Base game variants

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Base Game Variants

HiG cherished many variants of the base game in the early years of Carcassonne. They made the most of the game by providing additional mechanics to enjoy the game in new ways without the addition of new tiles or components.

The publisher collected and hosted many of them on their website. They even posted a document with a selection of variants in 2002, that was available for several years, besides maintaining a page listing these variants with links to third-party sites. Once the official expansions gained traction, these variants were almost forgotten.

HiG's take on variants

Rules are there to be broken.

Of course, you can ignore the rules included with the game completely, it's your game after all. However, we think the rules make sense, otherwise they wouldn't be in the box. Nevertheless, you are free to tweak the rules further.

You will find some suggestions in this section. However, HiG does not guarantee the individual variants, nor can they clarify any rules issues or solve technical problems (e.g. with file formats).

• A collection of rule variants from various players selected by HiG.
• A variant selected by Mindok.
• A comprehensive collection of variants at H@ll9000 (translated into English here).
• A couple of variants by Achim Schopf.
• A variant by Alexandra Kremers.
• From Japan, some variants by Wanko and Tae Shioda.
• The untamed river variant by Christian Fielitz.
• A solitaire variant by Gudrun and Martin Ebel.

Rules

The following table summarizes the changes introduced by each variant. Note that the variant rules use "follower" instead of "meeple," and "cloister" instead of "monastery." We have maintained the wording of the First Edition (C1 for short) for historical reasons.

Name	Game setup	Tile drawing	Tile placement	Follower placement	New scoring	New features	Extra components	Comments
Speeding up the game								Drawing a tile at the end of your turn
Several tiles in hand								Multiple tiles in hand
Individual landscape planning								Multiple tiles in hand
Collective landscape planning								Face-up tiles to draw from as an option
Cloisters for all								Cloisters distributed during game setup
The architects								All tiles distributed during game setup
The unpunctuality of the follower								Different follower setup
Follower shortage								Fewer followers distributed during game setup
Capture								Capturing followers
Not a variant ...actually a must!								Tiles available adjusted during game setup
The battle for the completed cloisters								Multiple tiles in hand. Cloisters scored differently after the game
Life change								Followers may be placed and moved
Rush								Multiple followers may be placed and moved
Mountains					()			Mountains created with tiles placed face down. Scoring affected by updated majority
Rebuilding								Multiple tiles may be moved after placing a tile as usual
One is in charge							One neutral player marker	One player decides the tiles to be placed by all the players. The player deciding changes.
Dilapidated features								No final scoring
Rivers and harbors				()			A second tweaked copy of the game + 10 extra pieces in each player color	Adds rivers, harbors and marketplaces
Convents								Cloisters have special follower placement and scoring
Small cities								Small cities score less points when completed and for fields
Tax collectors						()		Followers can be placed on junctions and score points for it
The virtue of modesty								Different follower placement
Planning of democratic city								Tile placement as shared decision
Exceed the authority!								Different follower placement and final scoring
Common landscape tiles								Tiles face-up to draw from
Accumulation and negotiation								Tiles kept in supply before placement. Tile exchanged between players.
Untamed river		()					The River expansion	River placed during the game. Edge clashes create floods and remove tiles. Follower placement limitations.
Gudrun's Carcassonne puzzle								Solo variant

Speeding up the game

To speed up the game: the player takes a new tile immediately after playing their turn and thinks about its placement while the others are playing.

Several tiles in hand

In this variant, which is often played by 'tacticians', the players always have 2 or 3 tiles in their hand from which they can choose one. This makes it possible to plan more concretely 'into the future'. After a landscape tile has been placed, another tile is drawn back into the hand.

Note: Although HiG selected the previous wording for their variants document, the publisher leaned towards the 3-tile version when including it in some or their rulebooks, matching then the variant below.

Individual landscape planning

by Bernd Eisenstein

All players receive 3 landscape tiles in their hand. On your turn, you may choose one tile from each of these 3 tiles and place it on the table. You then replenish the tiles to 3. Finally, all tiles must be played.

Collective landscape planning

by Bernd Eisenstein

3 landscape tiles are laid out face up. The players can then decide whether they want to draw a face-up or a face-down landscape tile. After one turn, the face-up landscape tiles are replenished to 3.

