Carcassonne - Tips & Strategies

With the Traders & Builders expansion, when a city has trade good icons on its tiles, the trade goods go to the player to complete the city, not the player to score the city. Give your opponents a few points by finishing their cities for them and collecting the goods, worth up to 30 points at the end of the game.

In the Dragon expansion, it’s sometimes a good idea to not get your pieces grouped together, and also not to put them in a dead-end. That way, if the players before you drive the dragon towards you, you won’t have to kill your own piece.

When playing with 2 players a variation is to have each player use (2) colors. This is somewhat like one of the 2 Player Blokus variations.

This adds a dynamic element to the meeples, because you have 2 colors scoring points for you but do not get “double” the meeple’s power.
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For example:
Player 1 - Red and Yellow
Player 2 - Blue and Green

A completed 10 point Castle with (3) meeples.
(1)Red – (scores 10 points)
(1)Yellow – (scores 10 points)
(1)Blue – (scores 10 points)
Player 1 scores 20 points
Player 2 scores 10 points

A completed 10 point Castle with (4) meeples.
(2) Red – (scores 10 points)
(1) Yellow
(1)Blue
Player 1 scores 10 points

This is a game variation using the mini-meeple that come with the travel version. I inherited an incomplete travel version, so I decided to put the adorable mini-meeple to good use with my regular game. The mini-meeple are about 75% the size of conventional meeple. I had to paint one gray, since there are no expansions for the travel version.

Steward
Each player is given one Steward mini-meeple. It is valued at 1/2 a regular meeple. If a Steward and an opposing full meeple both end up in a completed feature, the player who used a regular meeple gets all the points. Obviously, if one player has a lone meeple in a feature, while another has a regular meeple and a Steward, then the latter player gets all the points.

Any feature already claimed by a Steward cannot be claimed by another player, as normal. Standard rules about joining claimed portions of features still apply.

I’ve found that when playing with new players or younger children , it can really make the game a lot easier to explain and more fun to play if you don’t even mention the farming part of the game. After a game or 2, if they are understanding the game, the farming can be explained and I believe they will get it much quicker without being overwhelmed. This has helped me quite a bit with new game players.