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Carcassonne

Klaus-Jürgen Wrede · Z-Man Games · 2000

Draw and place landscape tiles to build a shared medieval countryside of cities, roads, fields, and monasteries. Claim features with your meeples to score points when they're completed. The shared-board building creates organic interaction without direct conflict.

Players

2–5

Time

35 min

Ages

Difficulty

Light

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Why you'll like it

Tile-laying creates a beautiful shared landscape
Rules are immediately intuitive
The shared board creates natural interaction
Enormous expansion library
Perfect for 2-player and family play

How it plays

In Carcassonne, players build a map of a medieval landscape together, one tile at a time. On your turn you draw a tile and place it so its edges match what's already on the table: roads connect to roads, cities to cities, fields to fields.

After placing a tile, you can put one of your small wooden figures (called meeples) on it to claim a road, city, monastery or field. When that feature is completed, you score points and get your meeple back. Players often try to join and share big cities, which leads to friendly competition.

The game ends when the tiles run out, and fields score at the end. It's a classic that's easy to teach, and there are many expansions.