For anyone following my blogs you will know I have a young family and I’m really enjoying the children’s games, appropriate to their abilities. My first Carcassonne is no exception here, particularly as I am a huge Carcassonne fan. It has been exceptionally well made, really simplifying the rules but maintaining the essence of a Carcassonne game.
What have they done?
Carcassonne, for me, is not a complicated game to pick up. It is lovely and familiar. But the depth of strategy can be tricky to grasp and that is the area for me that younger people may struggle, making Carcassonne not appropriate for them.
This game has been stripped back to basics. The focus is only on roads, nothing else is relevant.
For 2-4 players only, players are given 8 meeples and it is the player to get all their meeples out first taking the win.
Each tile has a selection of meeples printed on each of the tiles. Players have to close the roads and all meeples printed on the tile get that colour meeple from the players pool played onto the tile and they are on their way to getting the 8 meeples played. Only when a road is closed the meeples are played by players.
Beautiful Carcassonne
This particular set of Carcassonne is highly vibrant and bold in colour. The animation is more cartoon-like making it look a very appealing game for the young ones to want to play (Very clever Z-man). It’s great though, I do believe that first visual impression is highly important in a board game and this game delivers. This is particularly important for young minds in sparking that imagination.
The meeples and the tiles are significantly larger than your base game which makes handling the components far easier as well as clearer for the young ones to see what is going on on each tile.
Simplified
I love how the set has been simplified for the younger player. Taking out the cities, the monasteries, the fields (not to mention all the expansion sets), and focusing on those roads has been very clever. It doesn’t ruin the game.
My first Carcassonne has been purposefully shortened to begin with. We know children have shorter attention spans so making this Carcassonne at a length suitable to their age is very astute. More than half the tiles of the standard game caters to this and the game can finish sooner if played out in such a way. It’s not long, making it ideal.
The game has not lost its point. This is highly important as there is still a very clear victory condition and strategy to be achieved. It is standalone also so when the time comes to move those young ones onto full Carcassonne they will have a great foundation from having played this game.
Every puzzle has a solution.
All players still have to think about how they play in this one. You cannot just turn and play a tile without purpose, you will lose. Players do not want to leave their opponents’ colours open for closing out and certainly don’t want to give them a long run of meeples to play on a closed road. There is plenty of strategy within this game to allow for that problem solving development to commence and create those foundations for building these essential life skills. I’m very impressed with the game.
Final Thoughts
Z-man games have played a blinder here in transforming a much loved and iconic game into a very friendly children’s game. Carcassonne can be ruthless, those of you who play know this, but this has massively been reduced keeping it very friendly and social for the younglings. It’s been very well received in our home and we cannot wait to have many more family games.