Cloisters for all

by Bernd Eisenstein

All players are assigned a cloister at the start and place it face up in front of them. You may now bring this cloister into play at any time instead of drawing a tile.

The architects

by Tobias Stapelfeldt

All tiles are distributed between the players and everyone can look at the tiles in their pile as they wish. In this very strategic variant, it may make sense to distribute the cloisters to the players separately.

The unpunctuality of the follower

by Bernd Eisenstein

You may not place your follower on the landscape tile you have just placed, but only on tiles that have already been placed (subject to the other placement rules, of course).

Follower shortage

by Holger Peine

The number of followers is determined by the number of players:

2 players: 7 followers

3 players: 6 followers

4 players: 5 followers

The appeal of this variant lies in assessing whether it is worth temporarily "using up" a follower for each tile.

Capture

If a player places their own follower on a feature that is already occupied, they can decide to capture a follower already in the territory. Both followers go to the active player. However, the active player must place his follower to 'guard' the prisoner. The 'guard' can be used again, but then the prisoner escapes back to its player.

Not a variant ...actually a must!

by Bernd Eisenstein

As there are 71 tiles, you have to make sure that each player has the same number of turns. Depending on the number of players, one or more tiles are placed face down on the side:

with 2 players: 1 tile

with 3 players: 2 tiles

with 4 players: 3 tiles

with 5 players: 1 tile

The battle for the completed cloisters

by Frank Rudloff

1. Each player has two tiles in their hand to choose from when it is their turn.
2. Each unfinished cloister counts for the opponent in the final scoring. If there is more than one player, the next player in clockwise order gets the points, so that the respective opponents have different interests and approaches.

In this variant, it is possible to turn an opponent's cloister advantage into an advantage for yourself by preventing your opponent from completing their cloister.

Life change

by Tobias Stapelfeldt

Instead of placing a follower, you may choose one of the following actions:

1. Sedentarization: move one of your own thieves to an unoccupied adjacent field.
2. Bourgeoisie: If one of your own farmers is placed on a farm adjacent to an uncompleted city, the farmer may move to the city.
3. Crusade: Two of your knights are placed on a cloister occupied by another player, who immediately returns all of their monks back to their supply.
4. Bandit knight: One of your knights may move onto a road located on the same tile as the city segment occupied by the knight.

Rush

by Tobias Stapelfeldt

The rules of Life change apply. After each action or the deployment of a follower, one point may be spent to perform a new action or deploy a follower again

Mountains

by Tobias Stapelfeldt

Instead of placing a tile normally, the player can also place the tile upside down next to a field edge without a road as a mountain range. When considering the edges of mountains when placing tiles normally, there must always be field edges without a road. Followers can be placed as mine workers on a mountain until the end of the game.

If there are city tiles with a pennant at a distance of 1 or 2 tiles orthogonally from the miner (forges), the miner worker will count as

1. a knight when scoring a city with one of these pennant tiles
   and
2. an additional farmer in the final scoring for such a city.

Rebuilding

by Tobias Stapelfeldt

After a player has placed their tile, they can do the following as an alternative to the normal turn sequence:

1. The player reduces their total score by a certain number of points.
2. For each point reduced, the player can now remove an unoccupied tile from the playing field and must then immediately place it in another position. (The tile may not be connected to the rest on more than 2 sides and the playing field may not be divided into several parts by the removal).
3. The player may now place a follower on the last tile placed according to the normal rules.
4. Scoring is done as usual.

One is in charge

by Robert Vötter

For this variant, an additional figure is needed to show which player has the turn. This player will draw as many tiles as there are players. The player looks at the tiles and gives one tile to each player as they see fit. Of course, the player keeps one tile himself.

Variant a) The tiles are dealt face down.

Variant b) The tiles are dealt face up. Everyone can see the tiles of the other players.

The players take turns to place their tiles. The starting player begins, of course.

Then the figure is passed to the next player and the game continues in the same way.

A small hint: It often happens with this variant that you pass on a tile that you think is very bad, but the other player plays so well afterwards that you are almost annoyed.

Dilapidated features

by Bernd Eisenstein

At the end of the game, unfinished cities, roads and cloisters are not scored. Therefore you have to be very careful in placing your followers.

