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Kristen McCarty
United States
Pennsylvania
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One of my favorite things about playing games are the pieces, the player figures, the dice, the meeples (oh how I love the meeples) and that all started with a simply wonderful game: Carcassonne.
Theme
Carcassonne is a beautiful, ancient city in France, famous for its medieval and Roman architecture. You are building the area around the city and sending out your followers on the roads, cities, farms, and monasteries in the area. You skill to place your followers in the best position will determine victory in Carcassonne.
Components
The game comes with 72 land tiles, 1 scoring track, and 40 followers (5 colors) and of course, a rule book. Depending on the version you buy you may find different types of components.
Most versions come with wooden meeples. (followers)
The 10th Anniversary special edition comes with cool acrylic meeples.
Playing the Game
After placing the starting tile with the different color back, players are ready to begin. On your turn all you do is draw a tile, place a tile, and choose to place or not place a follower. Simple, but strategic at the same time. If, when you place your tile a road, city or monastery is completed, they are scored.
Placing a Tile
The tiles fit together like a puzzle of sorts. The new tile must be place with at least one edge touching a previously placed tile and it also must match so that all field, city, or road segments on the new tile continue the road, city, or field segments of the old tile. It's very rare, but if you should draw a tile that can not legally be placed it may discarded. Other players are welcome to help the person placing the title.
After placing your tile you may deploy one follower. You must take the follower from your supply and you may only place it one the tile you just placed. But you do have many choices as to where to place the follower on the tile. You could place it on the road, in the city, on the monastery, or in the field. You can not place a follower on anything belonging to another player, no matter how far away.
Scoring
Roads: these are complete when both ends connect either to a city, monastery, crossing, or make a loop. You score one point for each road segment.
City: A city is complete when there are no gaps in the wall. You score two points for each tile in the city and an extra two points for each pennant
Monastery: When the monastery is completely surrounded by land tiles you earn 9 points.
After you score, you take your follower back and put it into your supply to use again. The only exception is the farm. They stay out and score at the end of the game.
Farms - you place a farmer on the green fields, make sure to put him on his side so you remember to not take him back into your supply. Farmers are bordered by roads, cities, and the edge of the tiles. The farmers supply completed cities and so score three points for three points for each completed city it supplies at the end of the game. If more than one player shares a city the players with the most farmers gets the points, otherwise they share the points.
Game End
The game ends when the last tile is placed. Players score points for farmers and incomplete cities, roads, and monasteries. The later score one point for each segment and in the city one extra point for the pennants.
Why I like this game...
This is a quick and easy game to play with awesome components. I enjoy the simple rules and deep thought involved in the game. As I play the game I feel I am building a map of the world and placing my people in its beautiful scenery. I also like the bit of risk / reward. Do I place my meeple in the city or do I wait, can I somehow place this tile to help me get a larger farm and connect to more cities, or do I keep the meeple and hope for a better draw next turn?
The other thing I like are all the great expansions you can get for this game. I think there are about 24 expansion, some big and some just extra tiles. These add more strategy and sometimes more chaos, but just he plain old version is fun.
This game had its 10th birthday this year, and is considered to be a classic. So it must be doing something right. I deficiently love this game and hope some of you are willing to try it.
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