Carcassonne as originally published by Hans im Gluck
Carcassonne is a tile laying game is designed by Klaus-Jurgen Wrede, and published by Hans im Gluck in German and Z-Man Games in English. The game depicts a medieval landscape built by the players as the game progresses.
Contents[]
- 1 starting tile with darker back
- 71 terrain tiles featuring numerous combinations of cities, roads, farms and cloisters
- 40 followers in 5 colors
- 1 scoreboard
- 1 rule book
- 12 tiles from the River expansion (later editions)
- 5 Abbots (new edition only)
Gameplay[]
The game starts with a single terrain starting tile face up and the 71 other tiles shuffled face down for the players to draw from. (Expansions change the total number of tiles used to play, and in some cases, change the starting tile.) The base game plays up to 5 players, and each player takes a matching set of 8 meeples. 1 is used as a scoring token on the scoreboard, while the other 7 are used by the player to place followers on the played tile. On each turn a player draws a new terrain tile and places it adjacent to tiles that are already face up. The new tile must be placed in a way that extends features on the tiles it touches: roads, fields, city walls and cities must match on each side. Tiles being placed must touch at least one side of a tile in play.
After placing a tile, the placing player may opt to place a follower on that tile. The follower can only be placed on the tile just played, and must be placed on a single feature. A follower claims ownership of one terrain feature—road, field, city, or cloister—and may not be placed on a feature already claimed by theirs or another player's follower. However, it is possible for terrain features to become shared when the further placement of tiles connects to separate features into one. For example, two field tiles which each have a follower can become connected into a single field by another terrain tile.
During the game, players score points for completed features. When a city is completely enclosed by walls and has no empty spaces within, the player with the most followers inside scores 2 points per tile and 2 points ber banner included in that city. If two or more players tie for the most followers, then all tied players score the full points. All followers in the city are then returned to the players to be used again in future turns.
A road is completed when the road has a termination point at each end or makes a complete loop. Termination points include city gates, cloisters, and crossroads. The player with the most followers on the road scores 1 point per tile included in the road. All followers on the road are then returned to the players.
A cloister is completed when it is completely surrounded by eight adjactent (including diagonally) tiles. It scores 9 points (1 for each tile) for the player who has a follower on the cloister. The follower on the cloister is then returned to the player.
The game ends when the player who places the last tile completes his or her turn. At that time all features (including fields) score points for the players with the most followers in them. Incompleted cities score 1 point per tile and banner in the city. Roads score 1 point per tile on the road. Cloisters score 1 point for the cloister tile and each adjacent (including diagonally) tile. Farms score 3 points per completed city adjacent to the farm. The player with the most points wins the game.
The most recent edition of the base game includes The River and the Abbot mini expansions.
[1] - BoardGameGeek page about the Core Game