Claim your meeple then your land and you'll be ready to play

The recent surge in popularity in board gaming, no doubt bolstered by a certain infectious disease you may have heard of, is built on the foundation of a set of titles omnipresent in collections the world over. The likes of Pandemic, Catan, Ticket to Ride and 7 Wonders each offer a glimpse into the wider world of board gaming, accessible to those finding their feet in the hobby while still scratching the itch of those of us already deeply entrenched.

One such title which has dominated and helped to shape the hobby in the past 20 or more years is the ubiquitous Carcassonne, Klaus-Jurgen Wrede’s magnum opus. 

I’ve always enjoyed Carcassonne but it took my father-in-law of all people to make me fully appreciate just how special it really is. We don’t get to see him as often as we’d like as he lives several hours drive away so when he visits, as a family we go out of our way to include him in the activities we normally partake in as a group, including board gaming. Unfortunately, his field of reference during his many decades on this planet were the obvious candidates - the Monopolys and Cludeos of this world. 

Trying to find something from the shelf that we felt he might enjoy without having an onerous or lengthy teach was tricky and we settled on the small blue box of wonder with the French town on the cover. He took to it like a duck to water, quickly understanding the rules on the first play and by the second, starting to discuss the subtleties - when to hold that last meeple, when to attempt to muscle in on someone else’s castle, where to place that church to maximise its scoring potential…

Watching him mentally adapt to a ‘proper’ board game, however relatively light it may be in the wider context of the hobby, was a joyous experience to watch. 

Components

Carcassonne is a game of laying tiles and placing meeples in as efficient a manner as possible to outscore the opposition. As you might expect then, the box primarily consists of tiles which will generate the towns and countryside of the tableau you all collectively create and the meeples used to signify ownership of some of the key features of the map.

The tiles are thick and robust, colourful and clear. Roads and walls align in a satisfying and organic manner when placed next to one another and any iconography is easy to understand. The meeples themselves are wooden and tactile. I’ve yet to play a game of Carcassonne where people aren’t stacking their spare meeples in piles and pyramids in downtime between turns. 

The rules sheet is short, simple and clear and can be explained in a handful of minutes with any subtleties explored as the game progresses. 

Gameplay

The basic rules of Carcassonne are simplicity itself. Each player is given a limited pool of seven meeples of their colour. On their turn they draw a tile from a shuffled facedown stack and place it on the shared map spreading out from the start tile in a way that matches the features on the tile. They can then place a meeple on that tile to claim some aspect of it and then they score based on the completion of a feature, reclaiming any meeples that had signified who owned it. 

A degree of depth is layered into the game through some concepts that aren’t immediately obvious from the rules themselves. Players have limited meeples and it can be easy to run out if scattering them around too liberally in the early turns. It is possible to place tiles in such a manner as to piggyback on someone else’s hard work at the last moment, claiming joint ownership of a castle that should have provided points to just one hard working player.

There’s just enough complexity there to keep the game interesting to those around the table used to more sophisticated board games while not overloading those who would find the Ark Novas and Twilight Imperiums of this world vastly over complicated.

Conclusion

On multiple levels, inclusion in board gaming is important. People need to feel they are welcome when they sit down with people to play a game irrespective of their sex or skin colour. But the hobby also needs to welcome those who don’t want a six-hour Cosmic Encounter marathon as an introduction. 

Gateway games are important because they allow those with differing levels of experience to sit down and play together whilst also offering an enticing glimpse of what else might be available if they are willing to fall deeper into the rabbit hole. Instantly accessible, fun and surprisingly layered, it’s no surprise that Carcassonne has immortalised itself in the gaming lexicon, an experience perfectly tailored to show what this hobby can be. It is an absolutely essential inclusion in any board game collection.