Carcassonne, by Rio Grande Games

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Note from Carrie: I think Fridays are going to be wild card days here from now on. At this point in the week I'm pretty much brain dead anyway. Today would appear to be "game day". Check out our earlier post today in which guest contributor, Sky, reviewed Number Hunt.) And then check out my note here at the end of Jonathan's review of the following game.
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Howdy folks! It's Carrie's better other half, blogging again. (Apparently you didn't "boo" loudly enough last time I posted... or she just hasn't gotten around to changing the password yet!)

Anyway, in a bit of a change of pace, I'm actually reviewing a board game this time rather than a book. (If you're only here for the book reviews, look at it this way: Here's a game that the rest of your family could spend hours on, giving you more time to read. Happy now?)

Growing up, I was the oldest of five kids, and we were all Totally Into Board Games. Particularly the serious, thinking kind. If a particular game involved any bit of luck, it was snubbed. (Yahtzee, for example. We would have rather been found dead in a ditch than been caught playing Yahtzee.) Anyway, when it came to board games, we invented them, played them, argued about them, and more. I'll never forget my eight-year-old sister coming home from a friend's house and mentioning that they had played a game which most of the other girls liked, but "the ruleset could have been improved."

Somehow, my younger siblings all became better than I was at games. I had serious morale issues as a teenager due to this. (Later on, two of my brothers went on to win national chess championships. I didn't feel so bad at that point.)

Fast-forward a dozen years, to the present. Carrie and I are not much the gaming types. (My acne is gone now, too.) But we ran across Carcassonne recently and gave it a try, to our very pleasant surprise.

Carcassonne (a French word, pronounced "Carcass-Zone") is unique in that it's a tile-laying game with extremely simple rules that don't require mind-bending strategy in order to get the hang of. At the same time, there's enough depth that you'll enjoy playing it over and over. (We have.)

It's also fun because you're creating a "landscape" of roads, cities and fields as you lay down the individual tiles, and the map is built from scratch differently with each game. By the time you're halfway through a game, you're thinking uniquely about the map that's being created, which is constantly changing and presenting new situations. This keeps the gameplay feeling very fresh and interesting, rather than becoming boring after a while.


The rules are easy enough to pick up quickly, and even most kids (8 years and up, I'd say) can participate in playing without much challenge. But there's enough depth in the strategy to be explored that it doesn't become tiresome, even to adults. The game can be played with 2 to 5 players (and there are expansion packs that support adding a 6th player.) Carcassonne can truly be enjoyed just as much by 2 players as 6 players; the gameplay scales perfectly without any difficulty.

If your family is the type that enjoys playing games together, I recommend this wholeheartedly. It's been a hit with everybody that we've introduced it to!

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I am seriously NOT a gamer in any sense or imaginative use of the word. I rather loathe playing games as a general rule. However, I wanted to play this one because we've been talking about Knights and Castles around here and this game involves both. Hence my initial interest. I played this game once with Jonathan and then volunteered him another round of it because I thought it was very fun. And I wouldn't even mind playing it again (and again and again)! If you know me, you know I wouldn't normally volunteer to play ANY game more than once. Except Clue. I do like Clue . . . (so I find it rather unfortunate that Jonathan doesn't) . . . sigh.
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