How to play Carcassonne, a quaint tile laying classic.
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Read the Rules
The aim of the game
To win, you’ll need to place your tiles and meeples strategically, to complete and claim cities, roads, farms and monasteries.
To set up
- Layout the score board.
- Each player picks a colour, takes 8 corresponding meeples and places 1 on the start of the score track.
- Put the dark grey starting tile in the centre of the table.
- Place the remaining tiles face down in easy reach and pick a starting player
To play the game
On your turn, take a single tile from one of the stacks and place it face up onto the table.
- You must place tiles orthogonally adjacent to existing ones, touching at least one full side. No diagonals!
- Cities, fields and roads on the tiles must connect correctly
- You cannot place a tile so that a feature would be impossible to complete.
- You may deliberate and chat about your tile placement before confirming its position.
After placing a tile, you may place one of your spare meeples on it if you wish.
- Meeples can be placed on roads, monasteries, cities and in fields.
- A field is a continuous, unbroken area of green space, uninterrupted by walls, roads or rivers.
- You can only place one meeple a turn and only on the tile you just placed.
- You cannot place a meeple onto a road, city or field already occupied by another player.
- If placing future tiles causes roads, cities or fields occupied by different players to join, that’s ok.
- You can’t move already placed meeples. If you don’t have any spare, too bad.
If after placing a tile, a landmark is completed, whoever has meeples on it will score its points and then return them to their hand.
- A city is completed when it is entirely walled off. Cities score 2 points per tile that make it and an additional 2 points for every banner icon. This one would score blue ten points.
- A road is complete when both ends are connected to a crossroads, a city or a monastery and scores you 1 point per tile. This one would score red 4 points and this one would score yellow 6 points.
- A monastery is completed when it is surrounded by tiles and scores 9 points.
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Fields are not scored until the game end.
If, by clever placement of tiles, more than one player occupies a landmark, whoever has the most meeples on it scores. In case of a tie, both players score full points.
If placing a tile completes a landmark, and you would be able to place a meeple on that tile, you may do so, scoring it and returning the meeple to your hand immediately.
Game end & scoring
Take it in turns in a clockwise order, placing a tile, laying a meeple if you wish and scoring completed landmarks until the final tile is placed. Then end game scoring begins.
- Players score 1 point per tile that makes up each incomplete road and city they occupy, plus 1 point per banner in each city.
- Incomplete Monasteries score 1 point per tile surrounding them, including the monastery itself.
- Finally, the player that has the most farmers in each field scores 3 points for every complete city that touches it. Different fields may touch the same city.
Remember, if players tie for having the most meeples on a landmark, they both score.
Whoever has the most points wins.
The River & Abbot expansions
New editions of Carcassonne come with the river and abbot mini expansions.
When setting up, remove the starting tile from the game, separate the 12 river tiles from the rest. Shuffle them and put the source tile on the top and lake tile on the bottom of the river stack.
If there are river tiles available, you must place these first.
When placing a river tile, it must join up to an open end of the river already on the table. If you join 2 bends in the river, they must turn in opposite directions.
Once all the river tiles are placed, you can draw tiles from the other stacks.
You can place meeples on landmarks on river tiles like normal.
The abbot is an extra meeple that can only be placed on monasteries and the newly added gardens. Gardens score exactly the same as monasteries - 1 point for every tile surrounding them, including the garden tile itself - however normal meeples cannot occupy them.
On your turn, instead of placing a normal meeple you can place your abbot on a garden or monastery tile you just placed instead.
If your abbot is already placed, instead of placing a meeple on your turn, you can choose to remove your abbot from its tile and score points for the incomplete Monastery or Garden it was on - 1 for every tile surrounding it, plus the tile itself.
That’s the Carcassonne original edition, the river and abbot mini expansions.
Enjoy!
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