Carcassonne – Review

Carcassonne is an award-winning strategy game available on line or visit the Esdevium website for local stockists, for 2-5 players, aged 7+, RRP £27.99.

I was excited to see what the soup dragon family would think of the game of Carcassonne as I had seen it at the London toy fair in January and thought that we would enjoy this style of strategy game. The box contains a score board, 45 coloured playing pieces, 84 land tiles and a rules booklet. At first glance I thought Carcassonne might be a bit tricky to learn, but despite quite a large amount of rules, there are additional ones that are not needed for your first game.

The game play of Carcassonne is simple, each player takes turns choosing and placing a land tile. A little like a jigsaw each piece can have a road, city or monastery. You choose a colour of playing piece (called meeples) one stays on the score board the others are used to take ownership of city’s or roads as they are built. Players take turns to do three things. First you draw and place a land tile, next place a meeples (if you want) and next you score any completed feature.

Learning what will score the most, and where to place your meeples is the most difficult part of the game to learn. But we have found once learnt we were happy to add in the additional scoring rules like adding rivers, and even farmers which all score differently and change the layout of the game. You will need a nice clear space as your city’s grow, as even though there is no board, the land tiles need space so you can add to them without having to move the whole game.

We have played Carcassonne as a 2,3 and 4 player game, although Bingo Granny wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing! The boy has enjoyed building up the cities and scoring. Dad Dragon enjoyed the strategy aspect, and I liked finding new ways to try and win. Carcassonne is a nice easy and relatively quick game to play, the box suggests an average game takes 35 minutes, we found a more competitive game took a little longer at 45 minutes. Once you think you have mastered Carcassonne there are expansion packs to change the basic game, and this is a great way to expand the game, so you don’t get bored with it.

Carcassonne has already found a place in our regular Sunday game/puzzle mornings, and will be one that we can enjoy playing for some time as it makes you think hard about your moves as you play. If you would like the chance to play Carcassonne with your family then why not enter my gleam giveaway below.

Carcassonne

Terms & Conditions:

The giveaway is open to the UK only

• It is mandatory to leave a comment in the post comment section answering the question specified. Other tasks completed will gain additional entries. The winner will be checked to make sure they have both left a comment and completed the task for the winning entry.
• Winner will be drawn randomly after the competition closes at 23:59 on Thursday 2nd June 2016
• The winner will be sent an  e-mail to the e-mail address left at time of entry. The winner will need to reply to the e-mail within 7 days of the notification. Every effort will be made to contact the winner, but if no response is made within the 7 days a new winner will be chosen.
• The prize details are stated at the top of the giveaway, and may be subject to change if they become unavailable.
• The prize will be posted by the promoter, unfortunately I cannot be held responsible or replace missing parcels. Please contact me if there is a problem.
• Please allow 28 days from notification for your prize to be sent out.
• This competition is listed at: Win competitions at ThePrizeFinder.com and SuperLucky