Carcassonne () is a tile-based Eurogame for two to five players, designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede and published in 2000 by Hans im Glück in German and by Rio Grande Games (until 2012) and Z-Man Games (currently) in English. It received the Spiel des Jahres and the Deutscher Spiele Preis awards in 2001.
It is named after the medieval fortified town of Carcassonne in southern France, famed for its city walls. The game has spawned many expansions and spin-offs, and several PC, console, and mobile versions. A new edition, with updated artwork on the tiles and the box, was released in 2014.
Gameplay
The game board is a medieval landscape built by the players as the game progresses. The game starts with a single specific terrain tile face up and 71 others shuffled face down for the players to draw from. Each player's turn consists of three distinct phases:
Draw and place a terrain tile Station a follower on the newly placed tile (optional) Score completed feature(s) (if relevant)
To start each turn, a player draws a new terrain tile and places it adjacent to tiles that are already face up. The new tile must be placed in a way that extends terrain features on the tiles it touches: roads must connect to roads, fields to fields, and cities to cities. Connections are made across adjacent edges only; corners do not connect. A cloister tile may be placed adjacent to another cloister tile, as there are no connecting features. If the newly drawn tile cannot be placed anywhere legally, the players may choose to remove the tile from the game, or return it to the draw pile.
After placing each newly drawn tile, the placing player may opt to station a marker (called a "follower" or "meeple") on a terrain feature (i.e., a road, city, cloister, or field) of that newly placed tile to claim control of it. However, if the feature is connected to a feature already claimed by another player, the follower cannot be stationed on that feature. When stationing a follower, the marker is placed upright on the feature to claim that feature, except for a field, where the follower is laid down instead to emphasize that fields are not scored until the end of the game; the follower's role depends on the feature claimed, changing from thief/highwayman (road) to knight (city), monk (cloister or monastery), or farmer (field). It is possible for terrain features to become "shared" by opposing players when tile(s) are placed in subsequent turns that connect previously unconnected features. For example, two separate fields (each with a follower/farmer) can become connected into a single field subsequently by a newly placed terrain tile.
If any feature (except a field) is completed during a player's turn, the score for the completed feature is counted for the player that controls that feature; after scoring, the controlling "meeple" is removed from the board and returned to the player's stock. Each player has eight followers; since one is used to keep track of the player's score, only seven can be in play at any moment.
The game ends when the last tile has been placed. At that time, all incomplete features (including fields) score points for the players with the most followers on them. The player with the most points wins the game.
Scoring
During each player's turn, completed cities, cloisters, and roads (but not fields) are scored before that player's turn ends. A player may complete a feature by drawing and placing a tile, claim it by stationing a follower on the newly placed tile, and receive the score for completing it all in the same turn, but the sequence of that turn means the player cannot redeploy the follower after it is returned to their stock. The stationing phase of the turn was completed by claiming the completed feature.
Cities are completed when they contain no unfinished edges from which they may be expanded, roads are similarly completed when they have closed both ends or form a loop, and cloisters are completed when surrounded by eight tiles. Points are awarded to the players with the most followers in a feature. If there is a tie for the most followers in any given feature, all of the tied players are awarded the full number of points. Once a city, cloister, or road feature is scored, all of the followers in that feature are returned to their owners. In general (see table), points are awarded for the number of tiles covered by a feature; a completed cloister scores nine points for the cloister plus eight neighboring tiles.
At the end of the game, when there are no tiles remaining, fields and all other claimed but incomplete features are scored. The score of each field is based on the number of completed cities that field touches. It is possible for a field to be completely enclosed by a road without touching any completed cities, or a field can touch only incomplete cities, in which case those fields will score no points.
Feature Completed during play Game end City 2 points per tile + 2 points per pennant 1 point per tile + 1 point per pennant Road 1 point per tile Cloister 1 point + 1 point for each of the surrounding tiles Fields (Not scored) 3 points for each completed city bordering the field.
Older editions There are two older editions of Carcassonne, differing in scoring of cities and fields. The current scoring rules were introduced in the German version in 2004, but until 2008, the first edition scoring rules were still included with the English releases of Carcassonne. Third edition rules are now included with all editions (including the Xbox 360 and travel versions), and are assumed by all expansions in all languages.
In the first and second editions of the game, completed cities covering just two tiles scored two points (one per tile) and one extra point for every pennant that resides in the city. This exception is removed from the third edition, in which there is no difference between "small" two-tile cities and cities of larger size.
