Carcassonne: Not Just a City in France

Knucklebones: May 2007This is a reprint of an article written in December, 2006 for first publication in the May, 2007 issue of the now-defunct Knucklebones magazine. Because of its origins, this article is more introductory and (hopefully) more polished than many of my online writings. Despite the original source of this article, this blog is in no way associated with Jones Publishing or Knucklebones Magazine.


In the late 1990s Klaus-Jürgen Wrede, a German music teacher, took a vacation in southern France. He was following the track of the Cathars, a Catholic heresy that flourished in the area in the 12th and 13th centuries. The walled French town of Carcassonne was an obvious stop on Wrede’s pilgrimage because it had been a stronghold of the Cathars until 1209, when the famous crusader Simon de Montfort took the town as part of the Albignesian Crusade.

For most people a stop in Carcassonne would be a memorable event on a vacation but little more. However for Wrede, the town of Carcassonne stayed with him. Long a gameplayer, Wrede now decided to try his hand at designing a game that captured his vision of Medieval Carcassonne. He wanted to create a game “in which … a medieval landscape developed and different power groups fought for influence” (my translation).


I winced when I saw the tile that my opponent had drawn. It showed a tiny road turning into a glorious medieval city, with fields running along the other two edges. It was exactly the tile that she needed, and as she placed it, merging my field to hers, I could imagine her farmers marching across the tile in victory. She’d just won the game.

Unless I could get the tile I needed on my next draw.


The result was Carcassonne, which has now spawned over a dozen sequels that have together sold over half a million copies in the United States alone.

The Game of Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a unique game without a standard gameboard. Instead the playing area is creating during the game. Each turn a player draws a tile which might show sections of cities, roads, or fields. He then chooses where to place that tile within the existing playing area by positioning it next to one or more tiles, ensuring that roads connect to roads, cities connect to cities, and fields connect to fields, so that the overall board being created forms a cohesive, connected vision of the Carcassonne countryside.

Each player also has a set of wooden figures or “meeples” — a term originated in Massachusetts for these wooden people and now widely used. After placing a tile a player can also put one of his meeples in a section of city, road, or field that he revealed — provided that no other meeple is already in an existing part of that terrain. When a tile completes a city or road, the player who had the most meeples there scores and more importantly everyone gets those meeples back for future usage.

The play continues in this manner until every tile has been placed, forming a massive map on your table. Then, meeples in fields and any other stragglers are scored, and a final winner is determined.

A Game of Success

Pretty much no one expected Carcassonne to be a hit. Dirk Geilenkeuser, a developer at the German publisher, said simply, “we didn’t expect such a big success.” Wrede himself states, “Today it is still unbelievable to me!”

Despite that, Carcassonne did very well. In 2001 it won the German Game of the Year (“SdJ”) award; since then it’s become an iconic German games, one of three definitive “gateway” games, alongside The Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride. Every year since 2001 at least one expansion — some small, some big — has been published. The 500,000 Carcassonne games sold in the U.S. account for just a fraction of its worldwide popularity.

Wrede says that he’s too involved with the game to fully understand its success, but he believes that “the low price”, “the simple rules combined with many strategic possibilities” and the idea of “building something growing and puzzling” all appeal. Geilenkeuser generally agrees with all of Wrede’s points and further adds that “many woman like the game very much”.

Creativity & Cooperation

Two aspects of Carcassonne’s appeal really stand out: its creativity and its cooperation.

The creativity in Carcassonne is mainly embedded in those puzzle-like pieces and the “building” that Wrede mentions. Each turn a player gets to choose where to place a new tile. In doing so he gets to select which cities will grow and whose further expansion might get blocked. He gets to determine which fields will be fenced in by roads and which will continue to expand. Thus he gets to forge his own vision of the Carcassonne countryside — and will hopefully do so in a way which benefits the meeples he has already placed on the board by making their fields, cities, and roads more valuable.

With 72 different tiles — which are drawn in a random order, and which can each be oriented in four different ways and placed in many different locations on the board — each game of Carcassonne literally forms an entirely different and original vision of Carcassonne’s lands. Like snowflakes, no two are alike.

Geilenkeuser notes the game’s appeal to women, and that’s probably due to a different factor: it’s uniquely cooperative. As Wrede says, “it is not a very war-like game.” Part of this comes out of the rules for determining who earns the score for a city, road, or field. As noted, the winner is the person with the most meeples. However, if two (or more) people have the exact same number of meeples in a terrain, they each score the full amount, thereby encouraging people to share terrains and build them up together, thus gaining an advantage against any other opponents.

Even beyond terrain sharing, Carcassonne is usually a social and cooperative game. When a player draws a tile, the other participants can all see it, and thus everyone can kibitz, each offering up their own advice for where the new piece can go. Sometimes a player might offer pointed advice that will be to his benefit, but more often everyone enjoys suggesting the best moves for their friends and fellow gameplayers.

The Carcassonne Expansions

Award-winning designer games often get the benefit of yearly expansions, and Carcassonne has been no exception. Besides many small expansions, four large expansions have appeared over the years, each adding new tiles and new sorts of gameplay to the Carcassonne game.

