Fun away from the computer! (Rio Grande Games Carcassonne)

Member Name: mizmir

Product:	Rio Grande Games Carcassonne
Date:	06/01/09 (33 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun, addictive, fast moving

Disadvantages: None

This is an old style game, played face to face round a table. No fancy graphics, no consoles, no avatars. Perhaps not the most promising idea for family entertainment in a digital age. Yet Carcassonne is actually strangely compelling - our family received it for Christmas and, after the first game, didn't want to stop playing.

Carcassonne is a game of strategy. The concept is simple. The idea is to build up a "map" of a medieval region showing fields, roads, cities and cloisters, by placing tiles adjacent to each other. If you complete a city, road or cloister, and have claimed it by placing one of your followers on it, you win points. You can also win points by claiming the farms around the cities which are scored at the end of the game by the number of completed cities they are adjacent to. Followers are knights (within cities), thieves (on roads), priests (in cloisters) and farmers (on fields) and each player only has 7 for the game so part of the skill is to decide when and where to place them to get the most points.

The game starts with a particular tile being placed on the table. Each player then places a tile from the deck and places it so it adjoins one of the existing tiles, so that all elements on the growing map are continued. Once a player has placed a tile, s/he has the option to place one of their followers on the tile. As the map builds up, players have to make strategic decisions about how to use their followers and place their tiles to maximise their points. These are complicated by the fact that farms are only scored at the end of the game (when all tiles have been placed) so players have to judge how profitable their farms might become.

It is a simple game but quite addictive and lots of fun. Games are fast moving and can be finished in under an hour. But I bet you can't play just once....

Summary: Strategy game for all the family