Breaking in this blog with the first board game post is Carcassonne! Carcassonne happens to be the first modern-era board game that I purchased precisely on this date 12 years ago, January 13, 2010, making it perfect for kicking off Bling My Games with this well-loved classic. Celebrating its own anniversary of 20 years, I’ll be featuring the stunning Carcassonne 20th Anniversary Edition, released last year.
Carcassonne is designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede and published by Hans im Glück for 1-5 players (an official solo variant was recently published) and plays in about 40 minutes. Based on the medieval town of Carcassonne in southern France, known for its fortified city walls surrounded by sprawling countryside, this game replicates building the countryside with cities, roads, monasteries, and fields. Carcassonne is a tile-placement game with square tiles, meeples, and a scoreboard. What is a meeple? After this game introduced these small wooden human-styled figures to the world, the term “meeple” was coined, blending my and people. You will hear this term a lot in this blog.
Carcassonne 20th Anniversary Edition Features
The 20th Anniversary Edition comes with a vibrant new blue box with contrasting gold UV spot print on the entire box and its tiles. This edition includes the base game, The River expansion, The Abbot, and the special Anniversary Expansion.
Included are stickers to decorate the meeples as you see fit, with all stickers being unique. I suggest not matching the primary sticker color with the meeple to better see the design. Don’t forget to examine the tiles; they have updated designs with fun easter eggs of Carcassonne-themed expansions and other games to discover!
How to Play Carcassonne – Base game
Find and set aside the starting tile – this is the one tile with a darker background. Shuffle all the base land tiles (exclude the river and expansion tiles) and lay them facedown in a few piles, so it’s easy for all players to reach a tile stack. Place the starting tile face up in the middle of the play area. Each player chooses a color and takes the eight meeples of that color. Place one of those meeples on the scoreboard in the starting position.
Play in clockwise order, with each turn taking these three actions in order:
- Place a tile
- Place 1 meeple on the tile you just placed (Optional)
- Score points
1. Place a Tile
On your turn, draw a tile and then put it next to a tile in play (the first turn will only have the starting tile). Each tile’s four edges will be a city, road or open field/countryside. Match one of these edges adjacent to the edge of another tile, making sure it matches the other tile, so connect a road to a road, a city to a city, and open field to field. The image below shows all possible “features.”
2. Place a Meeple (optional)
After placing your tile, you may place one meeple on one of its features – either within a city as a Knight, on the road as a Traveler, or on a monastery as a Monk/Nun. You may place a Farmer lying down on a field. I do suggest you should play your first game without the Farmer to keep it simple.) You now “own” that city/road/monastery/field! I’ll be referring to this as a feature.
You may wish to grow this feature by placing more tiles next to it in future turns to score more points. However, you don’t score points during the game until this feature is complete, so cities must be walled in, roads ended, and monasteries surrounded. Each feature will have a minimum of two tiles and no maximum of tiles, but it does get harder to complete a city feature. Roads are much easier to complete. You can choose not to place a meeple as you only have seven meeples to place if you think it will be better to save it for a future turn.
Meeples may not be placed on a feature someone already owns. You may, however, place a meeple on an unconnected feature, hoping to connect it to an already-owned feature in the future; this is a sneaky way to share a road or city!
3. Score Points
If a feature completes (roads completed, cities enclosed, monastery surrounded) and a player owns that feature, score points for all people who have completed a feature. For example, if you walled in a city, move your scoreboard meeple that amount of points on the scoreboard. Lastly, remove your meeple from the finished tile feature and return it to your supply.
Eventually, a feature with one color meeple may connect to another feature with a different color meeple. In this case, the person with the most meeples on that feature will score. If players tie, both score the points.
- Roads score 1 point for each tile in a completed road for the player who owns the road. A road must be closed at both ends or loop onto itself.
- Score the number of city tiles plus coat of arms and multiply by 2 points. A city must be completely walled in with no empty spaces inside the city.
- Score 1 point for all tiles surrounding the monastery, plus the monastery tile for a total of 9 points. A monastery is completed when other tiles completely surround it.
