Carcassonne Classic
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Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges
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Purchase options and add-ons
Brand | Z-Man Games |
Theme | Game,Medieval |
Genre | Tabletop Gaming |
Number of Players | 5 |
Minimum Age Recomendation | 156 |
About this item
- This Z-Man games edition includes the River Tile Expansion
- For 2-5 players
- Clever tile-laying game
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Product information
Product Dimensions | 10.75 x 7.5 x 2.75 inches |
---|---|
Item Weight | 1.63 pounds |
ASIN | B008ULAMSG |
Item model number | ZMG 78000 |
Manufacturer recommended age | 8 - 15 years |
Best Sellers Rank | #576,701 in Toys & Games (See Top 100 in Toys & Games) #18,234 in Board Games (Toys & Games) |
Customer Reviews |
4.2 out of 5 stars |
Is Discontinued By Manufacturer | No |
Release date | September 15, 2012 |
Manufacturer | Publisher Services Inc (PSI) |
Warranty & Support
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Product Description
Product Description
A clever tile-laying game. The southern French city of Carcassonne is famous for its unique Roman and Medieval fortifications. The players develop the area around Carcassonne and deploy their followers on the roads, in the cities, in the cloisters, and in the fields. The skill of the players to develop the area will determine who is victorious. 2 - 5 Players 13 Years +
From the Manufacturer
The Carcassonne is a clever tile-laying game. The southern French city of Carcassonne is famous for its unique roman and medieval fortifications. The players develop the area around Carcassonne and deploy their followers on the roads, in the cities, in the cloisters, and in the fields. The skill of the players to develop the area will determine who is victorious. The game is for ages 13 and up and 2 to 5 players.
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Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers like the quality, ease of use, versatility, and possibilities of the board game. For example, they mention it's still really fun, easy to understand the rules, and has a very short learning curve. They appreciate the variety of strategies and the nice balance between strategy and luck-of-the-draw during game play. Customers also appreciate the many expansions that go with a basic game, which adds to the fun. Overall, they say it'll be a great addition to any board game collection.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the board game really fun, with the River expansion adding to the fun. They also say it's an excellent game that invites friendlier gameplay. Customers also say the game is a good intro game that does not last too long for kids yet can be played. They say it keeps their mind tuned and is able to be played by a couple or for up to 5 players.
"...(and the experiences of those who have played with me), the game is still really fun...." Read more
"...similar in content and goals, but much less cutthroat and invites friendlier gameplay without the worry that your best friends will become your dire..." Read more
"...The tiles feel of good quality, and wooden followers are great too...." Read more
"...the "river" expansion, which makes it more challenging and interesting. This is good, because the basic game had a fast burn-out rate for me...." Read more
Customers find the board game easy to learn and understand. They say the rules are simple but complex enough to provide a variety of strategies. They also mention that the game has a very short learning curve and is the easiest game to pick up in a long time. Customers also appreciate the good instructions and videos online to help them. They mention that there is not a lot of set up or clean up, and the scoring is simple and easy.
"...only is it fun, but each game lasts ~15-30 minutes and there is very little set-up or clean-up involved. You can teach someone to play on the fly...." Read more
"...but as you pick it up, it's really simple to play. I'd heard some reviewers say that if you love Settlers of Catan, you'll love this game...." Read more
"...cities and roads is pretty much all you're doing and it is not too difficult...." Read more
"...Pros:• Easy to learn• Good date night game, or game for up to 5 players*..." Read more
Customers find the board game has nice elements of strategy. They say the opportunity to strategize abounded, the game is easy to learn, and has a variety of strategies to interest both gamers. They also say the game has balancing between strategy and luck-of-the-draw during game play. Customers say it's about strategy and building your kingdom. They mention that the river adds an interesting strategic element towards building.
"...This introduces a lot of interesting strategy to the game. Do I play multiple Meeples as farmers to try to steal this big field from another player?..." Read more
"...It is similar in content and goals, but much less cutthroat and invites friendlier gameplay without the worry that your best friends will become..." Read more
"...Nice balance between strategy and luck-of-the-draw during game play, especially with 2 players•..." Read more
"...It is easy enough that my ten year old can play it. It is also complex enough and allows for enough strategy that my 14 year old gifted son enjoys..." Read more
Customers find the possibilities in the board game great. They mention that it includes the River expansion, which is a fun alternate way to start. They also appreciate the numerous expansion packs to go with a basic game, adding to the fun. The addition of the river is really nice and adds an interesting strategic element. Overall, customers find the game scalable through numerous expansions for a more immersive gaming experience.
