Custom Carcassonne

Carcasonne

Project Timespan

A few days in June 2018

Inspiration

Carcassonne is a city in the south of France, known for its citadel – Cité de Carcassonneoriginally erected nearly two millennia ago. It’s a smallish city of less than 50,000 inhabitants, though yearly about three million visitors visit to tour the city and the fortifications. 

As I skimmed the citadel’s Wiki page, I found a fascinating story of the name origin of the city: The Legend of Lady Carcas. As the legend goes, Lady Carcas was the widow of the city’s Muslim prince who fell in battle against Charlemagne. Following her husband’s death, she led the defenses of the city for five years against the Frankish forces, using ploys such as fake soldiers propped up in the citadel to fool the besiegers into overestimating the numbers of the defenders.

After five years, the supplies of food and water began to run low, and the situation was desperate. However, in compiling an inventory of supplies, Lady Carcas noted that a pig remained unconsumed (the city being Saracen). She devised another strategy, fattening up the pig by feeding it with a bag of wheat before throwing it off from the uppermost tower at the feet of the outer ramparts, in full view of defender and besieger alike.

The Frankish forces, knowing that the Saracen city did not consume pork yet still had the provisions to waste a wheat-gorged pig, lost hope in the siege and departed from the plain in front of the city. Lady Carcas, euphoric at the turn of events, ordered her soldiers to ring all the city bells in sign of victory. Hearing this, one of Charlamagne’s men lamented, “Carcas sounds!” or “Carcas sonne!” in French. And henceforth the city received its name.

The city itself is well-known for inspiring the award-winning board game Carcassonne, designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede and first released in 2000. There have been many expansion packs over the years, including both full and mini expansions. As I have not actually played any of the full expansions, and I only re-created the original game and The River mini-expansion, I will focus on these two versions of the game. The original board game received both the Spiel des Jahres and the Desutscher Spiele Preis awards in 2001.

Project Overview

I’ll go over the gameplay, project design, and final images! As the project itself only took a day or two from start to finish, I will try to keep this post to a correspondingly trim length.

With access to a laser cutter, I was cognizant that there were certain board games that were easier to remake than others. Abstract games, with their elegant designs and limited features, generally are easier to recreate. Carcassonne at its heart doesn’t rely on the theme for gameplay, though the features of the tiles do make for a beautiful board gaming experience. As the game only consists of a score board, meeple characters, and a bunch of tiles, it was a straightforward process to remake.

Gameplay

Official rules can be found here.

The objective of the game is to take turns placing tiles to construct and claim features – cities, farms, roads, and cloisters. The winner of Carcassonne is the player with the most points when all the game tiles have been used. In the basic game, there are a total of 72 tiles.

Each game of Carcassonne has a starting tile that initiates the game; in The River expansion, the twelve river tiles replace the starting tile. The remaining tiles should be shuffled and placed feature-side down. Players should then choose a color of “meeples” – a neologistic portmanteau of “my peoples.” Each player will start with seven meeples each.

In a clockwise fashion, players will then take turns playing. Each turn consists of two phases. In the first phase, the player draws a random tile and adds it next to an adjacent tile or tiles, making sure that the features match up along the edges. This part may take some time to get used to. In the second phase, the player can choose to place a meeple on the tile just laid down – one can claim roads, farms, cities, or cloisters. However, when one places a meeple, one should make sure that the territory claimed has not already been claimed by another player. Farms are claimed with the meeple laying on its back.

Players will then take turns in a clockwise fashion. Each turn consists of two phases. The player first draws a random tile and adds it next to an adjacent tile, making sure that the features match up. This part may take some time to get used to. In the second phase, the player can place a meeple on the tile just laid down – one can claim roads, farms, cities, or cloisters. However, when one places a meeple, one should make sure that the territory claimed has not already been claimed by another player. Farms are claimed with the meeple on its back.

