The Tower; Carcassonne Expansion - Review
Carcassonne is expanding, and this time it’s going up! In the Tower, players have the opportunity to build not just outwards, but up as well! As the towers grow, you can take other player’s follower’s prisoner, or have your followers stand guard atop the towers to protect your own.
Check out my review of the base game, or click here to see the full series review of Carcassonne.
The Tower adds a vertical element to games of Carcassonne!
Set-up: 8/10
Setting up the Tower expansion is much the same as setting up a regular game of Carcassonne. You shuffle in the 18 new tiles to the base game, and then distribute the 30 wooden tower pieces to players; how many pieces each player gets is determined by the number of players.
Mechanics: 6/10
While the tile placement rules stay the same, the Tower introduces new actions for players to take on their turn. Instead of placing a follower, players can instead do one of three other actions. They may place a tower piece on any tile with a tower site, including one previously placed; they may place a tower piece on an already started tower; or they may place one of their followers on any started tower, which completes the tower (the follower remains there until the end of the game).
When a player places a tower piece, they may immediately take another player’s follower prisoner, removing the follower from the tile and placing it in front of them. The follower must be orthogonally adjacent. As they height of the tower increases, followers can be taken further and further from the tower.
Players can claim one prisoner back on their turn by gifting three of their points to the player holding their follower prisoner. Alternatively, if two players hold each other’s follower’s prisoner, both followers are immediately returned to their owners.
While the mechanics are easy to learn – placing tower pieces allows you to steal followers – the impact on the game is dramatic, and drastically changes how Carcassonne is played.
A closer look at the new Tower tiles.
Scoring: 8/10
With a reduction in the number of followers being able to score, scoring should be much easier to keep track off, and, in theory, scores will be much lower for players. Otherwise, with the exception of ransoming prisoners, scoring follows the normal rules of Carcassonne.
Speed: 5/10
Due to the threat of Towers, players need to be significantly more careful with tile and follower placement. This can, with the addition of 18 new tiles, really slow the game down. Ransoming prisoners can also slow the game down slightly, as players have to choose when to ransom, and, in some cases, who to ransom from.
Replayability: 1/10
Considering how much I love the base game I’d have expected to love any expansion for Carcassonne. However, the Tower changes a lot of how Carcassonne plays, and for players who already struggle with the aspect of stealing Cities, Roads, and Farms from each other, they will probably hate this version of Carcassonne, which promotes removing your opponent’s meeples from such features. When we play Carcassonne, we don’t bother with the Tower, as so few people enjoy it. It’s my least favourite expansion (of those I’ve played) by far.
The Tower has a big box, but does is meet expectations?
Final Thoughts
For me, the Tower takes away some of the aspects of Carcassonne that make the game so great, and detract a lot from player interaction. Players can also end up with far fewer followers to play with, which can make the game less fun for everyone. The Tower can also cause some confrontational moments between players that make the game less fun; if stealing or sharing the points of someone’s city can sometimes cause tension, stopping someone scoring will definitely cause issues in your group. If you have a very competitive or experienced gaming group, I’d recommend playing the Tower, but if you prefer friendly games, I’d give this a miss. If you are going to use the tower, I would also recommend not using too many other expansions, as the Tower doesn’t work as well with other expansions.
Thanks for reading! Let me know if you agree with me in the comments below!
You can support me by becoming a member or a Patron, where you’ll gain access to extra content and sneak previews!
Keep up to date and follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or Reddit.
Chris