How to Play Carcassonne: Expansion 8 – Bridges, Castles and Bazaars

Game Objective

In Carcassonne: Expansion 8 - Markets & Bridges, players continue to build the medieval landscape of Carcassonne, but now with the addition of traveling merchants who establish markets, engineers who build innovative bridges, and the erection of small castles to protect the surrounding areas. The overall objective of the game remains the same as base Carcassonne, with the addition of new ways to score and interact with the board through the new components. All base game rules remain, with this guide focusing only on the additional rules.

Setup

To set up the game with the Markets & Bridges expansion, follow these steps:

1. Shuffle the 12 new land tiles (marked with n) with the rest of the base game land tiles.
2. Each player receives bridges and castle markers according to the number of players:
   • 2 to 4 players: each player receives 3 bridges and 3 castles.
   • 5 or 6 players: each player receives 2 bridges and 2 castles.

Gameplay Flow

The basic flow of Carcassonne gameplay remains the same. However, the expansion introduces specific events that alter the sequence of a normal turn when certain land tiles are played:

• When a land tile with a Market is drawn:
  1. The current player places the land tile with the Market according to normal rules.
  2. Then, an "auction" of land tiles occurs in the Market.
  3. The current player flips over as many land tiles as there are players and places them in plain sight.
  4. The next player chooses one of the tiles and offers a number of points for it (can be 0 points).
  5. Following the game order, the remaining players can make a single offer each, indicating how many points they would like to offer for that tile. Offers must be higher than the current offer. A player can choose to pass.
  6. When all players have made their offers or passed, the player who chose the tile decides between:
     • Buying the tile from the highest bidder, paying them the points of their offer.
     • Selling the tile to the highest bidder. The bidder pays them the offered points.
  7. Points are subtracted from the score of the player who pays the offer and added to the score of the player who receives them. If the player who chose the tile is the only one to make an offer, they subtract the respective points from their score, without any other player receiving those points.
  8. The next player (who has not bought a tile in this Market!) chooses a tile and makes an offer for it. The procedure repeats, but only players who have not yet bought a tile can offer points.
  9. The last tile is given to the player who has not received any tile in this Market. That player receives it for free.
  10. When the Market ends, players place their tiles, starting with the player after the current player. When placing tiles, players have all the possibilities of a normal turn.

No chain reaction: New tiles are not flipped for a market tile that was flipped as a consequence of another market tile. A new market can only occur after each player has received one of the flipped tiles and all of them have been placed.

Market variant: The current player flips as many tiles as the number of players. Then, the next player chooses one of the tiles and places it, performing a normal turn. The remaining players do the same until all tiles have been distributed. Then, the game proceeds normally.

Actions and How to Play

In addition to the normal actions of placing a land tile and a follower, players can perform the following additional actions:

Build a Bridge

On their turn, a player can build one of their bridges. The bridge extends a road, carrying it over the tile under which it is placed, and simply counts as a normal part of the road.

Conditions for building a bridge:

• The bridge can be built on the newly played tile or on the tile adjacent (horizontally or vertically) to the current tile.
• Both ends of the bridge must be placed on a field (not a city, road, river, etc.).

It is allowed to place a field at the end of a road if the player continues that road with a bridge. The player can place a follower on the current tile or on the bridge itself, if it is built on the current tile (following normal rules for follower placement). The fields or cities under the bridge are not separated. A bridge can be built as a continuation of another bridge and also over cloisters (even if they are occupied).

The bridge cannot be built if one of its ends is on top of a road.

Build a Castle

When a player completes their own small city, formed by only 2 segments, they can choose between receiving points in the usual way (2 points) or building one of their castles on it. If they choose the latter, they place a castle marker on the city and place the follower that was in that city on the castle marker. A small city with a castle does not yet count as completed!

Building a castle does not give points immediately. The owner of the castle will receive points as soon as a construction in its vicinity (cloister, city, or road) is completed. More precisely, part of the completed construction must be on at least one of the neighboring tiles. The vicinity consists of the two tiles containing the castle, as well as the two tiles to its right and the two tiles to its left. In total, the vicinity is formed by 6 tiles.

The owner of the castle can receive points from the following constructions:

• The cloister in 1.
• The road in 1.
• The city in 3 (upper side).
• The city in 6 (right side).

(The small city in 3 and 6 had already been scored before the castle was built, so it does not give any points to it).

A cloister only counts as part of the vicinity if the cloister itself is on one of the 6 vicinity tiles, and not just one of the 8 tiles surrounding the cloister.

When building a castle, it does not matter if the follower had already been placed in the first half of the small city or if the player places it in the second half.

Fields can be separated by a castle in the same way as by a small city.

End of Game and Scoring

Refer to the manual for details on this section.

Castle Scoring

A castle only counts as complete when a construction (cloister, road, city, or another castle) on one of the 6 tiles in its vicinity is completed. The owner of the completed construction and the owner of the castle receive the full points of the completed construction. The follower on the castle is recovered after scoring.

Other castle scoring rules:

• A follower on a castle receives the points from the first construction to be completed! It cannot stay on the castle waiting for constructions that may be completed later.
• It is not important whether the completed construction is actually scored. Even if the completed construction does not have a follower, the owner of the castle receives the respective points.
• If several constructions in the vicinity are completed at once, the owner of the castle can choose one of the completed constructions to receive the respective points.
• Since a small city is not completed when a castle is placed on it, two castles can exist side by side. In this case, a castle that scores in the vicinity of another castle counts as a completed construction and both owners receive the same amount of points.
• At the end of the game, a follower on a castle does not receive points. A castle never receives points for a farm.
• A castle on a farm is worth 4 points (instead of the usual 3), 5 points when there is a pig on the farm (2nd expansion: Traders & Builders) or 5 points when there is a stable on the farm (5th expansion: Abbey & Mayor).

Tips for Winning

• If the Market tile is drawn in the first turns of the game, players are allowed to have negative scores. This can be a strategy to acquire important tiles early on, even if it costs points temporarily.
• When building a bridge, remember that it counts as a normal road segment for scoring purposes. Use it to complete your roads or those of your opponents, or to connect roads strategically.
• When deciding to build a castle, evaluate the potential vicinity. The castle scores for the first completed construction in its 6-tile vicinity. Positioning a castle near areas with high potential for completing cities, roads, or cloisters can yield many points.