Our next instalment of the Blogger Board Game Club is Carcassonne. Carcassonne is for 2 to 5 players and is suitable for children aged seven and above. It is a tactical game that requires good attention to detail but is easy to master once you get the hang of it.
To play Carcassonne you use land tile to create your playing board, place Meeples on the map to claim land and use the scorecard to keep track of it all. The box we received also featured some river land tiles and some Abbots. The contents of the box include 72 land tiles, 40 followers in 5 different colours, 1 scoring rack and 5 abbots.
There are various land tiles in the pack including crossroads, churches, gardens and cities. The aim of the game is to own cities, farms, roads and cloisters. You take it in turns to add tiles to the play board and claim the areas you lay down a meeple on the area you wish to claim.
You can not lay a meeple on a tile someone else placed and you can not lay a meeple on territory someone else has claimed. Once an area you have claimed has been completed you can remove your meeple and add the score (number of tiles to complete your territory) to your score card.
Each time a tile is placed it must match up to the edge of a previously lain tile so a road joins to a road and a city joins to a city. It is great to see the board coming together as the world expands. This is a game that the girls really enjoyed beating me at. It is a game of skill and observation and they seem to have got the hang of it really quickly.