Inns & Cathedrals (Rio Grande Games, $14.95) introduces the two eponymous features: inns go on roads and cathedrals in cities. Each one can increase the value of their terrains — or result in no score if the terrain isn’t completed.

Traders & Builders (Rio Grande Games, $14.95) adds new city tiles that feature goods that can be collected and also introduces two new meeples for each player. Pigs increase the values of farmers, while builders speed up tile laying.

The Princess & The Dragon (Rio Grande Games, $14.95) adds a more competitive element to Carcassonne. A dragon that is jointly controlled by all the players now roams the countryside, eating meeples.

The Tower (Rio Grande Games, $17.50) is another competitive expansion for Carcassonne. This one includes new tower pieces that players can build up on their lands in the hope of capturing other meeples in the surrounding countryside. It also includes a cardboard tower to draw your Carcassonne pieces from.

These four big expansions were also recently packaged with the original game in a Carcassonne Big Box limited edition. There are also two small 12-tile expansions available: The River II and The Count of Carcassonne.

Alternative Carcassonnes

Carcassonne has also spun off five alternative games, each one of which takes the basic Carcassonne game in different directions. These are standalone games that don’t depend on the original (but can’t be used with the original’s expansions either).

Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers (Rio Grande Games, $25) takes Carcasonne into the distant past, where players now build forests, river systems, and meadows. It has a new sort of meeple — the hut — and several other rules variations. For a while Hunters and Gatherers was the best Carcassonne for more serious players, but now The City and The Discovery both contest for that title. Nonetheless, Hunters and Gatherers remains one of the more complex and thoughtful variants.

The Ark of the Covenant (Inspiration Games/Uberplay, $25) is a variant set in biblical times. It’s very comparable to the original game, but the tile selection is more balanced and a mobile Ark of the Covenant helps to make the game less frustrating if all your meeples have been placed. The field scoring is also a bit simpler. It’s probably the best choice for casual Carcassonne players — if you don’t plan to get any expansions.

Carcassonne: The Castle (Rio Grande Games, $25) is a two-player variant by master game designer Reiner Knizia. All of the Carcassonnes can be played two-player, but they tend to be more competitive, as it no longer makes sense to share terrains with your single opponent. The Castle addresses this issue by making it easier to keep other players out of your terrain. It also constrains the whole game inside a castle’s walls. If you’re looking for something to play with your wife or husband, this is the one.

Carcassonne: The City (Rio Grande Games, $50) is the ultimate fan’s version of Carcassonne. It comes in a huge wooden box and has hefty tiles. This time you’re creating markets, residential districts, and streets, but as you form your city you’ll also build a wall around it. The walls are made out of short wooden wedges and make your city almost three-dimensional; you can even place guards upon the walls, watching down upon the city below. The City is probably the most complex of the variants, and it allows lots of different options for players, but you won’t want to buy it unless you already know you like the Carcassonne system.

Carcassonne: The Discovery (Rio Grande Games/Funagain, $25) is a variant by renowned Italian designer Leo Colovini. Here players are laying down mountains, grasslands, and seas, and they have much better control over when a terrain scores. Discovery is much simpler and more abstract than most of the other variants, but it also has some strategy that’s very different than its predecessors. You might not want it as a first Carcassonne, but if you become enthralled with the system Discovery can offer a variant that plays very differently, yet still enjoys most of the standard Carcassonne mechanics.

Final Notes

The game of Carcassonne remains an original, innovative and fun game six years after its release. Its creativity and its cooperation are just two of the elements that make it particularly attractive to new gameplayers of all sorts. Many players of the original game consider it best paired with the first two expansions, Inns & Cathedrals and Traders & Builders, while many more serious gameplayers prefer only to play with the latter expansions The Princess & The Dragon and The Tower.

Whatever the case, whether you’re a gateway player approaching a German game for the first time, or a regular competitor looking for a new romp, Carcassonne offers a variety of possibilities, and that’s what’s kept it one of the most well-loved and well-respected games in the field for half-a-decade.

Appendix: The Gateway Games

Since the 1980s Germany has been putting out “designer” games that offer more strategy, more thoughtful gameplay, and less randomness than many traditional board games. Some of the most popular designer games have been broadly appealing and simple to play, yet nonetheless offer tactical depth. These have come to be called “gateway” games because they give traditional game players easy access into the designer game field. The three most successful gateway games have been The Settlers of CatanCarcassonne, and Ticket to Ride.

The Settlers of Catan (Mayfair Games, $38) allows players to build networks of settlements and roads and to use those settlements to generate resources, which in turn are used to build out a player’s network more. This Klaus Teuber game was the first of the major gateways, and continues to be a huge game in Germany and America alike.

Carcassonne (Rio Grande Games, $25) may have been an even bigger hit than Settlers. Its lower price and simpler gameplay both introduced many new players to the genre.

Ticket to Ride (Days of Wonder, $40) is the newest gateway game. In this train game by Alan Moon players collect colored train cards in order to build routes across the United States.

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