The Game

Carcassonne is a tile-laying game. The objective of the game is to build and occupy regions within an evolving medieval city-fortress. During the course of the game, the two to six players gradually construct the map of the area, using tiles. Certain arrangements of tiles are called regions. In addition to adding tiles to the map, players also place "followers" on partially complete regions. When a region is completed during a turn, the players with the most followers in the region receive points. The game is over when there are no more tiles available. The player with the most points wins.

The Tiles and the Map

Every tile depicts some theme: an abbey, a castle, a road, or a combination of these. There is one starter tile. Take a look at the examples (square tiles with pictures). At the beginning of the game the designated dealer arranges all the tiles face-down to the side and places the starter tile in the middle of the table.

At each turn, the dealer retrieves a tile at random from a heap of tiles, turns it over, and hands it to the player whose turn it is. The player must add it at some matching place to the map. Matching means that the border of each neighboring tile is the same as the border of the newly placed tile. Also, this newly placed tile must share a border with at least one existing tile.

Over the course of a game, this map of tiles evolves. The map is usually not densely connected; its shape heavily depends on the strategy of the players and how they operate to build regions.

A region is a part of the map, specifically it is a collection of connected tiles with the same theme (roads, castles) or an abbey with its surrounding neighbors. A region is complete if it meets the following conditions:

It is permissible to connect two distinct regions with followers, and this kind of move is indeed an important part of the game.

Playing a Turn, Playing a Game

After placing a piece, a player may also place a follower on a region if the region is incomplete and if no other follower already occupies the region. Placing a follower is optional and should follow strategic considerations because a player has only seven followers.

When the placement of a tile completes a region, the follower(s) are immediately returned to their respective player. This implies that the player who just placed the tile may use a returned follower to end his turn.

A game consists of 70 to 75 turns, depending on the number of players.

Scoring

Players receive points when regions are completed. If a region is populated by the followers of several players, the player with the most followers in the region receives the points. Sometimes several players have the same number of followers in the region. In this case all players with the highest number of followers receive the points.

Points correspond to the number of pieces in a region. Thus a completed abbey always yields nine (9) points. A completed road produces as many points as there are participating tiles, including the end pieces. Each castle tile accounts for two (2) points, unless it also contains a flag, in which case it accounts for four (4) points.

At the end of the game, players receive additional points for followers that occupy abbeys. The score for an incomplete abbey region consists of one point for the abbey tile plus the number of tiles that touch the abbey, i.e., a player may obtain up to eight (8) points for an abbey at the end of the game. The followers on incomplete roads and incomplete castles are ignored.