How to Play Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a tile-laying territory game: instead of a fixed board, the map is built one tile at a time by the players themselves, spreading outward from a single starting tile into a landscape of roads, cities, cloisters and fields. This guide covers the complete ruleset exactly as it plays in our version, including modern scoring.

Overview & Goal

Each turn you draw a tile and add it to the shared map, then decide whether to place one follower to start claiming a piece of that map. Roads and cities score points the moment they’re finished; cloisters score once fully surrounded; and fields — the trickiest feature — score only once, at the very end, based on how many finished cities they border. Whoever has the highest total when the tiles run out wins; an exact tie is shared.

Components

• 72 square tiles, each printed with a landscape of roads, city walls and fields, and sometimes a cloister.
• 7 followers per player (2–5 players), used to claim features as they’re built.
• One starting tile, always placed at the centre of the table before the first turn.

There’s no board, no dice and no cards — the tiles themselves become the board as the game unfolds.

Setup

• The starting tile is placed in the middle of the play area.
• The remaining 71 tiles are shuffled into a face-down stack (the draw pile).
• Every player receives 7 followers of their own colour, kept in a personal supply.
• Scores start at 0. Play proceeds in seat order.

A Turn, Step by Step

1. Draw a tile. It’s revealed to everyone.
2. Place it. Rotate it as needed and place it anywhere it touches at least one already-placed tile edge-to-edge, with every touching edge matching in terrain — road meets road, city meets city, field meets field. If the tile you drew truly can’t be placed anywhere, it’s set aside and you draw a replacement.
3. Claim a feature (optional). You may place one follower from your supply onto any segment of the tile you just placed — a road, a city, a cloister, or a field — as long as no follower already sits anywhere on that connected feature, even far across the map. You may also place no follower at all.
4. Resolve scoring. Any road, city or cloister that becomes complete because of your placement scores immediately, and every follower on it returns to its owner’s supply. Fields never score during play.

Play then passes to the next seat. The game ends the moment the last tile is placed and its scoring resolves.

Special Rules & Edge Cases

The occupancy rule. A feature can carry followers from more than one player only when two separately-claimed, already-occupied features are joined together by a later tile placement — nothing is ever displaced, and majority decides who scores it once it’s complete.

Ties on a feature. Whoever has the most followers on a completed feature scores it in full. If two or more players are tied for the most, each of them scores the full value — points are never split or halved.

Roads and cities can be blocked, or left with a hole nobody can ever fill. Both are legal, intentional tactics.

Field boundaries. A field is split from its neighbours by roads, city walls, and the edge of the map itself — but tiles touching only at a corner are never connected, in fields, roads or cities alike.

How the Game Ends & Scoring

Feature	While completing it	If still open at game end
Road	1 point per tile	1 point per tile (same rate)
City	2 points per tile, +2 per shield	1 point per tile, +1 per shield
Cloister	9 points, always	1 point for itself + 1 per surrounding tile actually present
Field	never scores during play	3 points for every completed city it borders

Fields are the one feature that only ever scores at the very end. A single field can border several completed cities and pays out for every one of them, and the same city can pay several different fields at once — there’s no limit and no competition between them. When the last tile is placed, incomplete roads, cities and cloisters are scored first, then every field is scored in turn, and the highest total wins.

Quick-Reference Summary

• Draw a tile, place it so every touching edge matches, then optionally claim one feature on it with a follower.
• A feature can’t be claimed if any follower already sits anywhere on it.
• Completed roads, cities and cloisters score immediately and return their followers; fields never score during play.
• At game end, unfinished features score at a reduced rate, and every field finally scores for each completed city it touches.
• Ties for the most followers on a feature share the full score; ties for the highest overall total share the win.