Introduction
For a lot of board game enthusiasts, Carcassonne by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede was one of the early games that pulled them into this wonderful cardboard hobby. Released in 2000, and with over 100 expansions and versions listed on BoardGameGeek.com, it’s hard to imagine a world without this quintessential tile laying game.
The Meeple, or, My People, have become a ubiquitous icon of the board game community
Mists over Carcassonne is the 2022 cooperative game, utilizing the tried and true tile laying mechanics, but turning the scoring on it’s head and forcing players to collaborate to achieve a score threshold, while trying to keep the ghosts at bay. Does it work? I’m not going to bury the lede here, it absolutely does, as long as you’re already a fan of cooperative games. Read on to find out more!
How to play
Just like in base Carcassonne, players take turns adding a new land tile to the display, creating an ever-enlarging game board onto which you may then place your meeple on terrain features to score points. During Mists over Carcassonne, ghosts will keep appearing, and it’s your job is to pacify them. Together, you must reach the goal tile, i.e. score a pre-determined number of points. But watch out: If there are too many ghosts on the board, or you can’t draw land tiles any more, you lose the game. All players play together against the game. Show each other your tiles and decide as a team where to place them. In later levels especially, you will need to cooperate well!
Each turn, you must execute a set of actions in a specific order. Start by drawing, and placing a land tile adjacent to an existing tile. Then, place ghosts and meeples. Ghosts get placed on the mists, while meeples get placed on the terrain features. And finally, you score points for completed terrain features, and return those meeples to their owner’s supply.
When placing tiles, you must match the terrain of the tile to the same terrain on a tile already in the central play area. Cities to cities, roads to roads, and fields to fields. The exception here are the mists, which can abut non-misty terrains of the same type (a clear road can lead into a misty road, and ditto for fields)
If a newly placed tile contains mist, and if the mist bank it’s added to is completed, then all the ghosts from that mist bank are removed. If you started a wholly new mist bank, then you add ghosts equal to the number of ghost symbols on that tile. If you added to an existing mist bank, making it bigger, then you get to place one fewer ghost to that tile. Managing your ghost supply is important, as if you ever need to place a ghost, and you can’t, then it’s game over!
One more wrinkle to the game is instead of scoring a completed terrain feature, you can choose to forgo the points and instead remove 3 ghosts from any one tile, returning them to the supply.
To win the game, players simply need to achieve the point goal set out by the chapter they’re playing. The first chapter’s goal, is 50 points. Further chapters will introduce castles, graveyards, and impose more restrictions
Review
I recently played base Carcassonne, and was reminded on just how brilliant that core game is. I know everyone will have their own favourite combination of expansions or ways to play, but for me, the base game is sufficient. It’s quick, concise, and competitive.
Mists over Carcassonne retains that lighting quick gameplay and slowly expanding decision space. Now, with the cooperative aspect, you’re no longer hissing at your friends as they try to weasel in on your massive city. Instead, you’re encouraging it, leaving your gates open in the hopes you can double up on your scoring opportunities.
It would be boring if the goal was only to get the highest score. The titular mists bring spectres, determined to bring your city-building ambitions to its knees. Many of the tiles feature mists and require a number of ghosts to get placed on that tile. You place 1 fewer ghost if you’re adding to an already existing bank of mist, and if you manage to complete that mist bank, then all the ghosts from that get removed. It doesn’t sound like much, but the tension of pulling a tile that has the perfect orientation for completing a city, but also has mists that introduce 2 ghosts and your supply only has 3 ghosts left, do you risk busting on having too many ghosts and lose, or place tiles to mitigate ghosts, but end up ignoring the scoring opportunities and possibly lose the game.
Every time I review a cooperative game, I’m compelled to address the ‘alpha gamer’ or ‘quarterbacking’ issue that comes up. Some people have playmates that want to control every aspect of a cooperative game. I don’t have that problem in my group, but Mists over Carcassonne does nothing to address that complaint. If you’re one of the people who struggle with this issue, Mists over Carcassonne isn’t going to change your mind.
I love the various difficulty levels that serve as an on-ramp to the system. At first, all you need to do is earn 50 points. Easy. Then, it introduces two new tile types, castles and graveyards. Then, you’ll need to achieve points in a more even manner (getting 15 points within the first 20 tiles, 50 within the next 20, then finally, 100 points to win the level), then, some ghosts get removed, and so on. The first level levels serve as an introduction to the cooperative game, and one that I wouldn’t hesitate to use to teach my family how to play this system. The castles and graveyards can be a wrinkle too much to begin with, so leaving them out for the first level was probably a good idea.
Much like Viticulture World: The Cooperative Expansion, I loved experiencing a competitive game that I enjoyed with a new mechanic and collaborative twist. While Mists over Carcassonne hasn’t completely overtaken the base game as my default way to play Carcassonne, it dons enough to earn a spot of respect in my heart. If you’re a fan of Carcassonne, or coop games in general, Mists over Carcassonne is assuredly going to be a hit for you.
