Naturelich Games

Gameplay
Unlike Carcassonne - Traders and Builders, the goods are not placed inside the cities; they are placed on the field. The player who completed the road or monastery takes the pineapple token. If the tile contains both road and monastery, a player who completed either feature can take the goods. When the player gets the pineapple token, he may exchange it with any player for one goods token of his choice. That player cannot refuse the exchange. After that turn, no exchange can be made.

At the end of game, players with most pineapple tokens gain 10 points. Players with most farmers on the field gain 2 points for each pineapple farm (map tile with pineapple) attached.

Design and Theme
The tiles are well designed. They look very similar to the original Carcassone game design. Three of the six tiles contain a cloister. I find this surprising but the designer may just be a fan of the clerics. A particularly nice tile contains three city parts with a monastery in the middle. It will be quite easy to score nine points for this cleric.
The little pineapple icon looks nice as well. However, I would not have expected pineapples in a medieval European game, as these fruit were probably very difficult to get for the ordinary person (if they were available in Europe at all?!). But since this merchandise is the base for a powerful new game mechanism, I believe this little glitch may well be forgiven.

If you do not own Carcassonne - Traders and Builders, this expansion is probably not a must have: half of the game mechanisms are not fully usable. Just collecting pineapples without the option of trading does not really add much value. In fact, the game will be turned into a game of luck even more. What remains is a few new interesting tile.

If played in combination with Carcassonne - Traders and Builders, however, the option of stealing merchandise from your fellow players makes it easier to collect one particular kind of merchandise (entiteling you to 10 bonus points - maybe even several times?). This adds a nice new game element without harming the game balance. It can also hit you hard if someone steals a valuable piece of merchandise from you. The bad-luck chap I am, this will probably happen to me all the time. Altogether, I think Fruit Traders is a good add-on for Traders and Builders that's worth the effort of tinkering the tiles...

Download
The game is available at BoardGameGeek http://www.bggfiles.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=11989 or at the authors website http://jhywu.tripod.com/FruitTrader.htm.