If a feature is completed, the player should tally the score for the turn and add it to their scorecard. The meeples that took part in claiming the feature can then be recycled back to the player’s supply. Note that farms cannot be scored until game’s end as the field may keep expanding with additional cities. 

Scoring is as follows:

– Roads: 1 point for each tile of the road

– Completed City: 2 points for each tile and 2 points for each coat of arms

– Uncompleted City: 1 point for each tile and 1 point for each coat of arms

– Monastery: 1 point for each tile surrounding the monastery, including the monastery itself

– Farm: 3 points per adjacent completed city

 

The complete set of The River expansion set, work by Cmglee.

Occasionally, multiple players will claim the same territory. If the players have the same number of meeples, each of the players receive full points; if one player has more meeples, they take control of the territory and claim all the points associated with the territory. The game can get quite competitive!

Design

The design I used for this project was posted on Thingiverse by user msraynsford, who has a nifty personal website filled with projects!

As the files were already in .svg format, all I did was import them into the CAD drafting software I was using at the time (DraftSight). 

I used 3 mm Baltic birch plywood for the tiles. I stained the plywood on one bottom side with a medium brown color to contrast with the light tan color of the natural wood. On the top side, I stained the plywood with green for the fields.

One change I made in the design was the vector etching pattern. I wanted the tiles to be double-sided, and to ensure alignment, I separated out each tile with spaces on all four sides. I then etched one side completely before flipping each tile over to etch the other side. This technique worked out quite well, as I had previously used it to recreate the board games The Duke and Jarl – which I will discuss in an upcoming post!

I flipped the foreground and background Easter etching of the original design with respect to the cities to obtain the proper contrast, and I added in the Carcassonne design to the tile background.

After raster and vector etching the details of the tiles, I then recreated the scoreboard as well by converting images of the actual Carcassonne scoreboard I found online to .svg format and then raster etching the whole picture. I vector etched the meeples from 6 mm Baltic birch plywood (I glued two halves together to obtain a stable thickness). I also made mini-meeples out of 3 mm plywood to keep track of score. I used a variety of stains, paints, and sprays to make meeple factions. For the board game box, I used the simple MakerCase program to create the box out of 6 mm plywood, which I stained medium-brown beforehand.

Now that the tiles were cut out and fully detailed, I then hand-painted the roads, churches, walls, rivers, and buildings with acrylic paints. To distinguish the starting tiles (12 river tiles and 1 original starting tile), I painted in orange the C on the tile backs.

Finished Project

The game really is endlessly enjoyable to play and such a beautiful game to see all laid out! I highly recommend it!

Lessons Learned & Improvements

There are certainly some improvements I can make, but I am quite pleased with the final result overall. I will share three aspects of the project I am very happy with and three aspects I could have thought through better.

Three areas of success:

1. Mini-meeples: A cute touch that makes for a fun addition to the game for keeping score!

2. Box organization: I measured twice and cut once on this part of the build, as everything fits nicely and snugly!

3. Color contrast: The game looks spectacular when played, and I’d say a good part of the aesthetic comes from the clean lines and sharp colors!

Three areas to improve:

1. Box design: completely brown and devoid of contrast – I originally did etch away the Carcassonne name on the top, but foolishly decided to stain it over. Moreover, the finger joints on the top surface make for an inelegant way of opening and closing the box.

2. Scoreboard placement: I placed the scoreboard on the bottom of the box, so the contents within have to be shifted around or taken out of the box to keep track of score. An improvement would be to place it on the inner side of the box lid.

3. Materials: If I wanted to be extra fancy, I could have used hardwood for the tiles or the box, or both. Perhaps hard maple and walnut, respectively.

 

Reflection

So simple to pick up and fun for all ages. No wonder it remains a timeless classic. As a note to its longevity and popularity, it has the second-most number of voter ratings on Board Game Geek, behind only Pandemic (2008) and in front of other classics as Catan (1995), 7 Wonders (2010), Dominion (2008), and Ticket to Ride (2004).

Now I really want to go back to France and see the city, and perhaps play a game or two within the walls of the citadel!