Review: Circleville Boardgaming Group
Carcassonne, a tile-laying game, the winner of the WORLD’S BEST BOARDGAME in 2001, gets its name from a walled city in Southern France.
A tile-laying game is similar to that of a puzzle. Each turn a player will draw a tile and then place the tile on the ever enlarging game surface matching the features on the tile. Where you place the piece and where you place your resources determine your score and eventually the winner once all tiles have been played. The tiles have features on them such as roads, cities, farms, and monasteries. Your resources are workers called MEEPLES, and are placed on the feature of the tile you just placed, to control the roads, cities, farms and monasteries you are constructing. Those that build the longest roads, the biggest cities, and largest farms and Monasteries will garner more points and thus win the game.
Advertisement - Story continues below
Request advertising info. View All.
Simple, build a map, control the biggest features and win! BUT, with everyone building around you, often cutting off your roads, making it hard to complete your cities and other features the game requires a good bit of strategy in your placement of both the tiles and MEEPLES. Each person has a limited number of workers, and if a road, city or monastery does not get completed – you do not get your worker back to place again to garner more points. So placing them require thought and purpose.
Controlling farms, feeding the cities are often large point getters, but the MEEPLES used are not returned to you until the game is over, so questions about scoring many times in small amounts or once with a big amount come into play. Also, watch out, your opponent can be sneaky and maybe build into your city or road and share the points or even take it over leaving you with nothing!
The basic CARCASSONE game, comes with 72 tiles and 5 sets of 8 MEEPLES and can be played with 2 to 5 players and completed in an hour or less once the rules are learned and how many players are playing. There are a number of expansion sets large and small that add many new rules, tiles and MEEPLES and you then can be building a puzzle map over your entire dining room table and be playing all night long!
Carcassonne, a modern game is a must that deserves to be in everyone’s collection.
Be sure to visit the Circleville Boardgaming Group Facebook page to keep up with all the events they have.
