The third expansion pack for Sierra Online's digital version of Klaus-Jürgen Wrede's board game Carcassonne arrived on Xbox Live Marketplace today. As its title suggests, The King and Baron Expansion Pack adds the king and robber baron characters to Carcassonne, in addition to five new tiles, and is available for 300 Microsoft Points ($3.75). Carcassonners with the expansion enabled will receive a King icon next to their avatar, while players with the longest roads get a Robber Baron caricature. Whichever player has either icon at the game's finish will receive bonus points. The expansion, based on the board game's King and Scout expansion, arrives after the 12-tile River II expansion in August, also available for 300 Microsoft Points ($3.75), and the River expansion bundled with the full 800 Microsoft Point ($10) Carcassonne game.

Sierra Online's electronic version of Klaus-Jürgen Wrede's popular board game Carcassonne will mark this week's Xbox Live Arcade release, Microsoft revealed today. Arriving on the Xbox 360 download service early Wednesday morning, the full version will sell for 800 Microsoft Points ($10). The second board game to hit Xbox Live Arcade--the first being Big Huge Game's Catan in May, based on Klaus Teuber's award-winning Settlers of Catan--Carcassonne supports matches of up to five players via Xbox Live and up to four players offline. Unlike Catan, in which players make the best use of a randomized map, Carcassonne has players instead creating the surrounding landscape by laying tiles as well as building towns, roads, and farms while they race to acquire the most points. Featuring simple rules that provide for a number of different approaches and gameplay styles, Sierra Online's Carcassonne will include both the initial 72 tiles of the original game and the added tiles of the Rivers expansion pack. Along with today's announcement, Microsoft also sent along several new screenshots.