About six years ago or so, I got to experience The Settlers of Catan for the first time on a double date and I was completely hooked. Soon after, I appropriately set up an emergency board game night with four of my friends to try it. They were probably a little confused, since I think the last time we'd all played a board game together was a seemingly neverending game of Risk our sophomore year of college, but nonetheless, we set it up. The board was ridiculously crowded because it's meant for just four players and we had five (we used Risk pieces for the fifth person, if you were curious), but nonetheless, everyone was a pretty big fan, and it spread quickly among my larger group of friends.
And so began the era of me being heavily interested in euro-style board games.
Truth be told, I can't exactly call myself a connoisseur here despite how much I enjoy them. I need to not only get more experience with the ones I have, but also expand my bank of games. Since then, I've played Ticket to Ride and Dominion, which were both very good. But, as the title implies, I'd like to talk about a different one in this post -- Carcassonne.
I received Carcassonne as a Christmas gift three years ago and it basically sat in the box for two years. Eventually I got around to playing it a couple times with a friend or two. It seemed fun, but undeserving of the hype. I had just got Ticket to Ride the previous Christmas and that seemed like the far more enjoyable game at the time; others got hooked on that easily as well. That made it difficult to get people to play Carcassonne because board game time is pretty limited at my stage of life and when I can actually get together with others to play, people are typically content to play what they know and enjoy rather than dive into something that might take experience to appreciate.
Fortunately, I had a good opportunity to give the game another go over New Years, which I spent with my wife's family. I brought Carcassonne with to the house we were staying at, pretty unsure of why I was doing so given my own reluctance to push it over the past few years. Surprisingly, my wife's cousins and I wound up giving it a try. Perhaps more surprisingly, it was an instant hit, and I gained a far greater appreciation for it.
Carcassonne is for 2-5 players and while I've given it a go with two and five, I think it plays best with three or four. The game itself is probably simpler to understand than I made it out to be in my mind, because after a few minutes it's pretty easy to figure out what's going on. You don't set up a board at the beginning of Carcassonne. Rather, you build the board one tile at a time, gradually creating a map of cities, roads, and fields that comes together like a neat puzzle. Along the way, you claim cities, roads, and fields and then (generally) score points upon their completion.
The concept is extremely simple but the strategy seems like it will take a hundred games to master. The feeling that I've got a lot to learn about correct play is what is really sucking me in. Never have I played a game before where I've so frequently decided I've made a (huge) mistake seconds after making a move (and that's saying something, because I'm a habitual second-guesser). While I used the puzzle analogy above, it doesn't quite work because in a puzzle, there's one piece for one location. In Carcassonne, there's a LOT of possible things you could do with each piece, many of them have their merits, and you have to do a lot of guesswork about how you think the board will build itself by the end of the game. Often times, the obvious move isn't the best one, and being able to adjust your plan on the fly to the ever-developing map is a must.
While that might imply that there's a chess-esque low level of luck in the game and that new players don't have much hope, that's certainly not the case. Drawing the right tile at the right time can make up for blunders in design, so randomness is definitely a factor, and everyone, even those with plenty of experience with the game, will make some errors. The complexity in strategy is necessary because there's no one silver-bullet A-B-C strategy that's going to make you win more than your fair share (unlike, say, Ticket to Ride, which is a great game but I feel like I follow the same basic plan every time with good results). That makes for high replayability, which is an absolute must for a great game.
I feel like I'm going to have to play this a lot more for me to assess whether it's my favorite game I've ever played, but the fact that this is a possibility at all says a lot. I highly recommend this game and hope that others will have as much fun playing it as I have.
Fortunately, I had a good opportunity to give the game another go over New Years, which I spent with my wife's family. I brought Carcassonne with to the house we were staying at, pretty unsure of why I was doing so given my own reluctance to push it over the past few years. Surprisingly, my wife's cousins and I wound up giving it a try. Perhaps more surprisingly, it was an instant hit, and I gained a far greater appreciation for it.
Carcassonne is for 2-5 players and while I've given it a go with two and five, I think it plays best with three or four. The game itself is probably simpler to understand than I made it out to be in my mind, because after a few minutes it's pretty easy to figure out what's going on. You don't set up a board at the beginning of Carcassonne. Rather, you build the board one tile at a time, gradually creating a map of cities, roads, and fields that comes together like a neat puzzle. Along the way, you claim cities, roads, and fields and then (generally) score points upon their completion.
The concept is extremely simple but the strategy seems like it will take a hundred games to master. The feeling that I've got a lot to learn about correct play is what is really sucking me in. Never have I played a game before where I've so frequently decided I've made a (huge) mistake seconds after making a move (and that's saying something, because I'm a habitual second-guesser). While I used the puzzle analogy above, it doesn't quite work because in a puzzle, there's one piece for one location. In Carcassonne, there's a LOT of possible things you could do with each piece, many of them have their merits, and you have to do a lot of guesswork about how you think the board will build itself by the end of the game. Often times, the obvious move isn't the best one, and being able to adjust your plan on the fly to the ever-developing map is a must.
While that might imply that there's a chess-esque low level of luck in the game and that new players don't have much hope, that's certainly not the case. Drawing the right tile at the right time can make up for blunders in design, so randomness is definitely a factor, and everyone, even those with plenty of experience with the game, will make some errors. The complexity in strategy is necessary because there's no one silver-bullet A-B-C strategy that's going to make you win more than your fair share (unlike, say, Ticket to Ride, which is a great game but I feel like I follow the same basic plan every time with good results). That makes for high replayability, which is an absolute must for a great game.
I feel like I'm going to have to play this a lot more for me to assess whether it's my favorite game I've ever played, but the fact that this is a possibility at all says a lot. I highly recommend this game and hope that others will have as much fun playing it as I have.
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