"...the expansions much, other than to say that there are several expansion that are really fun...." Read more
"...The addition of the river is really nice and adds an interesting strategic element towards building...." Read more
"...quite easy to learn (and to teach to your friends), is scalable through numerous expansions for a more immersive gaming experience, and is quick to..." Read more
"...There are lots of expansion packs to go with a basic game, adding to the fun." Read more
Customers find the social game awesome for two players, but also scales well as the player count increases. They say it's a fun game that can be played by more. Customers also mention that the game works well with two or four players and is great with a group of people.
"This is a simple but fun game that plays well with 2 players, as well as 3-4...." Read more
"...It plays GREAT with two people (I haven't had the chance to play it with more, but I'm sure it retains the fun factor), and it's become a wonderful..." Read more
"...The scoring is simple and easy. It plays wonderfully with only two people but also scales well as the player count increases...." Read more
"...While Carcassonne has a strong strategy component, it is also a great social game as you are often put into situations where you have to coordinate..." Read more
Customers find the value of the board game to be well worth the money, reasonable, and good price. They also mention that the game has a lot of replay value and is worth having around.
"...Researching that now.Well worth the money. ENjoy." Read more
"...But, it was cheap, so I grabbed it.I'm so glad I did...." Read more
"...be steep (not so much with Carcassonne or Ticket to Ride) but well worth the effort...." Read more
"...Very good game for the money you spend. There is definitely so much replay value for this game since every game can play out differently." Read more
Customers like the portability of the board game. They mention that it has a small footprint to store the game box, and it's pretty portable. The game is short enough that you can play multiple games in a reasonable length. Additionally, the game is pretty portable, since you just set out tiles and do not need to set up the game pieces.
"...This set includes The River• Small footprint to store game boxCons:•..." Read more
"...a thinking type of game, even though it is an easy to learn, fairly short to play game...." Read more
"...I do like the meeples, but sometimes I wonder that they are too big for the board pieces...." Read more
"...It also decreases the required floor space for the game. If you aren't crafty I'm sure you could use a paper bag from your local grocer...." Read more
Customers find the board game elegant and well-designed. They also appreciate the nice art on the tiles and the cerebral tile laying game. Customers also say the instructions include helpful illustrations and are great for visual gifted kids. They say the extra River tiles are cool, but not really an expansion.
"...Pieces are high quality and look pretty much new after 4.5 years of frequent play...." Read more
"...to understand game with well written instructions that includes very helpful illustrations...." Read more
"A Very unique and cerebral tile laying game, I thoroughly enjoy the city building mechanic of Carcassonne...." Read more
"...The pieces look better (more detail), but some of the roads don't quite line up, which is baffling since I'm guessing computers would be involved..." Read more
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So I hope that tells you just how much this game made an impression on me. Now I'll talk a bit about the game. I would think most people on BGG are familiar with this particular game, but then, maybe you're newcomers to the genre like I was. Maybe you're here because of how much you liked some game called Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride.
The game is made up of tiles. Tiles that have different features on them - walls, roads, cloisters, or fields. Players take turns placing tiles, making sure the features on the edges match up (you can't have a road just suddenly dissapear, or an unwalled patch of city meet up with a field). They can then place a follower, or "Meeple" on a feature in that tile. When the feature is completed (a city will walls all the way around it, or a road with two endpoints, or a cloister with 8 tiles surrounding it), that feature is scored, and the player gets his Meeple back. With out getting too much into the technical details, there are some nuances - completed cities are worth more than roads, and incomplete features are worth points (less points if they are cities) at the end of the game.
And then there is also farming. A player can put a Meeple on its side on the field portion of a tile. That Meeple will remain there until the end of the game, and will then score 3 points for every completed city that touches its field.
Finally, there is the way in which you can steal (or share) features. You can't place a Meeple on a feature which is currently controlled by another player. However, you can place a Meeple on a feature (a city for example), which is separate at the time, and then try to place tiles so that your feature connects to another player's. If a completed feature has one Meeple from each of two players, those two players get the same score for that feature. But if one player manages to get two Meeples on a feature to another player's one Meeple, he gets all the points for the feature, and the other player gets none.
