My First Carcassonne

Overview

The summer festival has come to the city of Carcassonne and all the animals have been cut loose, roaming the countryside with aplomb. It’s up to the children living in that city to catch those animals and rein them back in.

My First Carcassonne is a game for 2-4 players who are 4 years old or older. Players will pick up a tile from a face-down pile and place it onto the board. Their goal is to place those tiles in such a way as to complete road segments with children whose color matches those of their player piece. Completing a road segment will enable them to put their player pieces onto the board and the first person to place all of their player pieces wins the game.

Core Mechanics: Tile Placement

Victory Condition: The player who wins at My First Carcassonne is the player who is able to place all of their player pieces onto the board

Ease of learning: My First Carcassonne is a children’s game. In particular, it’s a children’s game that’s targeted toward kids 4 years and up. As an adult, I do not expect there to be any difficulties in learning the game yourself. Teaching it to kids may be a different matter however.

The core mechanisms are pretty simple: you place a tile down onto the map and then determine whether a road segment is completed. And if a road segment is complete, you then place a player piece onto a matching child who is present on that completed road segment. And as stated above, the person to place all of their player pieces onto the board first is the winner.

Unlike in regular Carcassonne where you have to make sure that like tile edges match up to other like tile edges, in My First Carcassonne, all of the tiles will fit. Where children might have difficulty is in determining whether a road is complete or not.

For younger kids in the 4-5 year old age range, it may take them some time to determine a road’s completion status. Once they figure it out, they shouldn’t have any issues going through the motions. But for them to play it well is another matter entirely. You might need to give your child a few hints and tips now and then to help them place their player pieces onto the board in a more efficient manner. It’s not difficult, but it may take them some time to grasp My First Carcassonne’s spatial possibilities.

Purchase from: Amazon