Carcassonne Endgame: Tracking the Last Tiles

The endgame scoring lesson taught you to count the points on the board. This lesson counts the other half: the tiles. Late in the game, the stack is small enough to reason about. You can know how many turns you get, who places the final tile, and which spaces on the board will never be filled.

How many turns do you have left?

Count the tiles left in the stacks, and divide by the number of players. That is roughly your number of turns.

• With 14 tiles left in a two-player game, you each have 7 turns.
• With 14 left in a four-player game, you each have 3 or 4.

Do this around fifteen tiles from the end, and again near the last few. Every decision from here on depends on it. A city that needs two specific tiles is not worth a meeple if you have three turns left. A field you are about to lose can still be saved if you have five.

Count the stacks before you count the board. It takes a few seconds and changes everything after it.

Who places the last tile?

With 71 tiles to draw and no tile returned to the box, the last tile goes to:

Each time a tile is returned to the box because it fits nowhere, the game is one placement shorter, and the last tile moves back one seat. So if one tile was returned in a two-player game, the second player places the last tile instead. Keep track of returned tiles for exactly this reason.

Why it matters: the player who places the last tile gets the last word. They can make a final merge into a field or city, and nobody can answer it. If that player is not you, your defense has to be in place before your own last turn.

Track the rare shapes

You cannot track every tile in your head, and in tournament play you are not allowed to write them down. Both the World Championship rules and the 2026 WBC event forbid private notes during a game.

So track only what matters. The short list from the tile counting lesson is a good start:

• 1 crossroads
• 1 city on all four sides
• 6 monasteries, 2 of them with a road
• 7 cities on three sides
• 5 plain city edges

Then add whatever your live features need. If your city’s last space needs a plain city edge, you only need to know how many of the 5 are on the table. Glance at the map, count them, and you know what is left.

Find the dead spaces

A dead space is an empty space that no remaining tile can fill. Every feature that needs it will never close.

Dead spaces change the endgame in three ways:

• Your feature next to a dead space is now worth its end-of-game value. Stop adding to it.
• Your opponent’s feature next to a dead space is stuck too. Their meeple will not come home. Do not waste a tile blocking it further.
• A monastery next to a dead space will finish one short at best.

Late in the game, dead spaces appear quickly. Every placement adds new sides to match, and the stack keeps shrinking. A space that had three possible tiles at the midpoint may have none by the last ten.

Plan your last meeples

With your turns counted and the dead spaces known, plan each meeple in your supply.

1. List the targets. The biggest field you can win or tie. Any open city you can still join. Any road or monastery worth a point or more.
2. Order them. Contest the biggest field first, while there is time for your opponent to answer and for you to answer back. Small grabs come last.
3. Match meeples to turns. If you have three meeples and two turns, one meeple will score nothing. Decide now which target to drop.

A last-turns routine

When about fifteen tiles remain:

1. Count the tiles. Work out your turns left.
2. Name who places the last tile, adjusting for any tiles returned to the box.
3. Check the rare shapes your features need.
4. Mark the dead spaces in your head.
5. Assign every meeple in your supply a target and a turn.

Run this routine once a game for a few weeks. It is where the strongest players separate themselves: not in the opening, where everyone has meeples and space, but in the last fifteen tiles, where everything can be counted.