Carcassonne

The box suggests it is suitable for age 10 and above but it certainly didn't bore any of the adults so there is no upper limit.

It can be played by 2-5 people. Playing with 4 we found it took about 45 minutes to complete a game.

The rules are simple but for once we found it was a game that the more we played it the more we enjoyed it. The fact that you turn over a tile so everyone can see it, and then decide where to place it, allows others to help or suggest alternative courses of play - so everyone can learn the game together as they play.

Wooden "people" markers can be placed on one of the four types of landscape (fields, cities, roads or cloisters) and these people become farmers, knights, thieves or monks respectively. Scoring is based on the size of city "owned" by your knight, length of road controlled by your thief and so on.

Our set included the "river expansion" which starts the same off with some additional tiles and makes the playing area less cramped, but you'll need to make plenty of space on the dining table once you get into it!

It wins perhaps the ultimate accolate in that it distracted us from the television for most of Christmas Day and everyone was keen to resume play on Boxing Day.


You'll never ger bored of this board game   December 8, 2004
48 out of 49 found this review helpful

A friend of mine introduced me to Carcassone last year and it's spread like wildfire amongst my family & friends. The basic premise is that players take it in turn to pull map tiles out of a bag and place them like a jigsaw so that features such as roads, rivers, fields and cities grow. Any unclaimed feaure can be claimed by placing one of your characters on the tile, and you get points for each completed feature. There's a bit more strategy to it than that, but the basic game is very accessible, playable after 5 minutes rules, and the expansions really add to your options so that you can play as complex or as simple rules as you like (or as time allows).

Typically a game lasts about an hour with 5 people, and I can't recommend it strongly enough. If you're considering buying any board game, you won't go far wrong with this one.


Carcassonne   December 7, 2006
Mr. G. D. Barnfather (UK)
33 out of 37 found this review helpful

Having already recommended this in my review for `Polarity' (check that one out by the way) thought it only proper if I wrote a bit about this one. Carcassonne had me hooked within 2 minutes. I remember it as a real turning point in my games playing life, the day I suppose when I realised that there was more, much more, out there than we normally have brought to our attention in the UK. I have since found out that Carcassonne won the German Game of the Year a few years back and a encourage anybody who enjoys it to try out other winners (`Niagara' and `Settlers of Catan' are my favourites).

Anyway, on to the game itself. At the beginning, you start with an empty table apart from 1 tile - take a look at the 2nd image which Amazon have and you'll see several of these tiles. The green areas are fields, the meandering white lines are roads, the yellow-brown areas are cities and the blues bits are the river (which is included in a small expansion for the game which comes free with it). The only other structure not shown in this image is a stand-alone building called a cloister. The rest of the tiles are then turned face down and mixed up. Each player gets a roughly equal stack to put in front of them - these tiles are communal, see below. Youngest player chooses who starts and play continues clockwise.

Each players turn proceeds thus:

1. Draw a tile, look at it, show it to the other players who can suggest placement.
2. Place the tile next to those on the table such that at least one of the sides is touching one of the other tiles. In order to do this the features of the adjacent tiles must be continued i.e. roads elongated, cities and fields expanded, river continued (see the image). Certain placements are illegal, for example a tile cannot be placed such that a road runs directly into the side of a field. On this last matter, the rule booklet shows exactly what I mean.
3. The player then MAY choose to place one of their wooden `followers' on THE TILE THEY JUST PLACED. A follower placed on a road becomes a thief, in a city they become a knight, on a cloister they become a monk and in a field they become a farmer.
4. If a road, city or cloister is complete, the points are then scored using the scoring track (see image). Fields are a special case scored at the end of the game.

At no point can a follower be placed on a tile if the area on which they are to be placed are has another follower in/on it. For example if I were to play a tile to elongate a road and a previous player already had someone on the road I could not place a thief. This holds true even if the existing follower on the board is one of my own. One of the very important tactics therefore becomes a placement of a follower on a tile which could in later turns become joined with a large city or road.

Anyway I haven't done this game justice - the rule booklet is a couple of pages and has pictures to illustrate what I have tried (badly) to explain above. Suffice to say, I love this game. It is so simple to learn that you can teach anyone. The strategy however keeps you coming back for more. The other good thing about it is the ability to stitch up other players with cunning tile placement - this means that players of differing skill levels can play against each other as the more experienced can then spend half their time trying to make each others lives difficult while the novices can quite merrily get on with it while getting used to the game. A classic.



One to return to again & again   June 2, 2007
Ms. J. Jacobs (UK)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

I love this game! I bought it to play with my kids, to alleviate the usual Cluedo & Monopoly sessions. I would always prefer Carcassonne. Why?
1) The playing pieces are pretty and I am quite happy just doing the layout.
2) So I'm not too bothered about winning, which pleases the kids!
3) Games don't go on for hours.
4) It's a really excellent game if there are only two of you. But it also works well with more.
5) It's different every time.
The only thing against it is that I find scoring the farms tricky. But who cares, the kids do the scoring & I'm happy to lose :-)



Addicted!   November 17, 2006
Amber (Durham, UK)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful

We were looking for a game to rival Settlers of Catan and in this game I think we may have found it...

As stated by others, the premis of the game is that you build a map of the cities, roads, cloisters and farms of Carcassonne by drawing and placing tiles. When you place a tile, you can also place one of your marker people (or meeples) on the tile to "own" particular features (a city, road, cloister or farm). When these fetures are completed the owner of the meeple scores points. Superficially, this may seem quite dry, but in practice it can be very strategic with players trying to take over particularly cities and farms that "belong" to others and prevent opponents from building.

However, the real strength of this game is the scalability and ease of play. It is a genuinely excellent 2-player game that scales well to more. Additionally, it is really easy to teach to others, since the rules are basically as stated above. Finally, if you like slightly heavier games (or really get into it), there are a number of expansions, which develop the basic game, make it last longer and add complexity. This expansion mechanism means that it is still easy to play a basic game with new players, while retaining the more complex game for more experienced users.

We are completely addicted and it gets full marks from us!


NOTE: This review refers to the original version of Carcassonne, but there are a number of spion off games such as "Hunters and Gatherers", "The Castle" and "The City". We only have experience of Hunters and Gatherers and the original flavour, which we prefer as we find it easier to see the features on the tiles and feel it is more versatile in its use of expansions. However, Hunters and Gatherers is better value for money in that it you get slightly more tiles and pieces and it is analogous (in terms of rules) to the original Carcassonne plus the first expansion, so is prefered by many people. We have played both though, and prefer the original, ideally with some of the expansions (probably Inns and Cathedrals, Traders and Builders and/or the Count).