Carcassonne: Hills & Sheep is the ninth numbered expansion for the Carcassonne base game, and now players can become shepherds in the hills in addition to the regular thieves, knights, monks, and farmers. By placing the tiles in this expansion, players build hills and vineyards, attempting to plan ahead to claim the choicest meadows for points—by bringing in sheep and shepherds while keeping an eye out for the wolf waiting to be drawn among the tiles...

Any time a tile with a hill icon is added to the playing area, it is placed on top of another randomly drawn tile, raising it above the playing surface and creating a hill. Hill tiles act as tie-breakers: if two or more players equally occupy the same area (a "shared majority"), but one of the tied players has a follower standing on a hill tile, that player gains an advantage over the others and will score all points for that area.

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 are only counted if the monastery is completed, so players are more likely to sabotage their opponents' monasteries to prevent them from being completed.

Shepherds are new pieces that can only be placed in fields. Each time a player expands the field occupied by his or her shepherd, the player has two options: 1. Draw a sheep token from a bag and place it near their shepherd; or 2. Cash in all their collected sheep for points. Each sheep token is worth 1-4 points depending on the number of sheep depicted. However, among the sheep tokens are two wolf tokens, and if a player draws one of these, they lose all their sheep, and they are returned to the bag. This introduces an element of chance to Carcassonne, as players can choose to either "cash in" their sheep or try to add more sheep and risk losing them all.

The goal of Hills & Sheep is the same as in the base game Carcassonne: score the most points to win the game.

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ID: 153773

Release Year: 2014

Min. Players: 2

Max. Players: 6

Play Time (minutes): 40

Average Rating: 7.33821

Complexity: Medium

Mechanics: Area Majority / Influence and Tile Placement

Designers: Klaus-Jürgen Wrede

Publishers: Hans im Glück, 999 Games, Bard Centrum Gier, Devir, Enigma (Bergsala Enigma), Fantasmagoria, Filosofia Éditions, Giochi Uniti, Hobby World, Lautapelit.fi, MINDOK, Oxygame, Piatnik, Schmidt Spiele, Stupor Mundi, Swan Panasia Co., Ltd., and Z-Man Games