Carcassonne Board Game

Product Information

This dilemma is had by all who play Carcassonne and it is what makes this game so fiendishly fun. While the artwork and the general theme may be quaint and friendly, it is you, the player, who can turn that image around and become rather militant in your tile placing antics! Sometimes, you might get a tile that isn’t of much use to you. All the roads have highwaymen on them. Your city tile doesn’t fit in any legal spots. Don’t worry, because there’s always a get-out clause. And, if you’re smart with your tile placement, it can be a lucrative one. If you do feel competitive then this game has you covered there too. Its components can be used as an expansion for the original Carcassonne and can even be played alongside other expansions. Final Thoughts You can always place tiles so open fields sit next to open fields. Usually, you’d stand your meeple upright on a feature to claim it as your own. But you can also lay your meeple down in a field, where it becomes a ‘farmer’. Like the other meeples, you cannot place a farmer in a pre-occupied field.

Carcassonne Review - Board Game Review Carcassonne Review - Board Game Review

This should be your first objective when playing this version of the game. You must try and complete (laying the closing tile) as many forests as you can and gain as many of the 16 bonus tiles as possible. These bonus tiles are extra turns and usually have a better than average points value attached with them. Lots of fish, bigger animals to hunt, or another special rule. If you get the majority of these tiles, you will have had more turns with the prospect of higher scores. My experience, particularly in 2 player games, is that whoever gets the majority of the bonus tiles usually (but not always) comes out on top. Combine Your River Network With Your Hunting FieldsThe meeples simplicity makes them brilliant especially in their bold colours. The tiles are good quality. I have played my copy countless times and they don’t show signs of wear. The instructions are clear and concise but may daunt those who aren’t used to reading rules. Take it step by step and you will be fine!

Carcassonne (2015) | Board Games | Zatu Games UK

With these little boons to the design, the 20 th Anniversary Edition really does feel like the new standard of what the base Carcassonne experience should be. If you already own the previous base version of the game, then hey, why not combine them into one mega city builder? Multiple ways to score. After playing the tile you play your meeple, either on a river, a forest or permanently laying down on his side for a hunting field. There is also the hut token for fish in the river network. You only have 5 meeples (excluding huts) compared with 7 in the original Carcassonne. This creates far more jeopardy and risk on those meeples and future scoring. It needs a little more attention to the risk. Cities and roads keep being added to until they are finished. Cities are finished when the wall encircles the encampment and are scored at 2 points for every section of tile in the city. Therefore a city built with four tiles would be worth 8 points. Roads are completed when they end at a city, junction or monastery.

Final thoughts on Carcassonne

If you’ve played Carcassonne before, you’ll know some of the features here. Your turn consists of tile placement into a communal, ever-growing landscape. You can place one of your meeples onto that tile, with the aim to complete objectives to score it later. But Hunters and Gatherers takes place in a time before castles and monasteries. Instead, this is a land of forests, rivers, lakes and meadows – complete with wild animals! This isn’t a mere reskin of French countryside Carcassonne, though. Completed a forest that has gold in it? That lets you draw and immediately place a second tile – and it’s one of twelve separate ‘bonus’ tiles. Completed meadows, meanwhile, score you points per wild animal in it. (This differs depending on animal type.) But careful if a tiger enters a meadow! Tigers are predators and cancel out any animals in that meadow… So, if you are no stranger to Carcassonne then you will not be at a loss here. The artwork has been done in such an interesting and clever way. All the tiles are of course usable with other editions and expansions (mostly) but the small details on the tiles are what make this game really pop. There is UV print on all the tiles and on the box cover itself, giving the game an irresistible gleam. One thing that I never realised until I played this version was how baren the Carcassonne world looked before. Now that we can see little people on the tiles all over the place, it breathes life into the game and makes it feel like a much more real city that we are building. Always be aware of what others are doing as sometimes focusing just on your own game will not be useful or, critically, high scoring. Sharing other peoples scores can very much keep you on top and is one of Carcassonne’s best features. Final Thoughts

