"What's that game with these cute little figures?" "You mean meeples?" "Yes, I see them everywhere on the Geek!" "They are from Carcassonne."
Carcassonne is a tile-placement game in which the players draw and place a tile with a piece of southern French landscape on it. The tile might feature a city, a road, a cloister, grassland or some combination thereof, and it must be placed adjacent to tiles that have already been played, in such a way that cities are connected to cities, roads to roads, etcetera. Having placed a tile, the player can then decide to place one of his meeples on one of the areas on it: on the city as a knight, on the road as a robber, on a cloister as a monk, or on the grass as a farmer. When that area is complete, that meeple scores points for its owner.
During a game of Carcassonne, players are faced with decisions like: "Is it really worth putting my last meeple there?" or "Should I use this tile to expand my city, or should I place it near my opponent instead, giving him a hard time to complete his project and score points?" Since players place only one tile and have the option to place one meeple on it, turns proceed quickly even if it is a game full of options and possibilities.
A couple of homebrew mods. First is a replacement scoring track/start tile. We wanted to keep the scoring track in a neutral location, accessible to everyone. We decided to do that by putting it in the center of the table. :)
Second, The Annex, which consists of 6 semi-circular city sections (annexes.) One annex each should be placed on the scoring track at the 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, and 40 point spaces. This will be their respective purchase price. When placing a tile, a player may choose to purchase an annex in order to make that placement legal. He or she will subtract the appropriate number of points from his or her score. The player may choose to go into negative points.
Similar to a bridge, an annex can be used to create city space on a tile. The annex may only be placed on the...
A score keeping application I wrote that lives inside an Excel spreadsheet. Supports all expansions released thus far. You need either Excel 2007 or newer, or Excel 2003 with the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack. Macros need to be enabled and macro security set to medium.
For those of you who like to add up using pen and paper, here is a wipe clean scoresheet based on the box artwork.
Laminate before use, then mark scores as you wish with a dry wipe board marker.
Player names can be written above each of your coloured meeples.
With expansions the scoreboard may be too small. A face on a cube tells how many times you rounded the scoreboard. Works with the standard 50 points scoreboard as well as with other scoreboards. Start at the abbey and follow the road. A small meeple means one and a large meeple means two rounds on the scoreboard. There are six cubes, one for each color.
Carcassonne expansion selection card images, for all expansions up to June 2011 (e.g., includes Phantom & Anniversary edition tiles).
Can be used to randomly select a certain subset of expansion components for each game of Carcassonne. Each card also includes a rules overview for the component for quick reference.
Each "independent" component of an expansion has been represented with a card. So for example, for Inns & Cathedrals the tiles have one card and the Big Meeple has another. Just choose one representative card if you'd like to choose between complete expansions.
Contains 28 card images and one background image, all as PNG files.