Carcassonne: Die Stadt
Last week we played one of my latest game acquisitions: Carcassonne - Die Stadt (aka Carcassonne - The City). Designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede for 2-4 players, the game is published by Hans im Glück in Germany.
The first thing catching attention is the deluxe packaging of the game: a wooden box containing only quality components like nice wood pieces and linnen bags for the tiles. The rules are laid out on a few pages and explain the game in a lengthy but very clear way with a lot of examples.
Carcassone - Die Stadt is a standalone game divided into three rounds. The game is quite similar to older Carcassonne editions, but also adds some new elements to the game. These elements make it a challenging game - even for experienced players of older Carcassonne-style games. The basic idea is still adhered to: players have to build up a map (in this case the city of Carcassonne) by consecutively placing tiles. This will create a unique cityscape in which one can place his followers (onto markets, streets or buildings) who eventually will score some points.
After a specific (well-defined) moment in the game, players start building walls around city tiles. The players start building the wall next to a wooden gate. Walls always have to be connected to either this gate or other wall pieces. While the city still continues to grow the walls grow with it, leaving less and less areas in which the city may be extended.
Two interesting new ways of scoring points have also been introduced with the walls:
These two elements make the game far less predictable. Planning ahead is much more difficult and the number of options one has to calculate have increase drastically. In my opinion, this will make the game especially difficult for younger children. In addition, a raised level has to be put on chosing the right players to play with (especially if you are a non-planning person playing with all those tacticians who really want to calculate through all their possible options before making a move).
This put aside the game is real fun and a nice variation for all players who like Carcassonne at least a little bit. My game group has enjoyed playing this A LOT and we will certainly play it again soon.