My First Carcassonne is the current board game hit with my son!
It is the simplified, kid-friendly version of the well-known classic Carcassonne. The box says 2-4 players, age 4+, 30 minutes.
It is a super easy game, with a lot of luck influencing the outcome, but with some room for clever (or less than clever) decisions.
Like the standard Carcassonne, you randomly draw tiles and connect them together, but all tiles always connect. Each tile has one or two kids printed on it, colored blue, yellow, red or purple.
Each player has 8 meeples of the chosen color, and is allowed to place them on the tiles when the road they are printed on is closed. So you need luck in drawing tiles with kids of your color, but you also need strategy in putting tiles with other players' kids in the worst places, so their roads are harder to close (i.e. take more tiles).
While very simple, it's nice for me to play, too.
So how is it faring with my boy?
In short, WONDERFULLY. It is the very first game my kid plays with all the rules in place, and actual strategic thinking, after just two games. And he is loving it.
Federico is five, so he's just above the minimum recommended age. I'm not sure he would have grasped the whole thing with the same depth of understanding if he had played it at four. At five he's actually capable of mastering all there is, and he seems well aware of it!
Fun fact: we've played seven games so far, and I haven't won a single game yet!