This introduces a lot of interesting strategy to the game. Do I play multiple Meeples as farmers to try to steal this big field from another player? It could be worth a lot of points in the end, but then I'll have fewer Meeples to work with for the rest of the game. Should I play this tile here to complete my city, or play it over there to connect my field to another player's?
Each player only has one tile in their hand at a time, which has advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, it means you spend less time on your turn (or waiting for other people's turns), because there are only so many places you can put that tile. But on the other hand, it makes it harder to strategize. You can hope you'll get certain tiles in the future to further a particular scheme or strategy, but you can't guarantee you'll get them.
But one thing I really like about this game is that a lot of scoring takes place at the end (farms and any incomplete features). So during the game, it's not always evident who is winning, or who is going to win. So if you're behind, you don't necessarily feel like the game is over for you. You can enjoy working on your cities, roads, farms, and cloisters, and getting points throughout the game. You might lose in the end, but in my experience (and the experiences of those who have played with me), the game is still really fun.
It is still possible for two players to gang up on a third, or for players to spend a lot of tiles sabotaging other players. But we don't really play that way, so that hasn't been much of an issue for us.
I won't get into the expansions much, other than to say that there are several expansion that are really fun. Some enhance the game, and some totally change it.
Overall, I heartily recommend Carcassonne.
What a fun new game I have discovered. I thought I had completely lost touch with board games until I happened upon this game in a coffee shop and watched a few friends play. One of my big issues with board games is that they can be such a commitment. I used to love to play Settlers of Catan, but the game can go on forever. Just the thought of Monopoly bores me to tears. I remember playing so many games and wishing they were over.
The beauty of Carcassonne is that, not only is it fun, but each game lasts ~15-30 minutes and there is very little set-up or clean-up involved. You can teach someone to play on the fly. If you are learning for the first time with someone else, it is easy to pick up the rules.
You will likely enjoy the fun and simplicity of this game if you like Settlers of Catan and Civilization. It is similar in content and goals, but much less cutthroat and invites friendlier gameplay without the worry that your best friends will become your dire enemy. It’s pretty hard for this game to cause a fight unlike other world-domination type strategy games.
Another great aspect of the game is that you can pretty much customize the difficulty. You can play by drawing random tiles, building the map by chance. For strategy, you can play where each person has three tiles at a time that they can play. This allows for more strategy and adds some logical challenge.
I do like the meeples, but sometimes I wonder that they are too big for the board pieces. Sometimes it’s hard to see where exactly a meeple is place, e.g., on a road or in a city, because they are large and cover up the game tiles. If you bump the table, the meeples may shift and you can have a disaster on your hands. Sometimes we end up counting meeples at the end and find one that we can’t quite identify, so someone loses a few points.
Regarding quality, the tiles are well made out of solid industrial cardboard. They are thick with few imperfections and seem virtually indestructible. They have a satisfying texture and it feels great to “click” them down on the table as you watch your map grow.
Hope this helps. Enjoy the game!
Reviewed in the United States on April 15, 2016
What a fun new game I have discovered. I thought I had completely lost touch with board games until I happened upon this game in a coffee shop and watched a few friends play. One of my big issues with board games is that they can be such a commitment. I used to love to play Settlers of Catan, but the game can go on forever. Just the thought of Monopoly bores me to tears. I remember playing so many games and wishing they were over.
The beauty of Carcassonne is that, not only is it fun, but each game lasts ~15-30 minutes and there is very little set-up or clean-up involved. You can teach someone to play on the fly. If you are learning for the first time with someone else, it is easy to pick up the rules.
You will likely enjoy the fun and simplicity of this game if you like Settlers of Catan and Civilization. It is similar in content and goals, but much less cutthroat and invites friendlier gameplay without the worry that your best friends will become your dire enemy. It’s pretty hard for this game to cause a fight unlike other world-domination type strategy games.
Another great aspect of the game is that you can pretty much customize the difficulty. You can play by drawing random tiles, building the map by chance. For strategy, you can play where each person has three tiles at a time that they can play. This allows for more strategy and adds some logical challenge.
