Tabletop Tuesday - Carcassonne

Welcome to another edition of Tabletop Tuesday - Your weekly exploration into games of dice, cards, luck and more of the Tabletop world.

This week's game...the game of meeples and steeples that is Carcassonne.

Players: 2-5
Time: 30-45 minutes
Genre: Strategy

Mee-ple (noun): A small figure used as a playing piece in certain board games, having a stylized human form.

Carcassonne is based off the medieval town found in southern France made famous for its city walls.  In this game, players draw tiles of land in which the edges of these tiles contain various patterns of grassy plains, windy roads, monasteries, and of course the famed city walls.  These tiles' edges must match those of what is the constructed landscape as players create and expand a lavish kingdom.  With each tile placed, players have the decision of placing one of their meeples on the tile placed.  Depending where players place the meeple (road, city, monastery, or plains), they serve a different function and can score points in different ways.  However, players only have a limited number of meeples to place and the placed meeples are only returned when the scoring conditions have been met.  Players can also not place meeples where another player's meeple is already in control of road, city, or farm land.  And farmer meeples, while they can get the biggest score payoff, are unable to be returned to the players until the end of game, thus limiting the player's available pool of meeples.  As such, players must strategically decide when and where to place tiles and meeples for the biggest benefit.

The tile matching and freedom of choice in meeple placement makes Carcassonne an easy and enjoyable game for newcomers.  But it also offers extra layers of strategy to be enjoyed with repeated play.  Tiles can be placed in ways that you can place your meeples to later be joined and connected with other players' roads, cities, and farm lands.  In this way, you can end up sharing or stealing their points if you end up with more meeples than them.  The shared space can also create a collaborative effort to complete the road or city, allowing you to score more elsewhere.  And once you play enough, you'll begin to know the probability of certain patterns appearing, and how best to place tiles so that they can be completed..., or not completed if you wish to hinder an opponent's progress.  I recommend this game for those who enjoy light resource management and cool maps.

If you have any questions about Carcassonne, be sure to let me know in the comments.  Otherwise, look forward to future installments of Tabletop Tuesday!