Carcassonne Expansion 8 Bridges and Castles Board Game

This the addition of the Bridges, the board seriously opens up. This is easily one of the strongest larger expansion offered up by Carcassonne, giving more of a unique spin on how you play the game, with new ways to snake your way into your opponent's territories and new ways to counter their advances. It's really fun.

This is Z-Man Games 8th official expansion for Carcassonne. This expansion introduces 3 new mechanics to the game.First, there are the Bridges. The game comes with actual little bridges that can be used to connect to ends of a road together when an incongruous tile is laid between them.Second, there are the Castles, When you lay two city end segments together you have the option of either taking 4 points for it, or, you lay your Castle chip on it and receive an equal number of points the first time a feature is completed with the six tiles that make up the Castle's territory.Lastly, there are the Bazaar tiles. When one of these are played, you draw a number of pieces equal to the number of players and auction them off.When I've played this game, the bridges are okay although they don't get used all that often. The Castles are a neat upgrade as they allow you to score much more points for those tiny end pieces, especially if a big scoring feature is next to you. I didn't particularly like the Bazaar auctioning however the rules allow for a quick variant to get through it. All in all, this is not one of the best expansions; It falls somewhere in the middle when I compare all nine of the major expansions.

I love bthe addition of bridges, Really opens up the map. The Bazaars however can be hit or miss. It slows down the game a bit. I enjoy them but its either a "love it" or "hate it" with those i play with.

After much discussion, this became our first expansion to the core game. This family of 4 loves it! At first we just used the bazaars while we got used to how to use them. Then we added the bridges. Both aspects add a wonderful new dimension to this really fun and always different game.

We love Carcassonne, but this expansion is not the best. Castles are extremely hard to score and Bazaars are confusing. The only good part of this expansion are the Bridges. You can use them to continue a road over a land or city tile--this is extremely helpful when another player is trying to block your city's expansion by placing a road near it to limit your ability to expand--a bridge can be placed over a city end cap or another such piece, as long as it is touching grass on both sides, and both the road and city can still expand. We just take the bridges and the 4 non-bazaar pieces into our regualr Carcassone games because the rest of the expansion is not worthwhile.

NOt enough instructions included to know how to play. Had to go on line to find instructions.

This is my favorite expansion for the bridges alone. The castles are okay and I don't use the bazaars as written but the bridges are fantastic and my favorite addition. The bazaar rules have always felt confusing (but then I don't play monopoly with the bidding rules either) so our home rule is to just give one extra point to whoever completes a feature involving the bazaar.

This expansion made me mad because I don't like being a prisioner or captured or wasting my good men on fields or TOWERS but it is SO MUCH FUN!!!!! Makes things interesting and mixes it up a bit!

Although the game was a gift and not really for me, he was very happy and received the product perfectly :)

We own quite a lot expansions. The best one by far is Inn and Cathedrals. The castles element of this expansion is really good, and can make a massive change to the scores. The Bazaar element is better with more players and does not work so well with just 2 players. We like all the additional tiles too, some funky shapes.Edit -Owned this for quite a while now. Bridges have become a permanent fixture of the game. It took me a long time to get my head around them but now i love them. You can add them over cities or monasteries so enhance the placing of your tiles. You only get 3 so need to use the wisely. Some games i feel i need 5 whereas others they are not needed.

Excellent expansion to an already fun game. Highly Recommend.

Took a while to see were you could use the bridges, but can help to open up your fields. Castles really boost the score up.Have not used the bazaars yet.

An important addition to the Carcassonne gameplay. Especially compared to the other expansions that we've bought: the castles and bridge require you to change your strategies quite a bit!