Based on an actual Southern French city, the carcassonne board game involves a good amount of tile placement where players try to piece together the city’s landscape. The piecing together is done through matching the various roads cities field and monastery segments that need to go together to complete the landscape. Once this is done, players proceed to place followers on those pieces of land (called meeples), and they become farmers, thieves, knights or monks that help in the development of the land in one way or another. Sounds interesting? Get to the end of this Carcassonne review and find out whether or not it deserves a spot on the list of the best board games to play.
Why We Like It – Carcassonne
Like most board games (think Catan Studios Cantan2017), Carcassonne requires a decent amount of strategizing, but we still wouldn’t consider it to be as difficult to play. All you figure out is which tiles match with which other ones, and complete more tiles than your partners can to win the game.
- Easy to learn
- Fun to play
- Quick gameplay sessions
- Somewhat difficult scoring system
Performance
Luckily for most people, playing Carcassonne is quite easy – it’s easier than playing Catan the Board Game. But, if you want something more challenging for adults, check out Betrayal At House On The Hill. The game begins with one starting tile, with the remaining tiles having been mixed and placed on the table face down. Players must also each take up 8 meeples, and once that is done, the first player proceeds by picking a tile that is most likely to match the tile on the table as a continuation of a road, a green farmland or a medieval city. Also during a player’s turn, there’s the option to deploy a follower, who goes ahead to become a farmer, knight, thief or monk. Once you place one meeple on a tile, no other player can place another meeple on it, or the tile that connects to it. They will remain there until there’s a completed city or road.
Design
Carcassonne players have up to 70 land tiles that they have to figure out how to place, so it helps a lot that the tiles are of high quality and are well detailed, similar to what you’ll also find with the Plan Games Azul Board Game. If you flip the tiles over, you’ll also notice that they’re colored differently from the top, and this makes it quite easy to figure out which one of them is the starting tile. Also included in the game’s packaging is a rule book, a score board and the follower pieces.
Value
Unlike the Ticket to Ride board game, new players might find it a bit difficult to figure out how to score points in this Carcassonne board game, but the scoring system is quite simple once you wrap your head around it. Each player receives points per tile that’s used to complete a road, and to form a completed city, players have to surround the segment by a city wall. In addition to that, every player that has the majority of followers in a city gets 9 points, and every time a segment is completed, you get to pull your meeple back to your collection. The end of the game is signified by the last tile being played, and once this happens, all the uncompleted segments are counted and farm values established. Whoever has the victory points is then declared the winner.
Carcassonne Wrap Up
Now that we’ve review Carcassonne for you, you should have a pretty good idea of what to expect when you get it, as well as how the game is played. Go ahead and make your order for it on Amazon, and as you do, make sure to go through the customer reviews that have been left by other buyers.
