Carcassonne - a German board game about a French city that you play on your phone.

The German and the French don’t like each other very much; which is why I didn’t expect much from Carcassonne. I mean, a game made by a German about a French city? it is not very encouraging from the get-go. However, it seemed similar to one of my favorite board games, Settlers of Catan, so I made a blind purchase, and I’m really happy to say it’s a great game. Jawohl!

Carcassonne is a map building game. The game consists of 72 tiles that have drawings of fields, cities, roads and abbeys. Players take placing random tiles in ways that fit each other, sort of like a puzzle. To score, players have six ‘followers’ or Meeples, and they can set one down on each tile that they play every turn. The idea is that Meeples give you a claim to the territory that you set it on (be it a road, city, field or abbey) and then you get points when it’s completed. The bigger the feature completed, the more points you receive.

The game board after a couple of turns. All photos courtesy of me.

There is a lot of strategy involved in the placing of both tiles and Meeples, because you do not get a Meeple back until whatever thing it is placed on is scored. Cities are only scored when they are completely surrounded by walls, roads are scored either when they are looped or they end at clearly marked junctions. Abbeys are scored when they are completely surrounded by other tiles. There is an additional layer of complexity with fields, because they nab you 3 points for every complete city that borders that field, but it is only scored at the end of the game. This means that once you set a Meeple on a field, you have no chance of getting it back. Similarly, if you set a Meeple down on a road, city or abbey, you don’t get it back until it’s scored. If a feature isn’t completed and the game ends, you never gave it back. You still get points for incomplete stuff, but not as many as you would if it had been completed.

When you set a Meeple down on a feature, no other Meeples can be deployed by anyone on the same thing. However, there is the chance that due to the way tiles get placed, two separate cities may become one. In occasion, this means that a city, road or field may have more than one Meeple. When this happens, all points go to whoever has the most Meeples in it, and ties result in everyone getting all the points. Because of this, another fun part of the game is trying to figure out how to steal points from opponents by placing tiles and Meeples in such a way that you are sharing a feature, and have more Meeples than they do. This is especially crucial with fields, because they can be the difference maker at the end of the game.

The game board after a few more turns.

Now everything I described above is true for the physical and video game version of the game. The transition to iPhone / iPod touch is absolutely fantastic. You have a virtual table, and you drag and drop tiles using touch controls. The tiles look exactly like the real ones, and the developers have put context sensitive tips and controls, like showing you which places a tile is legal to play, and a rotate button when there is more than one legal position to place a tile. Additionally, there are extensive multiplayer options, ranging from a pass and play, to wireless local play, to internet play. You can keep a friends list or compete with random people over the internet. Overall, the developers have done a tremendous job of translating and enhancing the real life experience of playing the physical game.

The interface is extremely clean and simple. Tiles zoom in so you can choose where to drop your Meeples.

The sound effects are a little annoying, but you can turn them off and listen to your music while in it. Because of all this, if you have an iPhone or iPod touch, I would recommend dropping the $4.99 to get it.