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Carcassonne: Expansion 9 – Hills & Sheep
Expansion of: CarcassonneCarcassonne: Hills & Sheep is the ninth numbered expansion for the Carcassonne base game, and now players get to be shepherds on the hills in addition to the usual thieves, knights, monks and farmers. By placing the tiles in this expansion, players build hills and vineyards, trying to plan ahead to claim the sweetest meadows for points — bringing sheep and shepherds while keeping watch for the wolf that waits to be drawn among the tiles…
Whenever a tile featuring a hill icon is added to the playing area, it is placed on top of another randomly drawn tile, elevating it above the playing surface and creating a hill. Hill tiles act as tie-breakers: if two or more players occupy the same feature equally (a "shared majority"), but one of the tied players has a follower standing on a hill tile, that player will have an advantage over the others, and will score all the points for that feature.
Vineyards are designed to increase the importance of monasteries. Each vineyard tile placed around a monastery adds three points to that monastery’s score. However, these bonus points only count if the monastery is completed, so players are more likely to sabotage their opponents’ monasteries in order to prevent them from being finished.
Shepherds are new pieces that can only be placed in fields. Each time a player expands the field occupied by his or her shepherd, that player has two options: 1. Draw a sheep token out of a bag, placing it near their shepherd; or 2. Trade in all their accumulated sheep for points. Each sheep token is worth 1-4 points, depending on the number of sheep depicted. However, hidden among the sheep tokens are two wolf tokens, and if a player draws one of these, all of their sheep are lost and placed back into the bag. This introduces a push-your-luck aspect to Carcassonne, as players can choose to either "cash-in" the sheep they have, or try to add more sheep and risk losing them all.
The goal of Hills & Sheep remains the same as in basic Carcassonne: claim the most points to win the game. Part of the Carcassonne series.
| Ages | 8+ |
|---|---|
| Players | 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players, 5 Players, 6 Players |
| Play Time | 40m – 40m |
| Designer | Klaus-Jürgen Wrede |
| Mechanics | Area Majority / Influence, Tile Placement |
| Theme | Expansion for Base-game, Territory Building, Medieval |
| Publisher | 999 Games, Bard Centrum Gier, Bergsala Enigma, Devir, Filosofia Éditions, Hans im Glück, Lautapelit.fi, MINDOK, Oxygame, Piatnik, Schmidt Spiele, Stupor Mundi, Z-Man Games, Inc., Fantasmagoria, Giochi Uniti, Hobby World |
cweberbr
A decent addition to the game. Hills don't add much, to be honest, but the sheep add a new dimension with balancing priorities and a touch of luck.
astomps
the hills aren't too interesting but the sheep are. needs to be played with more than just base game + river
bdeink
Okay expansion. The verticality is little more than a gimmick (unless you've really memorised the tile distribution), and hills feel rather redundant. The new city tiles included in the expansion include some really cool layouts. Vineyards are neat, as the extra points can make cloisters worth the wait, but nothing too exciting. Shepherds and sheep are a cute addition, and low-key the reason why we keep adding this expansion to our games. It's a pure push your luck-mechanic, which in most cases won't do much to decide the victor, but adds a lot of charm. We always play with the sheep, even when the rest of the expansion is not included in the mix.