Carcassonne

If you venture far enough off the Chessboard, you wind up in Carcassonne.

The game board is a medieval landscape built by the players as the game progresses. The game starts with a single specific terrain tile face up and 71 others shuffled face down for the players to draw from. Each player's turn consists of three distinct phases:

1. Draw and place a terrain tile
2. Station a follower on the newly-placed tile (optional)
3. Score completed feature(s) (if relevant)

To start each turn, a player draws a new terrain tile and places it adjacent to tiles that are already face up. The new tile must be placed in a way that extends terrain features on the tiles it touches: roads must connect to roads, fields to fields, and cities to cities. Connections are made across adjacent edges only; corners do not connect. A *cloister* tile may be placed adjacent to another *cloister* tile, as there are no connecting features. If the newly-drawn tile cannot be placed anywhere legally, the players may choose to remove the tile from the game, or return it to the draw pile.

After placing each newly drawn tile, the placing player may opt to station a marker (called a "follower" or "meeple") on a terrain feature (i.e., a *road*, *city*, *cloister*, or *field*) of that newly placed tile to claim control of it. However, if the feature is connected to a feature already claimed by another player, the follower cannot be stationed on that feature. When stationing a follower, the marker is placed upright on the feature to claim that feature, except for a *field*, where the follower is laid down instead to emphasize that fields are not scored until the end of the game; the follower's role depends on the feature claimed, changing from thief/highwayman (*road*) to knight (*city*), monk (*cloister* or *monastery*), or farmer (*field*). It is possible for terrain features to become "shared" by opposing players when tile(s) are placed in subsequent turns that connect previously unconnected features. For example, two separate fields (each with a follower/farmer) can become connected into a single field subsequently by a newly-placed terrain tile.

If any feature (except a *field*) is completed during a player's turn, the score for the completed feature is counted for the player that controls that feature; after scoring, the controlling "meeple" is removed from the board and returned to the player's stock. Each player has eight followers; since one is used to keep track of the player's score, only seven can be in play at any moment.

The game ends when the last tile has been placed. At that time, all incomplete features (including fields) score points for the players with the most followers on them. The player with the most points wins the game.

## Scoring

During each player's turn, completed cities, cloisters, and roads (but not fields) are scored before that player's turn ends. A player may complete a feature by drawing placing a tile, claim it by stationing a follower on the newly-placed tile, and receive the score for completing it all in the same turn, but the sequence of that turn means the player cannot redeploy the follower after it is returned to their stock. The stationing phase of the turn was completed by claiming the completed feature.

Cities are completed when they contain no unfinished edges from which they may be expanded, roads are similarly completed when they have closed both ends or form a loop, and cloisters are completed when surrounded by eight tiles. Points are awarded to the players with the most followers in a feature. If there is a tie for the most followers in any given feature, all of the tied players are awarded the full number of points. Once a city, cloister, or road feature is scored, all of the followers in that feature are returned to their owners. In general (see table), points are awarded for the number of tiles covered by a feature; a completed cloister scores nine points for the cloister plus eight neighboring tiles.

At the end of the game, when there are no tiles remaining, fields and all other claimed but incomplete features are scored. The score of each field is based on the number of *completed* cities that field touches. It is possible for a field to be completely enclosed by a road without touching any completed cities, or a field can touch only incomplete cities, in which case those fields will score no points.