Note that Farmers do not score for their fields until the end of the game. They remain lying lazily in their fields; you may not return a farmer to your supply, so choose these wisely once you see an opportunity. You will want to lay your Farmer in an open field connected to completed cities; at game end, you’ll score 3 points per completed city that your field touches!
Game End and Final Scoring
The game ends when there are no more tiles to be drawn. The player with the most points wins! Any meeples on the tiles will score for their features, even if not completed, as follows:
- Roads score 1 point per road tile (as usual).
- Cities score only 1 point per city tile and coat of arms.
- Monastery scores 1 point and 1 point per surrounding tile.
- Farmer scores 3 points per completed city their field touches.
Carcassonne 20th Anniversary Expansions and Variants
Carcassonne 20th Anniversary Edition comes with the expansions listed below. They are super simple to add to your game; I suggest adding these into your gameplay after your first few plays.
River Expansion
The 20th Anniversary Edition includes 17 river tiles with a dark back and no symbol. Find the source and lake tiles, shuffle them and place them facedown. These will be the last of the river tiles drawn and will start and end the river. Take the remaining river tiles (minus the large double-tile), shuffle them, and place them facedown on top of your lake tiles. The double-tile will be your starting tile. You won’t be using the usual starting tile with this variant, so set that back in the box.
Players draw these river tiles first, following the above rules, but do not make the river turn twice in a row, creating a U-turn, as this risks the following tile will be impossible to place. As in the standard rules, you may wish to place a meeple on a feature, but only on a standard feature, not the river itself. The river will end when you reach the end of the river stack, as the source tile begins the river and the lake tile ends it. You’ll end up with one long, winding river in the middle of your play area. Resume regular play with the standard land tiles.
As a result, river segments split fields in this edition, helpful when playing with Farmers, so they have less chance to take over the entire countryside. The river bridge does continue a road.
Abbot Expansion
Abbots are the 9th meeple that you play as a Monk/Nun. You can also place the abbot on a garden, which acts like a monastery. Instead of placing a meeple, you can also take back the abbot on any turn. Standard meeples cannot be placed in gardens and must stay on the cathedral until completely enclosed. During final scoring, score the abbot as a normal monk.
20th Anniversary Special Expansion
This expansion consists of 15 unique tiles, separated into three types of 5 tiles each, depicted by a blue arrow in a corner. Shuffle these tiles in with the base game tiles during setup.
If you draw a tile with one of these symbols, place it as usual. The symbol will point to one side of the tile. Depending on the symbol and its placement, you may either score 2 points immediately, place a second meeple to one of your own already placed meeple, place a meeple on any unoccupied, incomplete feature anywhere on the landscape or take a second turn. The symbol above with the two gold meeples indicates you may add your meeple to any of your previously-placed meeples on the landscape, better ensuring you will score on a shared feature.
Official Solo Variant
For their 20th Anniversary, Carcassonne also released an official solo variant. I will be covering this in a future post!
Did I Bling this Game?
I did not bling this game out; this edition was deluxe enough. The box insert is adequate to separate the components. I’d love to 3D print a tile tower; this could come in handy for other tile games.
Carcassonne 20th Anniversary Edition Summary
Carcassonne is the gateway game for many people in the hobby. It’s easy to teach, has no player elimination, and plays quickly. The result is a French countryside with winding roads, sprawling cities, and villages that you and the other players have made. The box is beautiful, and the components fun to inspect. This special edition will be a keeper and one I can see playing multiple times in the future, especially with the solo variant. I believe the 20th Anniversary Edition will serve my Carcassonne needs well with the three additional expansions it includes. The tiles have features of additional expansions, should you want to use the new tiles.
There are dozens of additional expansions and themed variations of Carcassonne to explore. I still have the version I purchased 12 years ago and a “Big Box” version with the base game and 11 expansions. I don’t think I need the base game, and the Big Box takes up too much space, plus I don’t think I need all those expansions. They might have been fun back when Carcassonne didn’t have as much competition.
Have you played Carcassonne, and do you have favorite expansions? Should I keep the Big Box and try your favorite expansion? Comment below!
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Carcassonne: 20th Anniversary Edition