I do like the meeples, but sometimes I wonder that they are too big for the board pieces. Sometimes it’s hard to see where exactly a meeple is place, e.g., on a road or in a city, because they are large and cover up the game tiles. If you bump the table, the meeples may shift and you can have a disaster on your hands. Sometimes we end up counting meeples at the end and find one that we can’t quite identify, so someone loses a few points.
Regarding quality, the tiles are well made out of solid industrial cardboard. They are thick with few imperfections and seem virtually indestructible. They have a satisfying texture and it feels great to “click” them down on the table as you watch your map grow.
Hope this helps. Enjoy the game!
I just got it last week, and we already love it. The game seems a little complex at first, (wait, how do I score this guy?), but as you pick it up, it's really simple to play. I'd heard some reviewers say that if you love Settlers of Catan, you'll love this game. That worried me because my wife is NOT a Settlers fan, but she loves Carcassonne now. We've played almost every day since I picked it up.
The addition of the River expansion in the box is great. After the first couple of games, we added it into our game and have played with it every time since. Plus, I'm not sure if it's something I would have paid for separately, so it feels like a nice bonus in the box.
The tiles feel of good quality, and wooden followers are great too. My biggest concern with them is that my 1 year old may run off with one at one point. My only complaint about the game is that in our box, the slot for the tiles is just slightly too short for all the tiles, which means you have to stuff it into the side where it sticks up slightly. It's not the end of the world (and not enough to deduct a star for), I'm just the type of person who hates when something doesn't fit the way it should.
We're excited to try this game out with more than just the two of us, and I'm sure the dynamic will change in that case, but for now, this will sit on the shelf of our most played games next to Dominion and Ticket to Ride Europe.
Top reviews from other countries
It sounds simple and it is, but it can become very tactical and competitive once you've played a few games. Farms are slightly more complicated than any of the other features but it doesn't take long to get used to them and if your games of Carcassonne are anything like mine they'll usually have descended into an all-out war for control of the most valuable farm by the end!
With a bit of knowledge of the number and configuration of available tiles it's possible to make your opponents features impossible to complete if the required tile either doesn't exist or has already been placed elsewhere. This means their follower becomes trapped and this reduces their scoring potential for the rest of the game (spouses don't like this in my experience!) It's also possible to place tiles such that features owned by different players are joined together and become a single road/ city. If more than one player has a follower in such a feature then the player with the majority of followers takes the full amount of points for that feature when the feature is closed regardless of who originally claimed it. So stealing potentially lucrative features is another great tactic and something else to consider.
To describe Carcassonne merely as a good "gateway" game is to deny it the credit it so rightly deserves. I'm partly guilty of this as I saw it this way at first and "moved on" to some of the other games that I had become aware of since realising that there's more to board games than Monopoly and Risk. I enjoyed most of them well enough, but continually returned to Carcassonne as I found it to be far more enjoyable than anything else I'd played. Clearly the fact that tiles are drawn at random means that there is an element of luck in this game. The best players however are the ones who can lay their tiles and deploy their followers in such a way that they're able to use whatever tile they draw to score points or other improve their position.
Furthermore, it's worth remembering that the basic game can be significantly expanded using any of the numerous (about 30) expansions available for it. As other reviewers have mentioned, Inns & Cathedrals and Traders & Builders are generally considered to be the best although games can start getting somewhat more complicated when played with several expansions at once. The River (included in this box) is also a great starting point for those new to Carcassonne as it enlarges the starting area from one tile to 12 and thus provides players with a wider choice when it comes to placing their tiles.
Step 2: Eventually bought the game due to positive reviews on here
Step 3: Played a few games, thought it was "ok", the scoring is interesting/odd at first, but it kept my interest
Step 4: Decided to buy two expansions for the game (1st and 2nd expansions)
Step 5: This game is awesome and I want to get it onto the table every time we play
This game started slowly and then grew on me the more I played it. Which is probably why it is such a popular game. It seems to have a lot of staying power in the long-run. Recommend it, although the farming scoring will seem confusing at first, but eventually it all becomes familiar. I've given it 4 stars purely because I felt the two expansions made this game much more interesting for me, which adds expense to the total cost. Nevertheless I think highly of this game and both expansion 1 and 2 add very nicely to the game.
It is reasonably priced and you will get a lot out of it so grab it up and get going - you will be astonished how easy it is to pick up and the depth of gameplay that can come from this simplicity. Our tactics are ever changing and the politicking can get very funny or very nasty quite quickly - always a winner.