The greatest divergence in scoring rules between the editions of Carcassonne is in scoring for fields. In the first edition, fields were considered from the point of view of the cities. The player(s) with the greatest number of farmer/followers adjacent to a city were awarded four points for that city. Thus, followers from different fields contributed to the scoring for a city, and followers on a field may contribute to the scoring for multiple cities. The second edition considered different fields separately – for each field, the players with the greatest number of followers in a field scored three points for each city adjacent to the field, although points were only scored once for any given city. The third edition removes these exceptions and brings field scoring in line with the scoring of other features.
Examples +In-turn completion scoring examples Illustration Feature Score Notes A B C Road 3 Road spans three tiles [A1]—[B1]—[C1] (three points); the road terminates in villages at both ends, [A1] and [C1]. Because corners do not connect, there are two distinct incomplete cities on the north edges of [B1] and [C1], respectively. In addition, there are four fields: West half of [A1] NE corner of [A1], connected to N half of [B1] and N half of [C1] SE corner of [A1], connected to S half of [B1] and SW corner of [C1] SE corner of [C1] 1 A B C City 14 The completed city covers five tiles at [C1]*[A2]*[B2]*[C2]*[B3] = ten points; it encloses two pennants at [B2] and [C2] = four points. There are six fields in this example, with the largest that touches the completed city worth three points or more, depending on whether the incomplete city on the W edge of [A3] is completed by the end of the game. 1 2 3 A B C Cloister 9 The cloister at [B2] (one point) is surrounded by eight tiles (eight points). Also note there is a completed road [A2]—[B2] between the incomplete city [A1]*[A2]*[A3] and the cloister [B2] worth two points. This example has five fields and three incomplete cities. 1 2 3
+Sample game #1 in progress (5×5) A B C D E 1 2 3 4 5 Consider the sample game #1 in progress on the 5×5 board shown; there are four complete cities: [B1]*[C1]*[C2] scoring eight points (three tiles plus one pennant) and three two-tile, four-point cities [C3]*[D3], [D3]*[E3], and [C4]*[C5]. There are two complete roads, scoring two points each: [A2]—[B2] and [B1]—[B2].
The largest field, bounded on the north by the roads in [A2]—[B2]—[C2], touches the two complete cities [C3]*[D3] and [C4]*[C5] and would score six points at the end of the game, more if the incomplete cities at [A2] and [C4]*[D4] are completed . In addition, the field could be extended by an appropriate piece in [D2] to touch the complete city [D3]*[E3].
+Sample game #2 (6×10) A B C D E F G H I J 1 2 3 4 5 6
Consider sample game #2 on the 6×10 board. In this example, followers are stationed on the board according to the capital first letter of the color name: "R"ed, "Y"ellow, "G"reen, "B"lue, and "P"urple, where purple is substituted for "B"lack to avoid confusion with blue.
There are three completed cities at [C2]*[D2]*[C3]*[D3], [F1]*[E2]*[F2]*[F3] and [H2]*[I2]. It is not possible to complete the city at [G4]*[G5]*[G6]; by examination of the available tiles, there is no tile that will fit in [H5] to continue all four edges, which also means the city in [H6] cannot be completed.
Similarly, because any piece that can be placed in [E1] must continue the three bordering edges, that piece in [E1] will connect the two fields that are currently claimed by the green farmer in [G1] and the red farmers in [C2] and [D2] alongside the yellow farmers in [H4], [H1], and [J3]. If no one else adds a farmer, yellow would claim the field by having the most followers in that merged field. The other shared-field situation is the red farmer in [D4] sharing a field with one blue farmer in [G5]. However, if a tile is played at [F6], it will connect to the field to the southeast; even though blue would have two farmers in the merged field, including the farmer in [G6], and would control the merged field, that field still does not touch any completed cities and would score no points unless the city at [C6]*[D6]*[E6] is completed.
There are two fields that have been completed and enclosed by loop roads in [I1]+[I2]+[J2]+[J1] and [C3]+[D3]+[E3]+[F3]+[F4]+[E4]+[D4]+[C4]. Neither of these fields touch any completed cities and so they would each score zero points. The Green farmer in [C5] is at risk of being enclosed in a loop and cut off from any completed cities.
The three cloisters at [H3], [E5], and [F5] include stationed monks because they are not completely surrounded by eight tiles; the two cloisters that are surrounded, at [G3] and [D5], are vacant because the claiming player(s) have scored those points. A tile played at [F6] would complete the surroundings for the blue monks at [E5] and [F5], scoring eighteen points for those followers.