Carcassonne | Waterstones Carcassonne | Waterstones

This review is for the Z-Man games version which caused a ridiculous uproar when released that the tiles were too bright and colourful. Oh, and don’t mention the change to the colour of the roofs – this caused uproar! Well, there comes a time where sentimentality can stifle progress. I like the tiles. I even prefer them to the images I have seen of the old pale and placid artwork of the original version. Change isn’t always a bad thing. It is evident that the publishers are aware of this too, as there is plenty of space in the box for more tiles. The base tiles in the box do not even fill half of the space available. Final Thoughts The game has come on holiday with me to Mexico, Spain, Italy, Scotland and up in the Alps on a skiing trip. We’ve sat with it in assorted hotel rooms around the UK, caravan parks, in bars and even in the waiting rooms of car Garages and a Sainsbury’s cafe. It has put in the miles with me for sure and will continue to do so for many more years to come. The Art When placed on a city space a meeple is classed as a knight. On the road, a thief. A monk on a cloister, and a farmer on grasslands. The knight, thief, and monk stay on the board until their respective area is completed, at which point they score victory points and are returned to the player to be used on subsequent turns. You may see that a player is about to complete a castle feature and score a respectable eight points. However, you see an opportunity to steal said feature and end up placing tiles away from the feature, joining it up and stealing it from right under their noses, as you will have placed more meeples on that feature than them! This is just one of the many strategies one can employ while playing Carcassonne and it is something that sets this game apart.It is a 2-5 player game. Gameplay is very different for the total amount of players involved. A two player is a totally different version of the game compared with playing against four other people and requires a different strategy. As of 2014, Carcassonne also includes two mini-modules in the box: The River, and The Abbot. Later in this post, I’ll teach you how to play Carcassonne with these variants. Firstly, however, let’s take a look at how to play Carcassonne in its original base game form. It’s a perfect ‘gateway game’ for board game beginners and younger players. The monk stays on this monastery tile until it gets surrounded by eight other tiles. At this point, you return the meeple to your supply and claim eight points. (One per tile that surrounded the monastery.) Top tip: if the tile gods smile upon you, try to place a monastery next to another monastery! That way, someone else (or yourself) contributes towards completing it. A game of Carcassonne lasts around 45 minutes. The aim? There’s a bunch of square tiles in the box, with different features on them. Roads, fields, monasteries, and walled cities. Like the actual medieval citadel. You’ll compete to build up the French countryside in a communal manner, but you’ll score your own completed features. Once the last tile gets placed, there’s some end-game scoring, and the player with the most points wins!

Carcassonne - Mists over Carcassonne | Board Games | Zatu Carcassonne - Mists over Carcassonne | Board Games | Zatu

You don’t need the Carcassonne base game to enjoy Hunters and Gatherers – you can play it on its own! The puzzle-like tile placement is very satisfying when you finally get that perfect piece but can be disappointing if it doesn’t quite fit! Seeing the map sprawl in front of you gives this game real table presence. Carcassonne is a tile-placement game in which the players draw and place a tile with a piece of southern French landscape on it. The tile might feature a city, a road, a cloister, grassland or some combination thereof, and it must be placed adjacent to tiles that have already been played, in such a way that cities are connected to cities, roads to roads, etcetera. Having placed a tile, the player can then decide to place one of their meeples on one of the areas on it: on the city as a knight, on the road as a robber, on a cloister as a monk, or on the grass as a farmer. When that area is complete, that meeple scores points for its owner.

What it’s like

I’m not sure why I feel the need to give away my game secrets, I won’t be sharing them in my gaming circles. But if you are a fan of Hunters and Gatherers like me you will likely benefit from this. So, my views on the best chance of winning this game. Complete The Forests For me, classic is a curious word. If you were to buy a classic car for example, you know you will be tinkering under the bonnet and fixing patches of rust more often than you would like to. You’ll be scared to take it on a journey in the rain, in fact you’ll generally be too scared for it to leave the garage in case of a breakdown!