I am in love with this game! I bought it over two years ago for gameschooling, but it took us until now to play it as a family. I played it three times in a row recently as part of our family reunion, and then the next day I played it again once with just my grandsons. It’s that fun!

Here’s a video showing the basics of the game.

It’s a great game for the whole family. You don’t have to be able to read so prereaders can join. My five-year old grandson enjoyed playing it. It involves tile drawing and laying to make patterns that give you points.

It even has expansions. See the list here. I hear the best ones are the Inns and Cathedrals and the Traders and Builders.

The guys from Dice Tower go into a deep dive of Carcassone below.

So if you are looking for a fun game that involves all ages, one that has strategy and luck, with beautiful components, AND on top of that, is easy to learn and explain, look no further. Play Carcassone! It’s based on a real city, and the illustrations really look the the real place.

It would be fun for gameschooling to pair it with some books on knights, monks, and medieval times.

It’s interesting to note that this was the game that first introduced the word “meeple” which is a kind of pawn. It is as a contraction of “my people.” At my recent game night we played Kingdomino which also uses meeples. I dropped one of them and asked someone to pick up my meeple, and my friend thought I said to “pick up my meatball.” She had never heard the word “meeple” before. So she learned something new. She loves games but favors card games so had never encountered a meeple before.

If you want to go into more of a deep dive, watch the video below and learn why sometimes it can’t be fun. He does have some valid points. I can see that if I played this game with people who who can memorize all the tiles that are available and played aggressively it might not be as fun.