Carcassonne

'Where the hells is this road going to go....?'

Type: Strategy / Board
Players: 2 to about 5

Time to explain to others: About 1 to 3 min

Time to play: About 30 minutes, possibly bit more

Difficulty: To play 3/10, Game difficulty 4/10

Portability: Medium. Loads of board tiles
Overall: 9/10

Carcassonne slipped through my fingers like sand through the hands of a toddler. I had totally forgotten about this lovely and simple Eurogame (Eurogames or German Games are games that focus more on strategy and resource management to get victory points, and not Player v Player conflict). A soul brother to Catan, although even simpler (if that is possible).

In each turn in Carcassonne, you play a tile, and have the possibility to play a person marker (the ever iconic Meeple). Depending on where you play the Meeple, it might become a farmer (in a field), a highwayman (in a road), a knight (in a city), a monk (in a monastery), etc. The game comes into its own because every played tile needs to connect fully with a previous one (roads can't start and end in the ether, cities must be closed by walls, etc).

You only have half a dozen meeples and although you can claim them back once you score an area (city, road.... you get the idea), you are at the mercy of the tiles. If you need to finish a city with a city tile, with a diagonal city wall running from upper left to lower right.... You might be in a lot of trouble, as your meeple knight is now stuck there, in a place where it will still score some point at game's end, but a fraction of what it would if you actually finished the city. There are by now about a dozen expansions with new tiles and new types of meeples, that keep adding to the story. You can still have a lot of fun with the base box though!

Rui's conclusion: Fast, engaging, simple and fun. A good warm-up game, or one for newbies. A hit, and rightly so!