50 Fun Facts About Carcassonne

Who designed Carcassonne?

He came up with the game while on holiday and still teaches music and religious education near Cologne.

Which German publisher first released Carcassonne in 2000?

Rio Grande Games handled the English edition until 2012, when Z-Man Games took over.

In what year was Carcassonne first published?

A redesigned edition with new tile and box artwork followed in 2014.

Which two major German awards did Carcassonne win in 2001?

Winning both in the same year is rare; the game is now regarded as one of the hobby's foundational titles.

The game takes its name from a fortified town in which country?

The real town's medieval citadel, the Cité, sits in the Aude department of Occitania.

How many players does the base game support?

Inns and Cathedrals adds a sixth set of followers, grey in 2002 and pink in the 2015 edition.

How many terrain tiles does the original game contain, including the start tile?

The River mini-expansion adds 12 more, and is bundled with the edition currently in print.

How many followers does each player receive?

One sits on the score track, so only seven can ever be on the board at once.

A follower placed on a road takes what role?

Knights hold cities, monks sit in cloisters and farmers lie down in fields.

A follower placed on a field is laid down instead of standing — why?

Fields are never completed during play; their value depends on the finished cities they touch.

A cloister is complete when surrounded by how many tiles?

Completing one scores nine points: one for the cloister and one for each neighbour.

At the end of the game, a field's score depends on what?

A field enclosed by roads that touches no finished city scores nothing at all.

Under first-edition rules, a farmer's field scored how many points per adjacent city?

Second-edition rules cut that to three per city; the third edition aligned fields with other features.

Third-edition scoring rules entered the German version in what year?

English releases kept shipping first-edition scoring until 2008.

Tiles connect across which part of their border?

Roads must meet roads, fields meet fields and cities meet cities along the shared edge.

Which starting river tile begins the River expansion?

The final river tile is the lake; both have a single river edge.

How many river tiles does the River mini-expansion contain?

They replace the single standard start tile and share its dark back.

The River expansion was originally distributed how?

It became part of the base game in August 2012 and stayed in the 2014 redesign.

In the tile-naming code, what does the letter M stand for?

The standard start tile is CRMR, read clockwise from the top edge.

How many distinct tile types are there among the 71 non-river tiles?

Mathematicians at Valparaiso University counted them, five being pennant variants of other tiles.

Which was the first full expansion, originally called simply "The Expansion"?

It added a large follower that counts as two, plus 50/100 tiles for scoring.

Which expansion introduced the pig and the builder followers?

The builder grants an extra turn whenever its feature is extended or completed.

Which expansion added a beast that eats followers and a fairy that protects them?

Its magic portal tiles let you place a follower on an earlier, unfinished feature.

The Tower expansion lets players build towers to do what?

The box also includes a cardboard tile tower used for storage and drawing.

Which expansion includes tiles that can fill holes in the board and complete features?

It also introduced wagons that score a feature and then move to a nearby one.

Which expansion includes a physical launching device?

Twelve fairground tiles trigger a round of flinging tokens across the board.

Hills and Sheep added which animal tokens alongside the sheep?

Each player gets a shepherd follower; the expansion also brought vineyard tiles.

Under the Big Top includes what wooden figure?

Its 20 tiles carry Big Tops or acrobat towers, and each colour gets a ringmaster.

The Phantom mini-expansion was the first to be released without what?

Its see-through acrylic phantoms let a player place a second follower in a turn.

The Festival expansion came bundled with which release?

Its ten tiles represent one year each since the game's 2000 release.

How many stand-alone Carcassonne Minis were released in 2012?

Each one carried a bonus tile that together form a seventh mini, Corn Circles II.

The Flying Machines mini uses a custom die showing only which numbers?

Players may fly to claim an unfinished feature, or crash if they land on empty space.

Which German city's market town forms the starting tiles of a 2017 expansion?

Four double-sized tiles with four roads leading out replace the usual starting tile.

Mists over Carcassonne, released in 2023, is notable for being what kind of game?

Its competitive mode is called Ghosts, Castles and Cemeteries, with 15 ghosts to banish.

What figure moves along the rim in the 2009 Wheel of Fortune set?

Its movement triggers events such as famine, plague and fortune from icons on 16 tiles.

What was the first stand-alone spin-off, released in 2002?

It builds forests, rivers and wildlife, and eliminated cloisters to fix perceived flaws in the original.

The Ark of the Covenant spin-off draws its theme from what?

The Ark itself can be moved instead of placing a follower, scoring for followers it passes.

The 2008 spin-off New World was known by what title in German?

Players start from a coastal edge and build westward across America.

Which was the first title in the Around the World series?

Gold Rush, Amazonas and Safari followed as the second, third and fourth entries.

The Star Wars version replaced cloisters with what?

It dropped the farmer mechanic and added dice-rolling attacks and 2v2 co-op.

The Xbox 360 version was released in 2007 by which publisher?

Microsoft announced it as an Xbox Live Arcade title alongside Catan and Alhambra.

Where was the first official World Championship held in 2006?

It has run there every year since, apart from 2010, 2023 and the cancelled 2020 edition.

Who has won the World Championship in four editions?

Litsardopoulos is the only other multiple winner, and Bulten the only female champion.

Who coined the word "meeples" in November 2000?

She reportedly blended "my people" mid-game, then proposed the term on the Unity Games forums.

Who designed the modern star-shaped follower for the publisher?

The flat, monochrome humanoid has since become a staple of modern board games.

The real town's citadel was restored by which architect between 1853 and 1879?

His slate roofs were criticised as northern French; the Cité became a World Heritage Site in 1997.

In what year was the Cité de Carcassonne added to the UNESCO World Heritage list?

The French government had actually decreed its demolition back in 1849 before an outcry saved it.

As of May 2025, only which game had more BoardGameGeek user ratings than Carcassonne?

In May 2025 the tile-layer sat second among thousands of titles on the site.

The designer created Carcassonne while doing what?

He was born in Meschede in 1963 and studied music and theology in Cologne.

What is the standard starting tile's four-letter code, read from the top?

City on top, roads left and right, field at the bottom.