Board game review: Carcassonne

What is it?
Carcassonne is an award winning table-top board game published by Rio Grande Games where 2 to 5 players lay down square tiles to build up a large map made up of roads, rivers, walled cities and fields.  By strategic placement of pieces, or meeples as they are known, points are scored for every city, road and farm that is completed.

Carcassonne is classed as a European or German-style board game.  This type of game tends to favour themes of economy over combat and there is more emphasis on skill and strategy than luck.  Also, all the players tend to remain in the game until the very end which for a family board game, is an excellent idea. 

What's in the box?

The game consists of 72 landscape tiles each measuring 1.5 inch square, 40 meeples in various colours, a score track board and a colourful, easy-to-read instruction guide.  The rules stretch to four A4 pages of large text with lots of pictures explaining various scenarios encountered within the game.  The tiles and score track are thick-stock card that will stand up to many hours of gameplay.  The pieces, or meeples, are wooden and are of a cute style, as employed by many games of this nature.

In play

Carcassonne is a very gentle game and the rules are relatively easy.  Expect to play three or four games before the rules become second nature and strategies and tactics become apparent.  When placing tiles, the features on the tile must match up against what is already on the board.  For example, a tile with part of a walled city must match up to an existing wall, roads must attach to an existing road etc.  Meeples are placed onto the various features but not where a meeple already exists.

A city is completed when the outer wall circles the city without a break.  2 points are scored for every tile making up a town so it pays to make the largest town you can.  While a meeple can't be placed in a feature that is already occupied by another player, through judicious placing of tiles, it is possible to sneak into an existing feature and to share the points.  When a town or castle is completed, the meeple is then returned to the player and that feature can't be used again.

Roads are completed when a blocking tile such as a city wall or road junction is placed at both ends.  1 point is scored for each road tile.  When the road is completed, the meeple is returned to the player and the road can't be occupied by any player for the remainder of the game.

Cloisters are completed when they are completely surrounded by tiles.  With a point per tile, a completed cloister is worth a total of 9 points.  Again, the meeple is returned to the player.

Farms are scored differently.  By placing a meeple on a field, any *completed* cities bordering the fields are worth 3 points.  These points are only scored at the end of the game so the meeple has to remain in the field for the whole duration and they aren't returned to the player.

At the end of the game, points are scored for meeples occupying incomplete features as well.  In the case of cities, this is reduced to 1 point per tile but the other features remain the same.  The game is finished when all the landscape tiles have been used up.

The stated game time is 45 minutes but in our experience, games can last up to an hour and a half.  Maybe that's our inexperience and it will improve in time?

Strengths:

• Easy rules to understand.
• Every game is different and a completed game board looks great with very colourful and detailed artwork.
• With a limited amount of meeples, there is a decent element of strategic thinking involved.  While turning over each tile is random, placing them to best effect in conjunction with your limited resources is the skill and strategy needed.
• With all players remaining in the game until the end, it's very family friendly.
• The scoring system allows games to be close and it's hard to pick out a winner until the very end.
• Encourages simple arithmetic in younger players.
• Quality components

Weaknesses:

• The farms are quite complicated to score, especially for younger players.
• It's easy to knock the tiles therefore dislodging the whole game board.  Keep your elbows together.
• Needs a large table or plenty of floor space once the map starts to grow.
• The link to Carcassonne, the REAL walled town in France is tenuous at best.  For those expecting a little history lesson in with their gaming will be short-changed in that regard.
• Takes longer than the anticipated 45 minutes.

Conclusion

Carcassonne is a fun game for all the family to play and easy to understand.  The artwork is well done, of a high-quality and is a lovely-looking game to boot.  I would say it appeals to all age groups and anyone from the age of 7 upwards would enjoy playing.  It obviously takes a few games to understand fully the game mechanics, develop strategies and know the best options for your followers but it's all good fun.  Carcassonne is highly recommended and a good introduction to alternative board games if you've only ever experienced Scrabble or Monopoly before.

Board game review: Carcassonne Princess and the Dragon

What is it?

Carcassonne Princess and The Dragon is an expansion set for the Carcassonne board game, a clever tile-laying game where 2-5 players build up a map of roads, fields and cities by connecting tiles together to form bigger features.  By strategically placing followers, or meeples as they are known, onto these landscape features, victory points are scored.  The bigger the landscape feature, the more points are scored.

