Carcassonne board game: how to play

Carcassonne is a tile-laying game named after a walled city in the south of France. Players build a shared landscape of cities, roads, fields and monasteries one square tile at a time. After placing a tile, you may put one of your small wooden figures, often called followers or meeples, on a feature of that tile to claim it. When the feature is finished, it scores points for whoever controls it. The game starts with a single tile and grows into a large, colourful map, different every time. Its rules are short, a turn takes only moments, and it works well with two players as well as with a full table of five.

How to play Carcassonne

On your turn, draw one tile from the face-down supply and place it so that it touches at least one tile already on the table. Every edge must match its neighbours: city edges against city edges, roads against roads, fields against fields. After placing it, you may put one of your followers on a feature of that tile, but only if no other follower already sits on the connected feature. A follower on a road is a thief, on a city a knight, in a monastery a monk, and lying in a field a farmer. When a road or city is closed, or a monastery is surrounded by eight tiles, it scores immediately and the follower returns to you. If two or more players share a feature after tiles join, the player with most followers there takes all the points. At the end of the game, unfinished features score fewer points and farmers score for the completed cities next to their fields.

Tips for new players

• Keep a few followers in reserve so you can respond to good opportunities later.
• Monasteries are a safe source of points because nobody can join them.
• Try to connect to a rival city with your own knight to share or take its points.
• Farmers stay on the board until the end, so place them only when the field is likely to touch many finished cities.