Carcassonne

Carcassonne builds its own board as you play. Every turn you draw one land tile, add it to the growing landscape, and may place one of your followers on what you just built to claim it.

Claimed features score when they are completed — and again, differently, when the tiles run out.

Setup

1. Each player takes 8 followers in their colour. Put one on the scoreboard to track your score and keep the other 7 in front of you.
2. Place the starting tile in the middle of the table. You can identify it by the darker grey on its back.

That is the whole setup.

How a Turn Works

1. Draw and place a land tile

Draw one tile face up and place it next to a tile already on the table. Tiles must be placed orthogonally adjacent — edge to edge, never diagonally — and the edges must match: city to city, road to road, field to field.

In the rare case that you draw a tile that cannot legally be placed anywhere, discard it and draw again.

2. Optionally place a follower

After placing your tile you may place one follower from your supply onto that tile only. You can never add a follower to a tile placed on an earlier turn.

Where you place it determines what it is:

Placed on	Becomes	Scores for
A city	Knight	That city
A road	Thief	That road
A field	Farmer	Completed cities the field touches
A monastery	Monk	That monastery

The key restriction: you may not place a follower on a feature that already contains a follower — including a city, road or field that connects to one, however far away its owner’s follower sits.

But there is a way around it, and it is the heart of the game. Place your tile somewhere separate, put your follower on it, and connect the two features on a later turn. Once joined, you share the feature. If you have more followers on it than your opponent when it scores, you take the points outright.

Scoring During the Game

When a feature is completed, it scores immediately and you take your follower back into your supply. Getting followers back matters — with only seven, running out is what stops you claiming anything new.

Completed feature	Score
City	2 points per tile, plus 2 per banner (the shield symbols)
Road	1 point per tile
Monastery	9 points — the monastery tile plus all 8 tiles surrounding it

Fields never score during the game. Farmers stay on the board for the whole game.

How to Win

The game ends immediately once the last land tile has been placed. Anything unfinished still scores, just for less:

Incomplete feature	Score
City	1 point per tile, plus 1 per banner
Road	1 point per tile
Monastery	1 point per tile — itself plus whatever surrounds it

Then score the fields. For each field you control, score 3 points for every completed city that field touches.

Farmers are the part that decides close games. They sit there doing nothing visible all game and then land a large score at the end, so watch who is quietly claiming the fields under your cities.

Highest total score wins.

Common Mistakes

• Placing a follower on an older tile. You may only ever place a follower on the tile you just laid.
• Claiming an occupied feature directly. If a connecting road, city or field already has a follower on it, you cannot place there — you have to build separately and join up later.
• Forgetting to take followers back. When a feature completes, the follower returns to your supply. Leave it on the board and you have quietly lost a piece.
• Ignoring the fields. Farmers score nothing until the very end and then decide the game.
• Under-valuing banners. Each shield in a completed city is worth two extra points, the same as a whole extra tile.
• Placing tiles diagonally. Every tile must share a full edge with one already down, and the terrain must match across it.