Who will enjoy this game?

Obviously, this is an expansion and as such, the original game is required before-hand.  Carcassonne, the board game in general, is very much geared towards a fun, family-orientated game and the rules are relatively easy to pick up.  Euro or German style games such as Carcassonne place the emphasis and theme towards economy and area control as opposed to combat and luck.  Players tend not to be eliminated, rather they stay in the game until the end, allowing for a high level of player interaction.  More importantly, family members aren't left out because they've been knocked out of the game early. 

What's in the box?

The Princess and The Dragon expansion contains a number of new landscape tiles with various features pertaining to the expansion on them, a wooden Princess piece, a wooden Dragon piece and an A5 double-sided sheet of rules.  As with all Rio Grande games, the components themselves are of a very high quality.  The tiles are printed on very thick card and stand up well to repeated play.  The wooden pieces are in the typical meeple style and are also thick and chunky.

How do you play it?

The Princess and The Dragon expansion adds an element of fantasy to the normally grounded-in-history Carcassonne game.  This is not a bad thing but could put off the more traditional games players.  There are several new game mechanics added to the original game with this expansion, namely the Dragon that moves around the map, removing meeples back to their respective owners and the Princess, who provides shelter from the Dragons fiery breath.

The Dragon starts the game on a volcano tile.  If another volcano tile is drawn by a player, it will immediately fly to wherever that tile is placed.  If a tile with a movement icon is drawn, the dragon will move around the board, throwing meeples back to their respective owners. 

There is a restriction on its movement however. It can only move 6 squares, horizontally or vertically only and it can't revisit a square it has already occupied on this movement.  Each square it moves, the responsibility for the move transfers to each player in turn until it can't move anymore.  Any meeples it encounters are returned to their respective owners.  Moving the dragon around is fun and calls for a little forward thinking when it comes to your turn to move it.  You can try and steer it into a cul-de-sac, away from your own players or move it towards your opposition. 

The Princess acts as a protector for a player as the Dragon can't move onto a tile occupied by the Princess.  Players can take control of the Princess at the start of their turn.  An extra point is accrued for the player who is being guarded by the Princess at the start of his or her turn.

To counter-act the effect of removing meeples from incomplete landscape features, there is also a portal tile that allows a player to place a meeple onto any previously incomplete and uninhabited feature, a significant rule change over the original game.  In addition, there are Princess tiles that allow a player to kick an opposing knight out of an incomplete city. 

Does it work?

In play, the Princess and The Dragon expansion calls for new strategical thinking and ramps up the tension, especially when the dragon is moving round the board, closing in on ones unprotected meeples.  The deliberate placing of a volcano tile near an opposing players settlement is also good fun. 

A drawback was remembering to score the extra point on each turn for possession of the Princess piece.  Trying to remember even to claim the Princess piece is a feat in itself.  While there is a small element of luck in the base Carcassonne game, especially when trying to draw just the right-shaped tile to complete a large city for example, in this expansion, if you don't draw any portal or Princess tiles, you're almost out of the running, meaning luck seems to play a bigger part than it originally does.

As with most (if not all) of the Carcassonne expansion packs, they can be combined with other expansions in the range to create one great big mega mega large game.  Just make sure you have the floor space.

Conclusion

Saying all that, it's still a fun addition to the series, my ten year old daughter in particular loves it.  The rule for the extra point seems to be one rule too far but is quite easily ignored.  It does extend the game time from 60 minutes to around 90, mainly because of the extra tiles and occasional rule lookup.  It's a worthy addition to an excellent board-game series.

Priced around £15 and published by Rio Grande Games, The Princess and The Dragon can be bought at any good board-game stockist.  The Carcassonne board game series contains elements of arithmetic, strategic and forward thinking and good old gamesmanship.

Board game review: Carcassonne, The Tower Expansion

What is it?

Carcassonne Tower Expansion is an add-on for the Carcassonne base game.  Carcassonne is a clever tile-laying game where 2-5 players build up a map of cities, roads, fields and rivers.  With strategic placement of followers on these landscape features, points are scored.

Who will enjoy this game?

