LogFAQs > #932447108

114. Carcassonne (2000)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Tile-laying, area control
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 40 to 60 minutes
Experience: 2 plays over 2 sessions (2018, 2019) with 2, 3 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - The players collectively lay out territory in medieval France, one (randomly drawn) square tile at a time. The tiles depict roads, meadows, cities, and more. When you lay a tile, you can also move one of your meeples onto that tile, which will award you points either immediately or in the endgame. Your meeples come off the board when a structure is complete.

Design - My respect for Carcassonne is off the charts. It's one of the gateway games (along with two that are, spoiler, very close to coming up on this list), and possibly the best-designed, because the depth is tremendous. Optimizing tile placement, knowing what your opponents are likely to draw, tactically and strategically setting up cities, trying to ensure you have the highest presence, but also gathering back your meeples at a timely manner - each decision is quick, but impactful. There's also the strategic and counterintuitive "farmers" mechanic that doesn't even factor into base Carcassonne.

Carcassonne is so influential that its community is responsible for the word "meeple" becoming common to describe the wooden (or plastic) figures in board games that are vaguely human-shaped, but are clearly not miniature sculpts. It's one of the defining hobby games and by far the most famous tile-lying game.

Experience - That said, my experiences with Carcassonne have been... okay. I first played it when I was already deep into the hobby, though I definitely have some fondness of it for being one of the first games I learned in a game cafe with a friend. I think that there are likely two areas where Carcassonne shines: as a gateway game, with its incredibly light and relatively repetitive mechanics; and as a hypercompetitive game, where all players have played the game an absolute ton and are competinghard with lightning-quick decisions. I fit neither category; I'm able to learn more mechanically unique games, but I also have no real desire to get deep enough in strategy to compete with more cutthroat players. So there's this middle groudn where it's... okay.

Future - Probably won't say no to getting more Carcassonne reps simply because, again, I have so much respect for the game. It could probably rise a tier or two, but I still can't really see myself getting good at it.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness