Carcassonne

Many of you may already know I love to play board games. I meet up with a group of guys every Monday to play our board games. I did a blog on Settlers of Catan Back in August of last year; witch was my obsession at the time. Later I stared playing Dreamblade witch is a Miniature based game that has some of the same mechanics as chess. Now the new came I like to play is Carcassonne.

Carcassonne is a heavily fortified French medieval town in the south of France. Carcassonne the board game is a tile-based German-style board game for two to six players. 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 facing up. The new tile must be placed in a way that extends features on the tiles it, (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 piece on that tile. The follower can only be placed on the just-placed tile, and must be placed in a specific feature. A follower claims ownership of one terrain feature—road, field, city, or cloister—and may not be placed on a feature already claimed by another player's follower. However, it is possible for terrain features to become shared after the further placement of tiles. For example, two field tiles which each have a follower can become connected into a single field by another terrain tile.

The game ends when the last tile has been placed. At that time all features (including fields) score points for the players with the most followers in them. The player with the most points wins the game.

The game has a few expansions that change the way the came is played in subtle ways. I bought the Carcassonne Big Box; witch combines the base set, The River, Inns and Cathedrals, Traders and Builders, The Princess and the Dragon and The Tower.

The best part of the game is that it is simple enough from Rodney and David (who are both 6) to play yet complex enough for adults to enjoy as well.