Carcassonne
The Gateway City Becomes a Gateway Game
In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
That quote is often simplified, but Saint-Exupery was talking about airplanes (and translated from French) so it is not as prurient as it sounds1. There are other translations; the most pithy being “Perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.”
There is beauty in simplicity. Carcassonne (the game) exemplifies that quote.
In Klaus-Jürgen Wrede’s creation, each player has a hand of three tiles and places one down to build up the region around Carcassonne. Tiles may contain fields, roads, cities, abbeys and other items. After placing a tile the player may (optionally) place one of their figures on the tile, indicating if its on a building, in a field etc. When roads/cities/abbeys complete the figures score and are returned. Some figures, like farmers, don’t score until the end of the game (when all tiles are placed). High score wins.
If players didn’t think, a turn could be over in seconds. Place tile, place figure, score, done.
Sidebar — Those “figures” have stories to tell
I use the term “figure,” but you’ve probably heard them called “Meeple,” which is short for “My people” and the phrase was coined by Alison Hansel … while playing Carcassonne.
Nowadays there are big old expensive lawsuits about who “owns” the phrase (or image) of Meeple and you have AniMeeple (for Animals) and MechaMeeple. Meeple has it’s own wikipedia page, if you are interested.
Anyway …
Carcassonne did well enough to spawn roughly a dozen “big” expansions and several small ones. Like any Spiel des Jahres winner, it sold well. Unlike some it has kept selling well, not just in game stores but in mainstream outlets. It is not quite the pure gateway game that Settlers of Catan or this century’s Ticket to Ride have proven to be, but it is close.
Personally, after a year or two of fairly frequent play of Carcassonne and it’s first sequel (Hunters and Gatherers) I tired of it. But someone pulled out their copy to introduce a new gamer a few years ago and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Absence had indeed made my heart grow fonder.
Ironically, much of my earlier compliant was that we’d been playing with several expansions. Like Saint-Exupéry said, Carcassonne shines when stripped down to it’s core2.
In any case, the game still hits the table today and birthed a new people (the meeple!), either one of which would make it of note, but both factors make me think that Carcassonne deserves an entry in The Hundred Most Influential Games of the 20th Century.
Or maybe it is, but it’s French, so we aren’t supposed to notice?
This is true of many games, in my opinion, and I have written about it in the distant past.
Definite yes - It's the yardstick against which tile-laying games are now measured.
And I'm guessing that the archetypal meeple came from Hans im Glück rather than Klaus-Jürgen Wrede. Any pawn would have done (though it helps that you can tell when it's lying down).