How to play Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a tile-laying game by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede in which players collectively build a medieval landscape of cities, roads, monasteries, and fields. On each turn you draw one land tile, fit it into the growing layout, and optionally commit a follower — called a meeple — to claim a feature for points.

The rules are easy to learn in a single round, yet the decisions run deep. Every tile placement shapes the shared map, and the choice of when to plant a meeple, which feature to claim, and when to retrieve followers through scoring keeps the tension alive from the first tile to the last.

Play proceeds clockwise. On your turn you must:

1. Draw and place a tile — draw one tile, rotate it freely to any of its four orientations, and place it adjacent to the layout so that every touching edge matches (road to road, city to city, field to field). If no legal placement exists, discard it and draw again.
2. Place a meeple (optional) — you may place one of your meeples on any feature of the tile you just placed, provided that feature is not already connected to a meeple anywhere along its extent. A meeple becomes a knight in a city, a thief on a road, a monk on a monastery, or a farmer lying flat in a field — a field is the open grassy area between roads and city walls; fields stretch across many tiles, just as cities and roads do.
3. Score completed features — if your placement closes a road (both ends sealed — each end must connect to a city tile, a crossroads tile, or wrap around a monastery tile), finishes a city (fully enclosed by walls), or surrounds a monastery (all 8 neighbouring tiles present), score it immediately and return the meeples on it to their owners.

The game ends when the last tile is placed.

The player with the most points wins. Points are scored during the game for completed features and again at the end for incomplete ones:

• Road (complete): 1 point per tile; (incomplete): 1 point per tile
• City (complete): 2 points per tile + 2 per pennant (a shield symbol printed on some city tiles); (incomplete): 1 point per tile + 1 per pennant
• Monastery (complete): 9 points; (incomplete): 1 point per surrounding tile
• Farmers score only at game end — each farmer earns 3 points per completed city touching their field

When two or more players tie for majority on a shared feature, all tied players score the full value. The strategic edge usually comes from farmers: because they never return to your supply, committing one early is a long-term investment — position a farmer to border multiple completed cities and the payoff at the game end can be decisive.