The Gifts/en

Image of The Gifts

General info and comments

Expansion symbol

The Gifts was released by Hans im Glück in 2021.

With this mini-expansion released for the 20th anniversary of Carcassonne, you can receive gifts if you help your fellow players.

Contents

• 25 cards featuring Gifts (5 x Synod, Road Sweeper, Change Position, Cash Out, Take 2)

Back (left) and front of the 5 types of cards in the deck (right)

Note: The expansion does not include printed rules. They can be downloaded from the product here in German and in English:

https://cundco.de/en/mini-expansions/carcassonne/390/carcassonne-the-gifts?c=35

This expansion has been developed for the Carcassonne basic game. All the basic game rules still apply in addition to the expansion rules below. You can combine it with other expansions - but at your own risk – that is, there will be no official rules for these combinations.

Rules

Preparation

Shuffle the 25 gift cards into one facedown deck.

Gameplay

This expansion only changes the course of action in step 1. Placing a tile. The following actions 2. Placing a meeple and 3. Scoring a feature are carried out as usual.

1. Placing a tile

Receiving a gift

If you place a tile in a way that it adds to a road or city of a fellow player, you receive a gift.

This means that:

• Roads or cities that have been expanded must belong to someone else than you (after the tile has been placed) according to the majority rule.
• When your tile extends several roads and/or cities, you still only receive 1 gift.

Now draw the top card of the deck, take a look at it (without showing it to any other player) and place it face down in front of you.

Note: In case all gift cards have already been given out at this point, shuffle the discard pile into a new gift deck. If the rare case occurs that all gifts are lying "unopened" before the players, you do not receive a gift.

Example 1: You place your tile, adding to Blue’s road and take a gift for doing so. Without the blue meeple on the road, you would not receive a gift, because you are involved in the city.

Opening a gift

After having drawn a tile, but before placing it, you may open exactly 1 gift.

Turn over one of your gifts, resolve the action, then put it onto an open discard pile.

There are 5 types of gifts:

Synod Place a meeple from your supply onto any unfinished monastery (if possible). The monastery can already be occupied by one or more meeple – yours or someone else’s. The monastery may also be unoccupied. Example 2: You use the card “Synod” and place a meeple onto the monastery 1, which is already occupied by a blue, a green and one of your own meeples. Now you place a tile and complete the monastery 2. You score 9 points, Blue and Green do not score any points.

Road Sweeper Score any unfinished road right away. It is not necessary for you to have a meeple on the road. After the road has been scored, the player’s meeple is put back into their supply. Example 3: You score the road and receive 4 points and take your meeple back into your supply 1. Next you continue the road by placing your tile 2 and place the meeple back onto the road 3.

Footnotes

For Icons explanation and licensing please visit Icons page.