There are a few games that make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside just thinking about them. Also, they usually have a light rules set and offer you some thinking and planning without frying your brain. As such it was one of the first, if not the first, boardgame I bought. Players draw tiles from a facedown stack and then add it to the central tableau that re builds the city of Carcassonne. There are castles to put knights in, roads to put robbers on, pastures to put farmers in and cloisters to put monks in.
When one of these buildings or features is finished with the exception of the pastures, they are only scored at game end and in a way that confused me in my first couple of plays , you get to retrieve your meeple, score some points and on a later turn turn that meeple yet again into a knight, robber, monk or farmer. As all players expand the same city, there is room for some blocking, but even so, the joy of seeing this city grow by far outweighs possible blocking from opponents.
A few years ago, I traded away my copy of regular Carcassonne and got a used copy of the winter edition instead. I love winter, so the snowy landscape brings even more joy to my heart. Similar to Carcassonne, players use tiles in Akropolis to build a whole new city.
But contrary to Carcassonne, in this game it is every player for themselves: you will each build your own city. Tiles consist of 3 hexagons and come with 0 to 3 different districts on them. Each district has a different way of scoring at the end of the game, while the grey tiles represent quarries that will provide you with stone when you build over them.
Tiles at higher positions are worth more points. Back to the stone: stone is the currency you use in the drafting of tiles: the first tile in the line is free to take, but if you want to draft a tile further down the line, you need to put a stone on each tile preceding it.
