A Meepling We Will Go!

Today at Books and Brews, we're all meepled up, and everywhere to go!  Now a quick history lesson.  The world famous French city, Carcassonne was known for its imposing fortifications erected during the Antiquity and the Middle Ages.  Even today, this fortress surrounded by it's magnificent walls, still stands as one of the most unique French cities.  In this 2 - 5 player tile-placement game, players must develop the area around Carcassonne.  They will place their followers onto roads, into cities, monasteries and fields.  The players who make the most judicious placements will gain the points required to win the game.

The game is really straight forward.  Once per turn, you place a tile.  This is how roads, cities, monasteries and fields will be created, one tile at a time.  You score points by placing your followers on these tiles.  Your points are scored throughout the game and at the end of the game.  After the final scoring, whoever has the most points wins the game!  You may only place tiles that connect to other tiles.  Roads must be complete by either connecting a surrounding one, or ending up at a crossroad.  They cannot just run into a grass tile at a dead end.  Same with cities.  A city is enclosed within it's walls.  This is how you know it's properly built to completion.  The more meeples you place within your cities, the more points you gain.  By placing them in the cities, they become knights, if you place your meeple on the road, it becomes a thief, if you place it in the monastery, it becomes a monk, and if you lay it down on it's side in the field, it becomes a farmer.  All of these methods are used as a way for you to mark your territory and gain more points, sometimes more than others.  Once you've completed one of these areas in the game, you count your points, then return your meeples to your stock pile, and start placing more!  This is a really fun gateway game!  Claire and I really enjoy it and it certainly helps that we already enjoy tile-placement games.  I'm not personally very picky about the amount of players in this game, I firmly believe that the execution of this game works really well even with two players.  This is another reason to consider it if you don't own it.  It's very versatile that way.  We really just love the flow of this game, the artwork is simple, yet pleasant, the setting of the game itself is really good as I enjoy games that take place during the Middle Ages.  There's plenty of strategy can be executed during gameplay and players have multiple opportunities to catch up, should they fall behind.  This game also has A LOT of expansions so that's something else to consider if you're ever wanting to add a lot more variations to the game to make it even better!  In my opinion, it's definitely a gateway game to keep in your gaming library!

Carcassonne
Overall Meeple Rating: 7/10



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