Pyramid Review
New World: A Carcassonne Game
Published by Rio Grande Games
Written by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede
Illustrated by Franz Vohwinkel
Translated by Jay Tummelson
95 Land Tiles, 30 Wooden Settlers in five colors, Starting Board, 2 Wooden Surveyors in white, Rules Pamphlet, and Rules Summary Sheet; $29.95
An alternative title for New World: A Carcassonne Game might be "Carcassonne: Go West," for although it is undeniably a Carcassonne variant, the most striking feature for a fan of the series is that it is played in just one direction. Technically this is from right to left, but since the theme of New World is exploring and settling the lands of British America and beyond during the 17th century, that bearing can only mean westward. This quite literally marks a change of direction for the tile-laying, meeple-placing, award-winning Carcassonne series.
Designed for two to five players, devotees of the Carcassonne series will find much that is familiar in New World. In the original Carcassonne, players take turns drawing tiles that depict a combination of cities, cloisters, and roads, with farms for in between these three. When adding a tile to the board, a player can place a meeple (as the playing pieces are known) or knight in the new city, a thief on the new road, a monk in the new cloister, or a farmer in the new farm. If at any point during the game a city or road is completed, or a cloister surrounded with other tiles, then the player with a meeple in that feature scores points and . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: September 19, 2008
Copyright © 2008 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.