Rivers and harbors

by Manfred Stenzel

For this variant you require two games of Carcassonne. You play with 2 games, where the roads of one set are painted blue and used as rivers. The 3 tiles with cities and a road become rivers as well; the city is now regarded as a harbor. The 2 cloister tiles with a road also become rivers and are no longer treated as cloisters, but as market places. Now the following changes in rules apply:

• Because the playing surface is much bigger, a farmer now only scores 2 points per finished city.
• You can place followers onto the rivers. It is possible to have pieces of several players on one river, still following normal placement rules.
• If a river ends at intersections at both ends (not by a harbor or marketplace), rivers score like roads.
• If a river ends at a harbor, the player who has played the harbor tile immediately gets 2 points. A marketplace is worth 3 points.
• A marketplace is not treated like a cloister, therefore does no longer get additional points.
• The harbor can be extended like a normal city, but does not get additional points at the final scoring.
• Each player, who has a follower (=boat) on the river when the first harbor tile is being placed, gets the right to place an additional piece of their color on the harbor segments during the next turns (instead of drawing a tile). It is permitted to place one additional piece, which constitutes goods, per segment. In order to have additional pieces, you can very well use cubes or any tokens in each players color.
• In total 10 goods pieces are available per player, at the end of the game they count 2 points each. Additionally, the player, who owns the majority of goods in one harbor gets 3 bonus points.

Author's comment: We enjoyed this variant, but have played too few games of this type to be able to determine the optimal distribution of rivers/harbors/marketplaces at this stage. The advantage is that everyone can arrange this number according to their own ideas. Of course, the playing time is extended accordingly.

Convents

by Achim Schopf

A convent is created when a player places two followers on a cloister instead of one. The player can do this either when placing the tile or later, if they do not otherwise place a follower in their turn and the cloister is worth less than 6 points at that time.

Scoring: The completed cloister scores an additional 5 points; if it remains uncompleted, however, 5 points are deducted (it is then only worth 1 - 3 points).

Leaving the cloister: The convent can be left by removing both followers from the cloister. In this case, no points are awarded and the followers may only be used again on the next turn.

Small cities

by Achim Schopf

Small cities consisting of just 2 tiles are considered villages and only score half. This applies to the "knight scoring" and is extended to the "farmer scoring" in this variant.

Tax collectors

by Alexandra Kremers

Tax collectors can be placed at junctions. For each completed road ending at the junction in question, the tax collector receives one third of the points that the thief receives. If necessary, the number of roads must be rounded up so that it is divisible by three. Once all the roads at the crossroads have been scored, the tax collector figure can be taken back.

The virtue of modesty

by Wanko and Tae Shioda

In the original rule, you may put your follower on a landscape tile that you have just placed. However in this variant, you may not. When you place a tile, you ask the first player on your right whether they want to place their follower on the tile. If they don't want to, you then ask the next player on right. You continue like this until there is anyone who wants to place their piece. Of course, you couldn't place your follower. And if no one wants to do so, no follower is placed during your turn. If someone says they want to place a follower, they put a follower on a tile and you don't have to ask anyone.

Planning of democratic city

(For 3 -5 players) by Wanko and Tae Shioda

In this variant, there is a difference in the placement rules of landscape tiles. At beginning of your turn, you draw a tile first. Then all players consider where to place the tile and discuss it democratically, with the majority deciding. If there is more than one majority, the player who belongs to a majority and sits the closest to your right decides.

Exceed the authority!

by Wanko and Tae Shioda

In your turn, you place a landscape tile as usual. In this variant, the follower placement rules are different. That is to say, you may place one of the other player's followers in your turn. Of course, you are allowed not to place it if you don't want to. When any roads, cities or cloisters are completed including the placement of the other player's follower, the other player will score for it. You may not place any followers in a field. The scoring rules are as usual during the game, but the rules of the final scoring are different. Each player gets 20 points for each one of their followers on the board.

Common landscape tiles

by Wanko and Tae Shioda

Before beginning a game, draw and place two landscape tiles face up on table. In your turn, you have to choose one of them and play it. At this time, you may place one of your followers on the tile as usual. After that, you draw and place another tile face up on table. Because of this, there are always two tiles available to draw from during the game.

Accumulation and negotiation

by Wanko and Tae Shioda

You can choose one of the following actions in your turn.

