Carcassonne is the castle-building game for many. It’s how I ended up in the hobby in the first place. A weekend away working out exactly how scoring for farmers works is really the thing that led me to be writing these words for you to read.
Everyone’s deep love of Carcassonne comes from its simplicity. Players are asked to draw a single tile from a stack (or a bag in some versions) and then place it appropriately. That means placing it so that roads align, castles touch, and the grass isn’t interrupted by a sudden open courtyard of a castle. Once players have done that, they have the option of adding a meeple from their supply to a tile – to the castle if it’s empty, on a road if its unoccupied, or lying in a field, if that also doesn’t have someone else lying in it. This field, you might shout at your friend many hillsides away, is not big enough for the both of us.