Carcassonne (board game)

Carcassonne is a German-style board game, invented by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede, for two to five players. It received the Spiel des Jahres award in 2001. It is named after the medieval town of Carcassonne in southern France famed for its city walls.

Table of contents

1 Game Play
2 Game Interest
3 Expansions and Spinoffs

Game Play

The game board is a medieval landscape built by the players as the game progresses. The game starts with a single terrain tile face up and 71 others shuffled face down for the players to draw from. On each turn a player draws a new terrain tile and places it adjacent to tiles that are already face up. The new tile must be placed in a way that matches, i.e. roads must connect to roads, fields to fields, and city walls to city walls.

After placing the new tile, the placing player may opt to station a follower on that tile. The followers never move, and can never be stationed anywhere except on the tile just placed. A follower claims ownership of one terrain feature (road, field, city, or cloister), and may not be placed on a feature already claimed by a different follower. However, it is possible for terrain features to become shared after the further placement of tiles. For example, two disjoint fields which each have a follower can become connected into a single field by a later terrain tile, after which the united field is shared.

When a terrain feature is completed, the followers claiming that feature earn points for the owning players, and are returned to those players to be stationed again later. For example, when a city wall forms a closed loop, the city is complete, and the player with the most followers in the city scores points based on the size of the city. If two or more players tie for the most followers, they all score the points. The followers are then returned to the owning players.

The game ends when the last tile has been placed. At that time all uncompleted terrain features score points for the players who have followers stationed on them, and whoever has the most points wins.

Game Interest

Carcassonne is an excellent family game, because the rules are simple, no one is eliminated, and the play is fast. A typical game takes only 45 minutes to play. On the other hand, it is not a children's game characterized by shallow strategies and lots of luck. Strategic points include:

Judiciously conserving followers, particularly in games with fewer players. Each player has only seven followers; once they are all stationed he can't claim any more features until one is returned. Thus it is sometimes better not to station a follower at all, or to station one that scores only a couple of points but will be returned quickly.
Attempting to share lucrative features. For example, a player may place a tile which creates a short new road, station a follower on that new road, and then place later tiles to connect his road to another player's long and valuable road.
Preventing the sharing of one's features. Sometimes it pays to close off one's own features for a smaller number of points than to allow another player to join the fun. However, one should not be unthinkingly selfish: if another player is sharing your city then he will be working with you to make it score more points.
Playing farmers at the right time. Farmers (i.e. followers in fields) have the potential to score more points than any other type of follower. The disadvantage of farmers is that they are never returned to a player during a game. They only score points at the end. One must judge whether the potentially large payoff at the end of the game is worth having one follower fewer to work with in the middle of the game.
Being aware of who is helped and hurt by each play. Most tile placements will directly or indirectly add points to the scores of other players. Advanced players don't simply play to maximize their own score, they also look to hinder the other players at the same time.

Expansions and Spinoffs

The game has spawned a number of expansions, such as

The River Expansion (was originally a free expansion, but now is included in the base game)
Carcassonne: Inns and Cathedrals (originally known as Carcassonne: the Expansion - adds pieces for a sixth player, and adds some new tiles)
Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers (a free-standing game - involves the building of forests, rivers and wildlife rather than cities and roads)
Carcassonne: Traders and Builders (an expansion to the base game - additional tile types and strategic possibilities)