Carcassonne

Carcassonne

This is the Dutch-language edition. In this well-known tile-laying game, the players together build up the French city of Carcassonne with all its roads, cities, cloisters and fields. By placing followers, they score points for completed projects.

About the game

Each turn you place one land tile and may put one follower on it. Which kind of follower that is depends on the tile. There are tiles with road sections, cloisters, city sections and/or pieces of field. In principle there may not be more than one follower on a project, but when two unfinished parts are built together, more followers can still end up on it. Whoever has the most followers on a completed project immediately scores points for it.

Each type of project has its own rules for the number of points you receive. The game ends when all tiles have been placed. Whoever has the most points wins. Carcassonne is popular with families as well as with frequent gamers, because despite its simple rules it has plenty of depth. The touch of luck gives everyone a chance to play for the win right up to the end.

How do you play Carcassonne?

You can see that in the video below!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuMHI2O4S5M

Carcassonne as educational material

Is Carcassonne a game for education? Absolutely!

Carcassonne takes about 35 minutes and has simple rules, so you can learn to play it quickly. In the end, the tiles form a landscape that you see from above.

Interpreting top-down views ties in with a number of core objectives in primary education, especially spatial orientation.
Playing this game introduces you to geometry and spatial insight. That develops problem-solving skills you can use in daily life. Think of cycling your route to school, packing your bag or organising your drawer. This way you prepare pupils for a world in which spatial insight and navigation are important.
You also work on a number of executive skills. We will mention organisation and planning/prioritising here. The first one involves forming the playing area by laying out the tiles. Everyone has to be able to see everything clearly and everything has to stay where it is. The second one is about planning ahead by thinking where you can best place your tiles and meeples to benefit as much as possible.