I See Dead Meeples

Tonight, I played the newest expansion for the popular (and Spiel des Jahres winning) game Carcassonne -- The Princess and the Dragon. Folks... this is not the Carcassonne you know. This expansion changes a fundamental aspect of the game, the answer to the question I hear many newbies ask about Carcassonne: "is there a way to remove other players' followers from the board?" With P&D, the answer is now "yes."

Six "volcano" tiles each cause the "Dragon marker" to be placed on top of them. 12 other tiles (I'll call them "rampage tiles") then pause normal play and start the dragon roaming. The player placing the rampage tile makes the first move, moving the dragon horizontally or vertically adjacent to its current location. Players proceed clockwise, each moving the dragon once (but never moving the dragon to a tile it has already visited this rampage) until it has reached a dead end or has moved six times. (Because the dragon moves six times, some players may move it more than once in a given rampage.) Every tile the dragon rampages to, it eats all the followers on that tile and sends them back to their owners' stashes.

A "fairy" piece also joins the game. Any time you place a tile but do not place any followers, you may move the fairy to the same tile as one of your followers already on the board. The fairy: 1) protects you from the dragon, which cannot enter the fairy's space; 2) scores you 1 point at the beginning of each of your turns if she's with your follower; and 3) scores you 3 points if a feature (road, city, cloister, or farm) is scored on the tile on which she stands.

As for the Princess... she appears on 6 tiles, all city tiles. When you place a princess tile into a city that already has followers, you do not place any follower on the tile -- instead, you choose one follower in the city to dismiss back to its owner's stash.

And finally, just to balance out all the follower death just a bit, there are 6 "magic portal" tiles. When you play such a tile, you may choose instead of placing a follower on it to place a follower anywhere on the board. You still can't place a follower on a feature that already has another follower on it. You also can't place into an already-completed feature (scoring a finished road, city, or cloister, for example). But otherwise, you can jump into something promising, or return a follower to the location of earlier dragon/princess carnage.

I have to give it another few tries before I try to give it my review. I just know it makes the strategy of Carcassone completely different. I nearly finished dead last on the score track, and I can't remember the last time that happened to me playing Carcassonne. But for those who might have wished for more mayhem and destruction in Carcassonne, you'll probably want to check it out.