Carcassonne: The Gold Mines

About this expansion

Carcassonne: The Gold Mines is a small expansion for the Carcassonne series, designed for 2–6 players and released in 2012. It adds eight landscape tiles showing a gold bar to the tiles used during play, introducing a new way to compete for points.

When a player draws a gold mine tile, they place it according to the normal rules. They then place one gold bar on that tile and another on any adjacent tile, including one that is adjacent orthogonally or diagonally. After that, the player may place a follower on the newly placed tile as normal.

Gold bars remain on the landscape until a feature is completed. This can happen on the same turn that a bar is placed or during a later turn. When a completed feature contains one or more gold bars, those bars are distributed among the players involved in scoring.

• A player with a majority of followers on the completed feature collects all available gold bars.
• If two or more players are tied for the most followers, the bars are distributed among the tied players.
• In a tie, distribution proceeds clockwise from the active player.
• At the end of the game, unclaimed gold bars are removed before final scoring.

Each collected gold bar is worth between 1 and 4 points, depending on how many bars that player has collected. This makes every gold-bearing tile a potential contest and encourages players to watch both the placement of new landscape and the features nearing completion.

With its straightforward addition to the normal rules, Carcassonne: The Gold Mines brings shared competition and changing rewards to the familiar tile-laying experience. The expansion is part of the wider Carcassonne series.