Over Hill and Dale Base Game

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A clever tile-laying game for 2 to 5 players, ages 7 and up.

Take in the magnificent scenery of this vast countryside by hiking a trail surrounded by fruit trees, wheat fields, and sunflowers! You'll be unable to resist the juicy apples and sweet strawberries you'll find along the way.

This rustic new variant of Carcassonne is alive with interesting decisions and intriguing tactics. Gathering a fine harvest, traveling far and wide, and taking care of your animals is reward enough, but it might just win you the game!

Components and Setup

Welcome to Carcassonne – Over Hill and Dale! These instructions will gently guide you through the rules of the newest variant of the classic Carcassonne. After reading this short rulebook, you will be able to teach it to and play it with your friends. Soon you will be enjoying a refreshing new Carcassonne experience.

First you must set the game up, but that is a simple task. As we guide you through the setup, we will briefly explain the various components.

The 73 Land tiles depict paths and fields, surrounding lush meadows. Animals are also found on many of these tiles.

A tile depicting a field with a harvest symbol

A tile depicting a path

A tile depicting a path and animals

One of the 73 Land tiles has a blue back. This is the start tile, from which every game begins.

Start tile with blue back

Normal tile with yellow back

There are 5 tokens each of apples, strawberries, pumpkins, sunflowers, and grain. In addition, there are 8 happy scarecrows.

Front of 6 different tokens, and back

Place the start tile in the center of the table. Shuffle the remaining tiles facedown. Then split them into several piles and place them around the table, so that each player may reach a pile. Sort the Harvest tokens and place them at the edge of the table.

Start tile

Several piles of land tiles

Then we have the scoreboard, which is also placed at the edge of the table. Next to it, place the 5 50/100 tokens. You will need these later, once you have scored at least 50 points.

Scoring Token front and back

Scoretrack

There are 25 meeples, 5 each in yellow, red, green, blue, and black. Additionally, in each colour, there are 2 stables. Each player begins with 4 meeples and 2 stables. These form the supply of each player.

Place the 5th meeple of each player colour on the 0 space of the scoreboard. All meeples and stables not used by the players can be returned to the box.

Meeples

Stables

Goal of the Game

Before we begin explaining the rules: what exactly is Carcassonne – Over Hill and Dale all about? What is the goal of the game? Turn by turn, the players place Land tiles. In doing so, they build paths and fields filled with fruits and vegetables.

Your meeples can become wanderers and farmers, and you will build sturdy stables in the meadows. Doing so will score you points both during the game and at the end of it. In the end, whoever has the most points wins!

Let's begin!

Gameplay

Carcassonne – Over Hill and Dale is played in clockwise order. The youngest player begins. As with each player who follows,the active player performs the actions of a turn in the described order. Then it is the turn of the next player in clockwise order, and so on. Let us explore the actions, and the order in which they are performed. We will do so with the tiles depicting paths, fields, and stables. What actions are there?

1. Place a tile : A player must always draw exactly 1 new Land tile, and place it so that it connects to at least 1 previously placed Land tile.

2. On the placed tile ... : 2a) ... place a meeple OR 2b) ... place a stable.

3. Score points : 3a) The player must perform all scoring triggered by the placement of the tile. 3b) In addition, the player may wander with a meeple to score points.

The Paths

1. Placing a tile

The tile you drew has 3 paths that emerge from a junction. You add it to the existing landscape.

Note how these Land tiles connect to one another.

You have placed the red bordered tile. The path connects to another path, and the fields connect to other fields. Perfect!

2a. Placing a meeple as a wanderer

Now that you have placed the tile, you may place a meeple as a wanderer on one of its paths. However, you may only do so if there are no wanderers already on the path.

The path is not yet complete, so for the time being, no points are scored (action 3), and play passes to the next player in clockwise order.

The next player draws a Land tile and places it. Your wanderer is already on the path to the left of the junction. Therefore, your opponent may not place his own meeple on that path. Instead, he chooses to place a meeple as a farmer in the field of the tile he just placed.

It is usually good to place a meeple, but never mandatory. You can always choose not to place one.

You place a meeple as a wanderer on the left path of the tile you just placed. As there is no other meeple on this path, this is not a problem.

As the path is already occupied, the blue player chooses to place his meeple as a farmer on the field instead.

3. Scoring points

Whenever a path is closed on both ends, it is scored. Paths will end in junctions, fields, or by forming a closed loop. Now we check if anything needs to be scored. Huzzah! We score the road, because both ends of it are closed.

It doesn’t matter who placed the tile, your path is now complete and you score points for it. How many points do you score? Each tile in your completed path scores you 1 point.

Because your path consists of 3 tiles, you score 3 points.

You take the wanderer that just scored you 3 points and return it to your supply. The blue meeple stays in play, as its field is not yet complete.

This is where the scoreboard comes in. Whenever you score points, you keep track of them by moving your scoring meeple forwards. Continuing our example, we move your scoring meeple 3 spaces forward.

After each scoring, the meeple that was just scored is returned to your supply.

Turn by turn, you will score more and more points. Once you have completed a lap around the scoreboard and crossed the 0 space, take a 50/100 tile and place it in front of you with the 50 side up. If you manage to make it around the scoreboard a second time, flip the tile over to its 100 side.

With the following action, you can score even more points with a path!

The remaining rules will follow shortly.

Tile Distribution

Total Regular Tiles: 73

Note: Tiles with multiple versions have various distributions of animals and harvest symbols.

  x11

  x8

  x5

  x1

  x2

  x7

  x2

  x2

  x2

  x1

  x3

  x4

  x1

  x1

  x1

  x3

  x2

  x1

  x4

  x3

  x2

  x4

  x1

  x1

Total Tokens: 33

  x5

  x5

  x5

  x5

  x5

  x8

Footnotes

For Icons explanation and licensing please visit Icons page.