A Nice Game to Live In

We were trying to take our mind off the heat, so Liz suggested we play a game. See also suggested one I had been waiting for a nice pretty floor to play on.

Carcassonne 2-6 players

This is the behemoth. The game I gave the most expansions to. I have all of the major ones, except the two really gimmicky ones. I started with the 10-year anniversary box which is shaped like a big meeple. It's very cute an all, but horrible for actual storage, both in the box and on the shelf. I made my own box out of framing cardboard and some paper. I replaced most of the acrylic meeples from the 10-year version with mini-meeples I got from Meeple Source. This helped keep the all wood aesthetic, allowed for a phantom meeple to be used, and it saved space inside the box which was becoming a concern. If I have to add anything else, I'm screwed. I think I'll just keep my ears plugged on anymore Carcassonne news. It's a lovely game and simple to teach. You draw a tile and place it anywhere on the edges of the already placed tiles so that the features connect. You can use any of your meeples to claim a feature on the tile you placed. When the feature is finished, you score points for it and get your meeple back. The expansions add more tiles, meeple types, and mechanics

This game we played with the main set, Inn & Cathedrals, The Ferries, and The Goldminers. It was a normal game until about mid-way through; I was able to snipe a large town from Liz and pretty much had her lapped on the scoring track for the rest of the game. She got pissy at me for the rest of the game. She even began name calling like "meanie" and "Carl". I stand by what I did. If I didn't it would have been the other way around.

This is a fabulous gateway game and everyone should play it at least once. You don't really need to go crazy like I did. Just get what you like.

Tally: 84/164  Bonus: 22/50