1. You may draw and put a landscape tile face up in front of you.
2. You may play a landscape tile from the tiles in front of you. (At this time, you may place one of your followers.)

You can exchange some of the tiles in front of you for some of the other player's tiles. You can only exchange tiles in front of you and the other players.

Untamed river

by Christian Fielitz

The Carcassonne basic game and the River expansion are required. [It includes some comments on interactions with Exp. 2 - Traders & Builders in brackets.]

The rules of the basic game apply, with the following exceptions:

A simple river tile is used as an additional starting tile and is placed on the original starting tile so that the river can flow parallel to the road. The river tile with the lake is not used initially and is placed aside.

All other tiles are shuffled with the river extension and placed in a bag for drawing.

The current player draws a tile. If the player draws a river tile, they must continue the existing river (i.e. the player may not start a second river). Furthermore, a river tile is treated like a normal tile, so you can place farmers, knights, thieves etc. according to the applicable rules.

The river must be able to spread unhindered. For this reason, it is not permitted to place another river curve directly next to a curve in such a way that the river immediately turns 180 degrees. However, if at least one straight river segment has previously been placed between the two river curves, the 180 degree turn is possible. If a further river curve follows at some point, the direction of rotation of the river must always be changed with this curve.

If a river tile is placed, the rule that a tile must fit from all sides need not be observed. If the river tile just placed does not match an existing "normal" tile, there is a flood. The mismatched "normal" tiles and the figures on them [including the pig and the builder] are removed from the game.

The playing field must not fall apart into several parts as a result of a flood (tiles no longer touch each other or only touch at the corners; a structure that could never have been created with "normal" placement). If this does occur, the entire section that does not contain the river is removed from the game (including the figures).

[If you are playing with Exp. 2 - Traders & Builders and a city or road is flooded in such a way that there is only one section containing a player's builder without a direct connection to a knight or thief, the builder is returned to the respective player. A pig, however, remains in place, so it can become worthless].

If cities or roads that have already been scored are opened by a flood, you can score them again by placing a matching tile. [When playing with Exp. 2 - Traders & Builders , only as many trading goods tokens (grain, cloth, barrels) are spent as are still in the "bank". It is quite possible that you will run out of trading goods tokens towards the end].

After placing a tile, a farmer, thief, monk or knight etc. can only be placed if the follower can reach a river tile from there in a maximum of 4 steps (placed tiles). Otherwise, the follower would die of thirst and may therefore not be placed.

If the last (counting!!!!!) river tile was placed during a turn, the lake is automatically placed at the end of this turn (does not count as a player's turn).

Gudrun's Carcassonne puzzle

by Gudrun and Martin Ebel

Puzzling with the square Carcassonne tiles is of course easier than with the usual puzzle pieces. But if you make certain demands on the end result, it can be quite difficult. And so, on a rainy afternoon, Gudrun's Carcassonne puzzle was created, for you players to emulate.

The game can be played with or without the time limit of one hour, with just the basic game or with the basic game and the tiles from the first and second expansions.

The starting tile is sorted out beforehand and placed in the middle of the table. The player shuffles all the tiles face down and stacks them in several piles. The player makes a note of the start time and then takes tiles from the piles and places them next to the starting tile. During the course of the game, the player can also remove and swap the tiles already placed. The player can also set aside several tiles face up so that they can be added again later. Tiles that have been removed from the piles must remain face up on the table. The face-down piles of tiles may not be looked through either, but the top tile must always be drawn and turned over, and the transitions between the tiles must always be correct.

The objective is to create as large a city as possible within an hour, surrounded by as few complete or incomplete cities as possible, with as few roads as possible leading to the outside, and forming as rectangular a map as possible.

A gap surrounded by other tiles is not allowed at the end of the game (scoring would be invalid). The following scoring shows what the player must take into account.

Scoring:
The largest completed city: +20 points

Each straight outer edge consisting of more than three tiles:
4 tiles: +1 point; 5 tiles: +2 points; 6 tiles: +3 points, etc.

Each additional completed city: -1 point

Each additional open city: -2 points

Each road leading out of the playing field: -1 point

In order to be able to compare scores with other players, there are three categories:
A) Basic game only within one hour
B) Basic game and two expansions within one hour
C) Basic game and two expansions without time limit

Footnotes

For Icons explanation and licensing please visit Icons page.