Tom Vasel
“Real men play board games.”