Catalogue

Carcassonne

A clever tile-laying game. The southern French city of Carcassonne is famous for its unique Roman and Medieval fortifications. The players develop the area around Carcassonne and deploy their followers on the roads, in the cities, in the cloisters, and in the fields. The skill of the players to develop the area will determine who is victorious. Includes The River expansion.

Wizardopoly say: Carcassonne is made up of 40 little people, eight each of five colours (known affectionately as Meeples) and 72 square land tiles, each of which shows a little part of the map of Carcassonne, with its roads, cities and fields. During game play each player takes it in turns to take a random land tile and add it to the map of Carcassonne which gets built up during the game. Tiles must be added so that their edges match up with whatever has been put down before (city edges match other city edges, fields match fields and roads run into roads). The skill of the game comes with the placing of Meeples!

Each player takes eight Meeples of one colour, and when they play a tile - depending on what is on the tile - they can put one of the little figures either in the green field area, in the city coloured area or on the road (unless there is another Meeple already on that part of an adjoinoing tile). During the game any road can be completed if both ends of it finish in a town or at a junction, and a city can be completed if the city wall around it joins up. When this happens the city or road is scored and the player whose Meeple is in that town or road is awarded points. In addition the player gets their Meeple back to use again. Meeples placed on green areas become farmers and stay in place until the end of the game, when they can score big points! Oh, and there are monasteries too: place a Meeple on a monastery tile and you get it back when it is surrounded by tiles, and you get 9 points.

Carcassonne is a brilliant game which can be enjoyed by anyone. Arguabley the perfect introductory game (this and Ticket to Ride, and Alhambra...and RoboRally...and Settlers of Catan...). What's more, there's a raft of expansions for it if you want a variation on the original!