| Game
Overview
This is the latest offering
in the Carcassonne series and unlike most
previous offerings this is not an expansion
but a new stand-alone game. Regular Carcassonne
players will feel somewhat at home as the
tile laying and follower placement is similar
to that of the original. However there are
numerous changes and new considerations,
which make this version a unique experience.
Play begins by creating 3 stacks of tiles,
the first must contain 30, the 2nd - 25
and the 3rd - 20. Each player must take
the top tile from the 1st stack until it
is depleted before moving onto the next.
This is important and will be explained
later. The tile features include the following
- Streets are the same as roads but are
now worth 1 point per tile if the street
is made up of 3 tiles or less. Four tiles
or more will earn 2 points per tile. There
are 3 types of market - fish, grain and
livestock. Each of these is a different
colour. Different or like markets can be
connected and when complete the controlling
player must multiply the number of different
market types present by the number of market
tiles in total. So if a market consists
of 4 tiles with 2 different market types
(lets say fish and grain) then the score
would be 8. There are also many brown houses
and these are called residential areas.
These are like the farms from the original
game in that followers placed here are left
on the board for the entire game. These
score based on the number of markets they
are adjacent to at games end. Many of the
tiles also have blue buildings on them in
addition to their other features. There
are two types of blue buildings - Public
and Historical and both of these are crucial
when building the cities wall. As mentioned
earlier the second pile of tiles can only
be accessed when the first has expired.
The first person to create a score using
a tile from the 2nd pile will begin the
construction of the city wall. They will
take the city gate and place it adjacent
to any tile in play. The other players will
take a wall piece, which must then be connected,
to either the gate or another wall piece.
In this way extra walls will be added whenever
a player creates a score using a tile from
the 2nd or 3rd tile stacks. The importance
of the walls cannot be underestimated as
a player can choose to place a follower
on top of a wall they have placed this turn.
These are referred to as guards and like
the followers in the residential areas,
they cannot be regained until the game is
over. The guards score 2 points for every
public building or 3 points for every historical
building present in the row of tiles that
lead from the wall they guard. It is through
this clever mechanic that the games underlying
strategy is revealed. Players are keen to
score points through street, market and
residential placement but they must also
consider how they are placing tiles with
blue buildings as these could earn them
more points if placed in their wall row
or earn their opponents points in the same
way.
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