Carcassonne is a tile-laying game where the players create a landscape of roads, walled mediaeval Cities, Roads, cloistered Monasteries and Farms. Carcassonne is a simple and well thought out game, which looks good, plays well, normally takes less than an hour and is relatively inexpensive. These factors certainly helped in sweep up plenty of awards in 2001.

The box contains:

• 72 tiles, each features one or more of the main four landscape elements: pasture, roads, cities and monasteries.
• 40 wooden "followers" 8 in each colour
• 1 scoreboard.
• The rules.

Each player takes it in turn to draw a tile, this tile is shown to all and must now be played. Played tiles must touch a tile already played, except for the very first tile obviously and all relevant elements must connect (so roads must continue an existing road etc.).

Next the player may place on or more of his followers onto the tile that was just played. Now the follow can be placed on any of the landscape elements, however you cannot place a follower on an element that already has an opponents follower on a connected like element. It possible to place a follower on an isolated element and later on connect it to an element already occupied by an opponent, and hence have for example two thieves on the same road. Some times this tactic can score very nicely, and can allow a player to effectively rob another players score. Now depending on which element your new follower is placed on will determine his trade, and hence what score he will generate.

Followers on roads are Thieves, followers in pastures are Farmers, followers in cities are Knights and followers in Monasteries are monks. This is important as each trade scores differently. Knights Thieves and Monks are scored at the end of the turn if they can. All followers are then removed from the scored City, Road or Monastery. This makes them available to be used to score again. In fact a player can lay a tile, place a follower and score that follower ad get him back all in one go.

The game proceeds until the last tile is laid and then all the partially complete Cities, Roads and Monasteries are scored along with the Farms.

Knights - When a city wall is completed. The player with the most knights in the city scores 2 points for each tile the city extends to and an additional 2 points for each shield symbol in the city.

Thieves - A road is completed and scored when both ends are terminated by either a City, a Monastery or a junction. The player with the most Thieves on the scores 1 point for each tile in the completed segment of road.

Monks – When a Monastery tile is completely surrounded by 8 tiles then the player owning the monk will receive 9 points.

Farmers – Farmers are only scored at the end of the Game. A farm is considered to be all connected pasture segments. At the end of the game the player with the most farmers scores 4 points for each completed city that borders the farm.

If more than one player has followers on the same scoring item then the player with the most will score it, in the case of equal numbers of followers than all players will score the item.

The objective of the game is to achieve the highest score at the end of the game.