Tile-laying strategy game where players build a medieval landscape and deploy followers as meeples to score cities, roads, monasteries, and fields.
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Turn timer
Keep turns moving with a per-player clock for Carcassonne.
Draw and place landscape tiles to build cities, roads, monasteries, and fields in a shared medieval French countryside. Claim features with your meeples and score points when they are completed. Highest total score after all tiles are placed wins.
Carcassonne is a tile-laying game where players take turns drawing a random landscape tile and adding it to a growing shared map. Each tile shows some combination of cities, roads, monasteries, and fields. After placing a tile, you may claim a feature on that tile by placing one of your limited supply of meeples on it. When a feature is completed, you score points and get your meeple back. At the end, incomplete features and fields score reduced values, and the highest total wins.
The game takes about 35 minutes, plays 2 to 5, and offers a clean mix of spatial puzzling and opportunistic area control. It won the Spiel des Jahres in 2001.
72 land tiles (including 1 start tile): each shows some combination of city segments, road segments, monastery grounds, and field areas.
Meeples: 7 per player in their chosen color (one is used on the scoring track).
Scoring track around the board edge.
Place the start tile face-up in the center of the table.
Shuffle all remaining tiles into face-down stacks within reach.
Each player takes 7 meeples of one color and places 1 on the zero space of the scoring track. You have 6 meeples available to place on tiles.
Determine a starting player.
On your turn, in order:
Draw 1 tile from the supply. Place it adjacent to at least one already-placed tile so that all edges match (city edges connect to city edges, road to road, field to field). The tile must be placed legally -- every edge that touches an existing tile must match.
You may take 1 meeple from your supply and place it on the tile you just placed, on one of these features:
City segment: your meeple becomes a Knight.
Road segment: your meeple becomes a Thief (or Highwayman).
Monastery: your meeple becomes a Monk.
Field: your meeple becomes a Farmer (lay it down flat).
Key rule: you may only place a meeple on a feature if no meeple (yours or another player's) already occupies a connected section of that same feature. However, separate features can merge through tile placement, sometimes resulting in shared or contested features.
If your tile placement completes any feature, score it immediately:
Completed City: a city is complete when it is entirely enclosed by walls. Score 2 points per tile in the city. If the city contains any coat-of-arms (pennants/shields), each adds 2 bonus points. The controlling player (most meeples in the city) scores. If tied for most meeples, all tied players score full points. Return all meeples from the city to their owners.
Completed Road: a road is complete when both ends are terminated (by a city, crossroads, monastery, or loop). Score 1 point per tile the road passes through. Same majority and tie rules as cities.
Completed Monastery: a monastery is complete when all 8 surrounding tiles are placed. Score 9 points (the monastery tile + 8 neighbors). Return the Monk.
The game ends when the last tile is placed. Then score all remaining features:
Incomplete cities: 1 point per tile + 1 per pennant (half the completed rate).
Incomplete roads: 1 point per tile.
Incomplete monasteries: 1 point per tile in and around the monastery (including itself).
Farmers (fields): for each completed city that a field touches, the player(s) with the most farmers in that field scores 3 points per completed city adjacent to their field. Same majority and tie rules apply.
Highest total score wins. If tied, the tied players share the victory.
Carcassonne uses a running score tracked on the scoring track, plus end-game bonuses:
Cities: 2 points per tile + 2 per pennant.
Roads: 1 point per tile.
Monasteries: 9 points (1 + 8 surrounding tiles).
Cities: 1 point per tile + 1 per pennant.
Roads: 1 point per tile.
Monasteries: 1 point per tile in the 3x3 area.
Farms (Farmers): 3 points per completed city adjacent to the field. Majority rules apply.
Final total score per player.
Number of completed cities and roads (useful for analysis).
If players are tied on total points, they share the victory. There is no official tiebreaker in the base game.
Select the Standard variant.
Add all players (2 to 5).
Enter each player's final total score (integer, sum of during-game and end-game scoring).
The system will rank by highest score.
Optional fields worth recording: