Carcassonne

As last Saturday’s D&D game was approaching, I came to the realization that I was not going to have an adventure ready. This has happened to me once or twice before and generally the game is just called off. This gives me an extra week to plan out an adventure. This weekend I didn’t want to do that. I hated the idea of my group going all week looking forward to a great game, only to find out at the last-minute there wouldn’t be one ready for them. I ended up finding a compromise in the form of Carcassonne.

Carcassonne is a game I have read a lot about on the Internet. I have only seen positive reviews about this game. Things like that it’s easy to learn and play as well as it has lots of replay ability. I figured that was enough for me to give it a shot. Friday after work I went down to my local book store and picked up Carcassonne and brought it home.

Amazon states:

The Carcassonne is a clever tile-laying game. The southern French city of Carcassonne is famous for its unique roman and medieval fortifications. The players develop the area around Carcassonne and deploy their followers on the roads, in the cities, in the cloisters, and in the fields. The skill of the players to develop the area will determine who is victorious. The game is for ages 8 and up and 2 to 5 players.

When Saturday came my gaming group of friends came over we took out Carcassonne and proceeded to learn how to play it. After ten minutes of reading the directions we were ready to play.

Like the Amazon description states “The players develop the area around Carcassonne and deploy their followers on the roads, in the cities, in the cloisters, and in the fields”. What they are not saying is that deploying your followers is how you get points and how lay out the tiles can be very competitive.

I am happy to report that I have nothing negative to say about this game. It was truly worth every penny and has tons of replay ability packed inside.

If you’re looking for an easy to learn, and fun to play game this is it.

7 comments

comments user
Mark

Bridget and I play this game all the time. It's a fantastic game.

comments user
Youseph

@Mark,

Glad to hear it! I was getting sick of buying board games and only playing them once. This was my first purchas after having read a lot of reviews and it was worth the time and research.

Apples to Apples is another really good one we play a lot of.

comments user
Thomas C

This is a great game – I would also recommend Ticket to Ride if you enjoyed Carcassonne. Both are favorites around our house.

comments user
Youseph

@Thomas – Thanks! Will have to check it out.

comments user
Sven

Great choice! Carcassonne is a really good game. I haven't played it for years but I played it literally hundreds of times when it came out. Another great thing about this game is, that it scales pretty well for any number of players (2-5).

I always fantasized of using the map created during a game of Carcassonne as the basis for the map of an RPG-Campaign. 😛

Oh, and listen to Thomas: Here's another vote for Ticket to Ride. This ones also very neat. Personally I prefer TtR: Europe because of a few rules-tweaks in that version.