Selected Rules Variants

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Originally from the official home page at www.carcassonne.de. Not available anymore.

Collective planning

by Bernd Eisenstein

Three tiles are placed on one side, face-up. The players can then decide to take any one of the face-up tiles or one from the stack. If any of the face-up tiles are used, they are replaced at the end of the turn, so that there are always three to choose from.

Cloisters for everyone!

by Bernd Eisenstein

At the start of the game, every player receives a cloister and places it face-up in front of him or herself. This tile may be placed at any time during the game instead of drawing one from the stack.

The architects

by Tobias Stapelfeldt

The tiles are divided among the players, who may select any tile from these individual stacks for placement. It may be strategically useful to distribute the cloisters separately.

Follower unpunctuality

by Bernd Eisenstein

A player may not deploy a follower to the tile just placed, but only to one which has already been placed (according to the usual rules for deployment, of course).

Fewer followers

by Holger Peine

The number of followers is determined in connection with the number of players:

  • two players: seven followers
  • three players: six followers
  • four players: five followers

The attraction of this variation is that it encourages players to carefully consider whether a follower should really be deployed to a given tile.

Prisoners

If a follower "enters" an already occupied city via the placement of a connecting tile, the player who deployed the follower can opt for it to take captive one of the other followers in the feature. In this case, both followers are given to the player: his or her follower must be assigned to "guard duty." However, the “guard” can be deployed to a tile at any time, at which point the prisoner is returned to its owner.

The battle for completed cloisters

by Frank Rudolf

  1. During his or her turn, every player has two tiles to choose from in his or her hand.
  2. During the final scoring, the score of every incomplete cloister is awarded to the opponent. In the case of more than two players, the player to the left receives the points, forcing the respective opponents to have different interests and strategies.

This variation offers a player the opportunity to turn an opponent’s cloister advantage into an advantage for themselves, by trying to prevent the opponent from completing a cloister.

A new lease on life

by Tobias Stapelfeldt

Instead of deploying a follower, a player may choose to perform one of the following actions:

  1. Settling down: a thief belonging to the player may be moved to an unoccupied farm bordering the road.
  2. The call of the city: a farmer may be moved to an incomplete city bordering the farm.
  3. Religious war: two of the player’s knights may be moved to a cloister occupied by a monk of an opponent, and the monk returned to the supply.
  4. The highwayman: one of the player’s knights may be moved to a road segment on any of the tiles of the city formerly containing the knight.

The dash

by Tobias Stapelfeldt

The same rules apply as for “A new lease on life.” After every action or deployment of a follower, the player may sacrifice a point on the scoreboard in order to carry out a further action or deploy another follower.

Mountains

by Tobias Stapelfeldt

Instead of placing the tile as usual, the player may turn the tile into a mountain by placing it - upside down - next to a field without a road. When placing a tile next to a mountain, the edge of the placed tile must always be a field without a road. Followers may be deployed to the mountain as miners, remaining there until the end of the game. If a pennant (smithy) lies within two tiles distance of a miner, then the miner:

  1. counts as a knight when for the purpose of scoring the city in question, and
  2. counts as an additional farmer in relation to the city during final scoring.

Rebuilding

by Tobias Stapelfeldt

After a player has placed a tile as usual, rather than following the usual procedure, he or she may do this instead:

  1. Move his or her score marker back a given number of points.
  2. For every point deducted, the player may remove an unoccupied tile from the playing field and must then place it somewhere else. The tile removed may not be touching other tiles on more than two of its sides, and its removal must not divide the playing field into unconnected parts.
  3. A follower may be deployed to the removed and replaced tile as usual.
  4. Scoring proceeds as usual.

Only one can choose

by Robert Vötter

For this variation an additional figure is required; it is used to indicate which player’s turn it is. This player draws as many tiles as there are players. After looking at the tiles, he or she distributes them among the other players as he or she chooses, naturally retaining one tile.

Variation a): Distribute the tiles face down.
Variation b): Distribute the tiles face up, so that all players can see the tiles.

Beginning with the player whose turn it is, the players then take turns to place their tiles.

Then the figure is passed to the next player and the game proceeds according to the same principle.

Note: It is often possible with this variation that a player will pass on a tile which may seem useless, only to find that another player uses it so well that one can get quite annoyed.

The Count of Carcassonne: Official Variants

Even the aristocracy are subject to certain rules, and cannot simply do whatever they may want. The following variants take this into account and constrain the freedom of the Count. Using these variants will lend the mini-expansion even more tactical possibilities. In both variants, the Count may no longer be freely moved, but rather:

  • whenever a new follower is deployed to the city of Carcassonne, the Count is moved clockwise to the next city quarter; or
  • the Count is moved to whichever city quarter the new follower is deployed to.