Carcassonne – high on the nerd scale, high on the fun scale.

I can hear you now. “Carcassonne is a city in France!” Correct. It is indeed a city in France. It is also a fantastic board game that has been around since 2000. Boardgamegeek.com (a great resource for your future reference) rates it the 103rd most popular board game in the world. In the world, you guys. That’s kind of a big deal.

We bought it today and have already played twice.

 

Suggested ages: 8+

Number of players: 2-5

Playing time: 30-45 minutes

My rating: 8/10

In Carcassonne, you and your fellow players simulate the city being built. On your turn, you randomly draw a tile which may include roads, fields, a monastery or bits of a city, or a combination of those things. You place it so it lines up with what’s already on the board – it’s sort of like dominoes – and you can choose to claim parts of the city (which will score you points later on) by putting down one of your seven followers.

 

I thought it was great. It was relatively easy to learn the rules. I did a quick read-through and then only had to refer to the book again once during the first play-through. The game plays quickly because your turn only consists of placing a tile and maybe placing a follower. But then the game moves on. Because you can learn the game mechanics quickly, it’s really easy to start experimenting with strategies (should I hoard my followers? Should I claim farms? Should I finish off that city now or build on it, and hope I can complete it later?). Once you do that, the game plays differently every time. It certainly doesn’t get boring.

This game is not Risk. It’s not aggressive and it’s not going to cause an irreparable rift in your family or your group of friends. To my mind, that’s a good thing – but you might think differently. If you are one of those people who loves watching your friends despair as, soldier by soldier, you take over China, then consider yourself warned. This game does not play like that at all. Instead, everyone kind of works together to build up the area. It is scored, but you can’t really block people and you tend not to think about the scoreboard too much. It’s a nice respite from those other homewrecking sods (I’m looking at you, Monopoly).

If you’re into the Catan franchise, or Ticket to Ride, you’ll be into this. Give it a try. It has infinite promise in that it comes with a seemingly neverending range of expansions (have a look at the purchasing options below), so you will just about always have a new way to go if you’re bored with your current way of playing.

 

OK you convinced me! Where do I buy it? How much will it cost me?

Like with all semi-serious tabletop games, you’re not going to get it at Farmers, and it’s probably going to set you back a fair whack. I try to think of it like, how many hours of great fun will this box give me? The answer is: heaps. It is well worth the $54.99 that mightyape.co.nz will charge you for the base game, or the $65.97 from fishpond.co.nz (which mysteriously includes a gingerbread man – it’s the winter edition. I am fairly certain they usually stock the normal one too).
Do be careful – there are lots of expansions that are sold separately, and you need to make sure you’re buying exactly what you need. The base game, annoyingly, looks just like a whole bunch of the expansions.

If you want to pick it up in person and play it RIGHT NOW (I have this problem a lot), then Mighty Ape will let you pick up from their warehouse on the Shore during working hours. Otherwise, Toyco has a physical store in St. Lukes that sometimes has it in stock (check their website first).

Now, here’s the kicker. Because it has loads of expansions, Carcassonne offers big boxes. That’s what I got. A box that comes with just about all the expansions – 9 to be exact. If you already have the base game then this probably isn’t worth it, but if you’re keen to invest in the franchise then this is a good way to save money that you would be spending on expansions further down the line. The current offering is Big Box 4, and it has 2 major expansions and 7 smaller “mini-expansions”. I’m pretty excited to play all of them … but especially ‘Crop Circles’.

 

Have you played Carcassonne? What do you reckon? And if you haven’t, would you be keen to give it a shot?

 

‘Tabletop’ is a class of games including board games, dice games, tile games, pen and paper games, etc. While tabletop games might make you think of bitter Christmas feuds over a Monopoly board, I love them, and I like to think they’re making a comeback (having said that, I’ve not played Monopoly for years). Not all of them are aggressive, and some of them don’t even have players competing against each other! What they do have is a plethora of ways to play and strategise, depending on the type of game you’re playing. That’s exciting, no?