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In this article, you can read about the basic rules of the board game Carcassonne and learn how to play. The object of the game is to score the most points. The game ends at the end of the turn when the last land tile is played.

Setup

Find the starting tile, identified by its inverted colored back, and place it in the center of the table face-up.

Shuffle the remaining land tiles face down and gather them into several facedown stacks for easy reach of the players.

Place the scoring track near the edge of the table. Each player picks a color and puts one of their followers on the large 0 square and the remaining 7 followers in front of them as a supply.

Pick a player to go first. Then play proceeds clockwise.

Your turn

On your turn, you draw one land tile and place it next to any adjacent tile already in play. You may not place it kitty-corner.

There are four types of segments that appear on tiles roads, fields, cloisters, and city segments. Within road segments, there are crossings that break up the road segments.

The place tile must fit all existing segments of all adjacent tiles. Roads continue with roads, cities with cities, fields with fields, the cloister is complete all by itself.

In the rare case that a drawn tile cannot legally be played anywhere and all players agree, discard it to the box and draw a new tile and continue your turn.

Followers

After a player places a land tile they may deploy a follower. You may only play one follower per turn. That follower must come from your supply. You may only deploy it to the tile you just placed.

Also, you can deploy followers in one of four ways. As a knight place the follower standing upright in the city segment, as a thief, place the followers standing on the road, as a farmer place the follower on its side on a field segment, or as a monk place the follower standing in a cloister.

You may not deploy a follower on a segment that connects to another segment on another tile no matter how far away that already has a follower on it.

You don’t have to place a follower if you don’t want to. If you don’t have any more followers you just place the tile and move to the final action of your turn. After placing a tile and a follower you may score points for completed segments.

Road segment

A road is complete when the road segments on both ends connect to a crossing, a city segment, a cloister, or when the road forms a complete loop.

The player with the most thieves on a completed road segment scores one point for each tile in the completed road. Separate segments on a tile count just once.

If two or more players all have the same number of thieves then all tied players score maximum points. Remove all thieves from the completed road and return them to their owner’s supply. At the end of the game, incomplete road tiles count for one point each.

Completed city

A city is complete when the city is completely surrounded by a city wall and there are no gaps in the wall. The player with the most nights in that city scores two points for each tile in the completed city and a bonus two points for each pennant, which is the small blue and white shield symbol.

If two or more players all have the same number of nights than all tied players score maximum points. Remove all nights from the completed city and return them to their owner’s supply. At the end of the game in complete city tiles and pendant count for one point each.

A cloister is complete when the eight spaces surrounding the cloister has a tile in them. The player with a monk in completed cloister scores nine points. One point for each of the surrounding tiles and one point for the cloister itself. Remove the monk from the completed cloister and return it to its owner’s supply.

The end of the game

At the end of the game, incomplete cloisters count itself and any of the surrounding tiles for one point each. Only after a segment is scored do you remove the followers from play and return them to player’s supplies.

The returned followers may be used again in any segment their owner wishes. It is possible for a player to deploy a follower and score a road, city, or cloister and then have that follower returned all on the same turn.

When scoring, move that players score marker forward on the scoring track that many spaces. If your score marker exceeds 50, lay your marker on its side to indicate you’ve surpassed 50 and continue around the track again.

Farms

Connected field segments are called farms. Farms only score at the end of the game. Farmers remain in the field segments where they have deployed the entire game and are never returned to their owner’s supply. To emphasize this, farmers are placed on their side.

Farms are bordered by roads, cities, and the edge of the area where the land tiles have been played. The game ends at the end of a player’s turn who places the last land tile.

Only completed cities are used for scoring farmers. The size of a city is irrelevant. The farmer must be in a farm that borders a city to supply it. the distance of the farmer is unimportant.

It is possible for multiple players to have a farmer or many farmers on the same farm. If this is the case, only the player with the most farmers in the farm controls the farm. If it is a tie for most farmers then all tied players control the farm.

Remember, you cannot deploy a follower to a tile that already has another fall we’re connecting to it. However, you may play a tile in such a way that joins two or more followers to the same area.

Scoring points

For each city’s supplied by a farm the player who controls the farm earns four points. A farm can supply and score several bordering cities. Several farms can supply a single city.

When this happens the player with the most farmers in the farms supplying the city earns the four points. If two or more players tie with the most farmers, each of the tied players earns four points.

When scoring points at the end of the game, first remove followers from incomplete roads, cities, and cloisters as you score them. Then, when scoring the farms place an unused follower in each city as you score them to be certain all cities are scored but only once.

Once all scoring has been completed, the player with the most points wins. If there is a tie then all the tied players win.

Carcassonne Board Game Set

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