Carcassonne Rules. How do you Play?

Carcassonne is a board game whose name and setting are inspired by the medieval French city of Carcassonne, a beautiful walled enclosure that exudes history and mystery.
From this point on, you will imagine that it is a game that takes you back to the era of castles, fortified cities, and highway robbers. You are not wrong.

Carcassonne is a must-have game for anyone, whether an insider or an expert in board games. This is because:

• It’s a game of strategy. You have to think, plan, predict.
• It allows short games (about 30 minutes), but well animated. No games are left incomplete for days.
• It allows up to 5 players, so you can get very competitive.
• It has wide in age: From 8 years old, you are already suitable to play Carcassonne

Here we show you how to play Carcassonne, its rules, and our opinion. I’m sure you’ll dare to play it once you get to know this incredible medieval game more closely.

Remember, when you start to play put on this background music, it’s sure to make your game much more fun!

Carcassonne – Main Goal

The objective in this game is to complete constructions: To make cities, to put monasteries, to found farms, and to build highways or roads, and to mark them as your own, placing in them our follower or character counters.

In this way, we will manage to dominate the game universe, as it grows. The dominated spaces generate points, and in the end, the one with the most points wins.

Carcassonne Game Pieces

The game has a series of pieces, or game elements, which we mention here, so that later when we explain the rules of Carcassonne, you know what we mean:

1. Ground Tiles: These are square tiles that are joined together to shape the universe of Carcassonne. The tiles are used to build roads, towns, farms, and monasteries.
2. Follower tiles (also called characters): Small pieces that represent each player’s followers. The game brings 40, at a rate of 8 each, from a total of five players. Each group of 8 has a different color. Followers can be: Monks (placed in monasteries), knights (placed in cities), farmers (placed on farms), and bandits (placed on roads).
3. A book of Rules: To explain the rules of the game, obviously.
4. Point marker: A device for scoring points during the game, and making the final recount.

Preparing Conditions to Play Carcassonne

I warn you that the floor tiles are quite large, don’t imagine they are like little pieces of a puzzle, you know, those puzzles that take months to complete.

The Carcassonne tiles unfold during the game, interlocking with each other, as the game universe grows. So you’ll need plenty of space to play. Find yourself a big table, or put a couple of them together.

In addition to the basic game, there are many Carcassonne expansions, which multiply the size of this universe. Be prepared to get into this game quickly, because it’s really catchy, and when you do, you’re going to want the expansions, so you know… more space!

Rules to Play Carcassonne

The rules are not many nor very complicated. The most difficult part comes when it comes to being able to win, to make your constructions intelligently.
But we’ll talk about that later. Now, we’ll look at the rules:

1. You play in turns, clockwise.
2. Tiles are put in a pile, face down.
3. In the center of the table, you put the starting tile.
4. Each player takes 8 followers, each of a different color.
5. On the tile that a player places, he can only put ONE follower, no more.
6. If the tile in question is part of construction where another player has already placed a follower, no more followers can be placed. Example: I take out a tile that is part of a city, but that city was started by another player and he already put a follower. In that case, my move will only have served to move the city ahead of my opponent.
7. You can put a follower or character on a path initiated by you, and that path can later join another path initiated by another player. Similarly, you can start two paths, each with a follower of yours, and have them join each other, and the path started by another player. This is the only way that, upon completion of the path, you will have two or more owners, and even one player can have more than one character on it.
8. When a construction is completed, the points it reports to the player who owns it are recorded, and the player collects his character to use it again in another construction.
9. On farms, the character is not returned when the construction is completed.
10. The game ends when all the tiles in the desk have been placed.

How to Complete Constructions in Carcassonne

Since the objective here is to build, completed elements give more points than unfinished ones. Now, we’ll see how it’s done:

• City: A city is complete when it’s completely enclosed by walls. Tiles with fragments of the city are placed until the city is closed around it. The player who places the first tile of the city puts a follower (knight) in it, and that city is his.
• Roads: Paths have segments. A road is considered completed when it has stops at both ends, which can be a city, a monastery, or a crossroads. Each completed segment gives points to the player who placed a follower on it.
• Monastery: The monastery comes whole inside a tile. But it is considered finished when the tile is surrounded by other tiles. The player who placed a follower in the monastery (monk) receives points for each completed monastery.
• Farms: Farms are the green spaces in between. A finished farm is a country space that is totally enclosed, fenced in by paths, towns, or monasteries. It gives points to the player who placed a follower (farmer) on it.

