I’m a recent convert to Carcassonne, despite having been a fan of modern board games for a good few years. I totally understand why it’s such a popular “gateway game”, and how it’s stood the test of time after its original release in 2000. Mists Over Carcassonne is a relatively recent addition to the Carcassonne family, releasing in 2022, and changes up the formula by playing cooperatively and even solo, which is how I've been playing it.
How exactly is Mists different from Carcassonne?
The basic mechanics of Mists Over Carcassonne are almost exactly the same as in Carcassonne - you draw and place tiles to build up a landscape of fields, cities, and roads, optionally placing meeples to score points. Since Mists Over Carcassonne is either solo or cooperative, instead of aiming to get more points than your fellow players, you’re aiming for a particular high score. Furthermore, where in Carcassonne you might try to force out another player to claim all the points for yourself, in Mists you can double (or triple, or quadruple) your score by joining forces and placing multiple players’ meeples on the same city or road. This works in solo games too, since instead of starting with meeples of all the same colour, you’ll start with 12 meeples in four different colours.
The titular mists throw a bit of a spanner in your point-scoring goals, however, bringing with them pesky, plan-ruining ghosts. The ghosts, in the form of adorable little ghost meeples, are added to the board when you place down a mist tile, and will become your greatest enemy. That’s because you have a limited stock of 15 ghost meeples (ghostles?), and if you run out, you lose. You clear the ghosts from the board by either completing the mist patches, or sacrificing your points when you score a city or road to get rid of up to three ghosts from a tile. This second one is a really important mechanic, don’t forget about it!
What is Mists Over Carcassonne like to play?
Difficult! In a good way! Mists Over Carcassonne is structured with six different levels, each increasing in difficulty. Level one has you aiming for 50 points, with only the basic mechanics of the tile-laying and the ghosts, and it took me over a dozen attempts to beat it. I had a great time, though; it has that addictive “just one more go” quality when things don’t go to plan, and is nice and quick to reset. Plus, I found that games normally went south before I’d got through even half the tiles (sometimes well before), so I didn’t feel like I’d invested a lot of time only to lose near the end.
Level two introduces the Castles and Cemeteries mini-expansions, which give you an extra way to earn points, and an extra way to run out of ghosts. Castles, if you place a meeple on them,
earn a point for each surrounding tile with mist on it, though they only score when you fully surround them with tiles. On the other hand, the Cemeteries require you to place an extra ghost on them every time you place a ghost somewhere else on the tableau. As I’m sure you can imagine, this can burn through your ghostle supply very quickly, but fortunately you can “close” cemeteries by placing tiles on all four of their edges. This banishes the ghosts from the cemetery, but you also have to immediately bury a meeple there, meaning you can’t use it for the rest of the game. Yes, this is bizarrely morbid, but I didn’t design the game.
I’ve found that the two mini-expansions add a lot more randomness to the game, with wins and loses being decided mostly by how many castles or cemeteries I draw. This isn’t my favourite aspect of the game, but I don’t dislike it either; I feel like it leaves room for skill to counteract some of the randomness. It also adds to the replayability, which might otherwise be a concern for a game with beatable levels. In fact, I’ve happily replayed levels one and two despite having “unlocked” level three (which adds another new mechanic). Between the differing mechanics and increasing difficulty, you can tailor the game to how you’re feeling by choosing which level you fancy playing.
So what’s the verdict, especially as a solo game?
Mists Over Carcassonne works really well as a solo game - it’s quiet and contemplative, and addictively replayable. As a fan of Carcassonne but a mostly solo board gamer, I love that Mists gives me an option to play something very similar to Carcassonne outside of game nights.
Compared to playing cooperatively, the multicoloured meeple pool means that you’re not technically at a disadvantage, but considering how challenging the game is, the extra brainpower of multiplayer might count as an advantage. At the very least I imagine it’s easier to keep track of all the different coloured meeples when they belong to different players. Other than that, I would guess that Mists plays very similarly cooperatively as solo, and compared to base Carcassonne it’s a nice new challenge.
Speaking of base Carcassonne, Mists has another trick up its sleeve in that it can be used as an expansion for the original. The mist tiles, castles, and cemeteries get mixed in with the base game tiles, and placing ghosts is now used to harangue your fellow players (and no one loses if they run out). All of these options for how to play Mists make it very easy to recommend, especially if you’re already a fan of Carcassonne!