Being an expansion, The Tower requires the original Carcassonne board to play.  The Carcassonne gaming system is a fun, family-orientated game and the rules are easy to pick up.  It's known as a Euro or German style game where the theme and emphasis is towards economy and area control as opposed to combat and luck.  In a lot of Euro games, players tend not to be eliminated and stay in the game until the end, allowing for a high level of player interaction but more importantly, no family members feeling left out because they've been knocked out of the game early.  Also, in most games of Carcasonne, the true winner is not determined until the final points tally.

What's in the box?

The Tower Expansion, as the name suggests, is an expansion to the original game.  It consists of 18 extra landscape tiles with nicely-drawn tower foundations, 30 wooden tower pieces, a thick-stock cardboard *actual* tower, around 10 inches or so high, that acts as a handy container to pull out tiles for the game and finally, an A5 double-sided rules sheet.  The extra tiles can be used as per normal ones should you wish to eskew these expanded rules (but why would you want to?).  The quality is excellent, as is to be expected of Rio Grande games, and the components stand up well to many repeated plays.  The tower is pre-constructed so no glueing or pushing together pieces of card.

What does the expansion do?

The Tower Expansion introduces a new element of strategy by allowing players to build towers that 'capture' opponent pieces within a pre-described area of influence.  As the tower grows higher, so does the area of influence it exerts.  Tower pieces can only be placed on landscape tiles with one of the new tower icons on them but a tower can be expanded anywhere on the board, icon permitting, and not only on the tile just played.  Players can cap a tower by permanently placing a follower, or meeple as they are known, on top of a tower thus preventing further expansion.  Once an opponents piece is captured, they can be bought out of captivity in exchange for three victory points or a straight swap should each player hold another players piece. 

The *actual* tower as supplied in the expansion doesn't add anything at all to the game except as a place for all the tiles to be stored and drawn out easily. 

Most (if not all) of the expansions within the Carcassonne game system can be combined to make a really really big game.  I suggest renting out an aircraft hangar should you wish to do that.

More strategy please

As Carcassonne is concerned with making the most of limited resources i.e. placing followers onto scoring features such as cities, roads and farms, so to have a follower imprisoned can be a large factor in the final scoreboard.  More care is needed when placing meeple onto the board as another player could easily take over a tower and capture your piece.  Conversely, capping a tower will protect your meeple from capture but it means you have one less resource to utililize for those all important feature scores (capped towers don't score any points).

The rules are fairly clear and concise although we did have a slight discrepancy that we had trouble resolving.  When a tower is capped, does it simply stop same-coloured meeples within its area of influence being taken prisoner or does it also stop other players from placing tiles and resources nearby too?  We played it so we could place resources without being penalized even though it seemed strange to do so. 

For example, there was a long road leading up to a large capped tower and placing a thief on the road seemed strange considering the tower is supposed to be providing protection.  It didn't explicitly say in the rules we couldn't do that so that's how we played it.  Conversely, by not allowing players to place tiles in the blank areas, the map could have quite easily become disjointed and imbalanced.

Conclusion

The Tower Expansion is an interesting, well-made addition to the Carcassonne base game and offers a new strategic element.  The tower pieces themselves pleasingly add height and an extra dimension to a normally flat game map.  The large tower-shaped cardboard piece holder seems a little gimmicky as it doesn't add anything to the game but in practice, it's actually really useful by allowing tiles to be pulled out with ease, keeps the game table clutter free and provides an easy-storage facility when not in play.  All in all, a great buy and an enjoyable addition to the Carcassonne series.

Bought for 19.99 from Travelling Man in York but can be bought in any good games store.  I recently saw Carcassonne being sold in Waterstones - a great coup for Rio Grande and can only result in more people trying out these fabulous games.  Expected playing time as stated on the box is 60 minutes but in practice, account for 90 minutes.  The game is suitable (and fun!) for all ages from 8+.  It has elements of arithmetic, forward-planning and gamesmanship.

PS

If your only experience of board games is with Monopoly, Cluedo and the odd game of Scrabble, I urge you to try out games such as Carcassonne.  There is a whole sub-culture waiting to be explored when it comes to board games and the depth of these games goes way beyond anything produced by Hasbro or Mattel.