Carcassonne Score. How to Win?

There are two stages to counting points: During the game, when points are scored each time a construction is completed; and at the end of the game, when points are scored for incomplete constructions and for farms.

Let’s see:

Score for Completed Constructions

• City: 2 points for each tile that makes up the city, and double when the tiles have a shield.
• Road: 1 point for each tile in the road. If the path has more than one owner, the points are taken by the player who has the most characters placed there. If there is a tie, all the owners of the path score the same.
• Monastery: 9 points.

Score for Incomplete Constructions

At the end of the game (when the tiles are finished), there are still uncompleted constructions. These are counted in this way:

• City: 1 point for each unfinished city tile, and 1 point for the shields.
• Road: 1 point for each tile of the unfinished road. (if it has multiple owners, the same rule applies for the completed road)
• Monastery: 1 point for the monastery, and 1 point for each surrounding tile.

Scoring for the Farms

The farms are counted at the end of the game, along with the incomplete constructions. Farms are considered to supply the cities. So when a farm is completed, you receive three points for each city that benefits from it.

Remember that farms are the free spaces between roads and buildings. If you have placed a character on a farm tile, take care of making your cities around it, otherwise, you will have wasted a character (which is not returned), in vain.

Finished constructions are worth more than incomplete ones, you noticed that, right? So it is extremely important that you take care of them at the end.

Also, remember that you have only 8 character counters and that you don’t get them back until you finish the construction. So be careful when you manage your tiles, and handle the balance of your building progress well.

Carcassonne’s Game Dynamics

Now that we’ve seen the rules, let’s look at a Carcassonne game dynamic, so you can understand better, and see how much fun it is:

1. I take out a tile and place it, joining it with the center or starting tile, which is already on the table.
2. My tile contains a road segment and a city segment. I have to choose which one I put my character on.
3. Mmm… I’ve made up my mind! I put a gentleman in the city. Now I know I must strive to finish my city.
4. It’s your turn: You take out a slab with a fragment on it. You place it after the tile I put before, giving continuity to the road started.
5. You put a bandit on the road, which you can do since I didn’t occupy it. The road is yours!
6. We continue to play and the stage grows.
7. The road that starts in my town ends when we reach a crossroads. The points are for you, you write them down and you pick up your bandit to use him in another construction.
8. I start a path and put my bandit.
9. You start another road and put your bandit. You give your path more continuity than I give mine because I have been neglected.
10. I place tiles so that I end up joining both paths and, when completed, I receive the same points as you, hehe!

Carcassonne’s Opinions

Since 2000, when this game was published, it has been very well received and has gained a lot of popularity, thus becoming one of the best board games of all time.

The testimonies of the players of Carcassonne agree that:

• Carcassonne can be played multiple times, game after game, without being boring. In each one, you will realize the mistakes you made, the opportunities you missed, and you will want a rematch.
• Carcassonne stimulates logical thinking and the faculty of foresight. You must be attentive to advance in your constructions, avoid being invaded by them, and manage to benefit from the constructions of others.
• When the game universe begins to fall short of your needs because you are already an experienced player, you can always buy Carcassonne expansions – and that’s it!

Carcassonne Game Expansions

Since the release of the basic Carcassonne, a lot of expansions have been launched to lengthen the games and to give a new theme to the universe.
Here are some of them, which we put here because they have contributed strongly to raising the prestige of this board game:

Inns and Cathedrals: Adding these two elements also gives the game more expectation. You see, the inns give more value to the roads, while the cathedrals while increasing the score of the finished cities, bring to zero the value of those that remain incomplete.
The Princess and the Dragon: Tiles are added here, such as the dragon, which attacks the player’s character tiles; the magic door, which allows the player to put a character of his or her own into any incomplete construction that has no owner; or the princess, which gives the player the chance to evict an opponent from a city.
The Wheel of Fortune: An expansion where the story is dramatized, when an outbreak of black plague occurs that sends the players’ characters to quarantine. Also included in the collection are the taxes of the knights, which increases the score.

As you see, the Carcassonne Board Game keeps growing and becoming more complex, which is why the players of this dynamic board game continue to dedicate their leisure time to immerse themselves in its fantastic world and play hard-fought games.

At first it seems difficult, but I assure you that you will acquire skills quickly, and then you will only want to accumulate more and more achievements in Carcassonne.

Here is a list of all the existing expansions. Have you tried one yet? Leave it in the comments!

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Última actualización el 2024-04-26 / Enlaces de afiliados / Imágenes de la API para Afiliados