There are very few board games that have had a profound effect on the gaming cultural iconography. Carcassonne’s meeples permeate gaming fan imagery. People have self-crafted life size meeples, made meeple cakes, and even taken photos of their meeples in France, the locale of game. Along with Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne helped refocus part of the gaming culture back towards board games.
Carcassonne is a fast-paced tile laying game that reinforces spatial awareness and finds a pleasant balance between strategy and luck.
Players take turns pulling and laying tiles that flesh out the countryside of Carcassonne. Tiles must match up when they are played down (roads to roads, cities to cities… etc.). When a tile is played, the player laying the tile may place one of their meeples on that tile in a variety of roles, depending on what is shown on the tile. Cities, abbeys, and roads allow for a play and in-game return on that investment. Players get points for the length of the road and can pick their meeple back up when the road has been completed to play again on a new tile. The same strategy goes for completed cities and surrounded abbeys.
Farmers require some additional thought. Once played, a farmer stays played and does not score until the end game. Points are awarded based on the number of completed cities that have access to a player’s farm. If more than one farm serves a city, the player with the greatest number of farmers takes the points in the end.
As other players lay tiles, this changes the landscape of the game and alters strategies. Players re-evaluate and re-formulate strategies in reaction to the ever changing tilescape. As they do, players must balance their scoring strategy, finding the best distribution of immediate vs. end game points.
An excellent choice for middle and high school libraries, Carcassonne is a light-strategy modular tile laying game with a high level of re-playability that will appeal to reluctant gamers. Along with Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, and Incan Gold; Carcassonne is part of a core group of Euro-games that make up a core library board game collection.
January 22, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Woohoo! I’ve long thought all the “gaming in libraries” talk that’s geared solely toward the video variety was missing out on the larger picture, so it’s great to see this blog.
Also, are you familiar with Cheap Ass Games? Although libraries may want to laminate their boards for greater longevity, once a library has a solid core of games, CAG’s could be good additions.
January 31, 2008 at 3:03 am
Cheapass Games is fabulous. Some of them might raise a few eyebrows, but the price is right, the games are inventive, and you can use all those extra pieces you’ve saved (from games that you can’t bear to toss out just because they’re missing two pieces)for the tokens! Games such as the one with zombies looking for new brains among the passengers on a moving train, and their being willing to accept cheese as a substitute… priceless!
As to Carcassonne, well, being a ‘Catan’ fan, it does sound good. I’ll investigate and see if I can bring anyone on ‘board’ with me.
Thanks!
July 8, 2009 at 5:34 pm
[...] Our only beef is that the size of the game grid might not scale down to the DS screen too well, and it might be hard to see everything going on. But, hey, even if that’s the case, you won’t need to clean up a messy board game, and isn’t that the important thing here? [image credit] [...]
July 8, 2009 at 6:31 pm
[...] the case, you won't need to clean up a messy board game, and isn't that the important thing here? [image credit]Carcassone laying down tiles on the DS originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 [...]
July 8, 2009 at 6:32 pm
[...] the case, you won't need to clean up a messy board game, and isn't that the important thing here? [image credit]Carcassone laying down tiles on the DS originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 [...]
July 8, 2009 at 6:32 pm
[...] the case, you won't need to clean up a messy board game, and isn't that the important thing here? [image credit]Carcassone laying down tiles on the DS originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Wed, 08 Jul 2009 [...]
July 9, 2009 at 12:17 am
[...] won’t need to clean up a messy board game, and isn’t that the important thing here? [image credit] Carcassone laying down tiles on the DS originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Wed, 08 Jul [...]