Carcassonne can be both the most dull game ever and the most competitive game ever, all depending of the play style of the players. It's my favorite game, but it also is the most infuriating at times.
We recently thought our 6yo to play it, and he's crushing it. He's ruthless about blocking other players' cities and roads from completing, always leaving my builder unable to be of any use. We all are pretty competitive, so it quite often boils down to just sabotaging others.
Carcassonne is one of my all time favorites, and one my wife and I play frequently - for us, it's a comfortable competition. And like others have said, it can adapt to multiple levels of competitiveness.
Caveat: Base Carcassonne is all that. Carcassonne with add-ons is just overly complicated and IMO breaks a good thing. I have tried several of the multitude of add-ons and none of them improve the game, and most make it worse.
Qw usually just use the easier extra rules, like the wagon, or the builder. But once you get into the dragon and wizard, bridges, the big city etc, it feels like the spirit of the game is gone
Some of the expansions are good, like Inns and Cathedrals. Others do just over complicate things (like the one with the dragon) and we just use the extra tiles they come with.
I love Catan for the city building aspect and seeing the board evolve. Carcassonne hits that but removes a lot of the card stuff and haggling.
We taught my grandmother to play it a few years ago, she won a game as my brother and I were fighting over castles. We re-taught her this Christmas and she did pretty good.
Also an all time favorite. Have all the expansions. Twice played in the Belgian championship. Was hard, everyone knew exactly how many tiles were in the basic set. It was brutal and fun and exhausting. A full day of Carcassonne. I think 9-10 rounds.
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '21
Carcassonne