Carcassonne review

This is another (from what I've seen, heard and read) immensely popular boardgame - which I have not had the chance to play up until just recently. Got to play this game over at my friend Thomas house last time I visited.

Just like the Settlers this is a very simple game. The whole game revolves around players taking turns in picking square tiles from the box and placing them face up on the table - adjacant to another square to that somehow fits (for instance connected by road or cityscape). So as the game progresses theboard grows and starts to fill with a landscape and multiple towns.

The goal is to build and claim land and towns. You claim areas or infrastructure by placing small meeples on your property, marking what is yours. During the game you get points for completing a road, completing a town (the larger the town the more points you get) or building a monastary that is completely surrounded by other tiles.

You also get points at the end of the game for every town you own that is under  construction, for owning land (connected grass fields stretching around the map) and unfinished roads.

It's a rather casual game, and it allows you to either help others out and sharing victory points for completed towns - or doing your best to sabotage the work of others by placing tiles in a way so that they can't expand and complete their cities or road networks.

Just like with Settlers of Catan this is a "simple game" that you can learn in a couple of minutes and which can be played either with friends or family. I think this game has a bit less of "luck" involved in it, you still draw random tiles - but you can always decide yourself where to put the tiles on the board, and if you want to help out or screw over other players. I kinda like that aspect. There are no dice or anything like that involved, just tiles and meeples.

For me this game was perhaps a bit too simplistic, but then I'm damaged by being a fan of Fantasy Flight Game like productions with lots of components, rules, twists and stuff going on. Just like Settlers of Catan this game feels a lot more  like an "old school" boardgame from back when boardgames didn't really had a theme but were more about game mechanics.