Carcassonne Openings: The First Ten Turns

Carcassonne has no fixed opening the way chess does. The tiles come out in a different order every game. But the first ten turns still follow patterns, and the players who win most often treat them the same way: score early, keep meeples moving, and build a position for the fights to come.

Why tempo matters more than size

You have seven meeples. Each one on the board is a meeple you cannot use. A meeple that scores 4 points and comes home in two turns can go out again and score again. A meeple on a huge city that takes twenty turns to close scored once, if it closed at all.

In the opening, a meeple’s value is roughly: points it will score, divided by how long it is away. Short roads and two-tile cities score small, but they score often.

The start tile

The start tile has a city edge, a road, and fields. The first player usually has three good options:

• Close the city. A city cap tile on the start tile’s city edge makes a two-tile city. Put a knight on it and it scores 4 points the same turn, and the knight comes home.
• Claim the road. A road tile on the start tile’s road, with a traveler, starts a road that often closes within a few turns.
• Start a city of your own away from the start tile, if the tile you drew is a bigger city piece.

The first option is the classic quiet start: points on the board and nothing lost.

Small cities, finished

A city with one open edge needs one tile to close, and many tiles have a single city edge that can cap it. A city with three open edges needs three good draws, and the right shapes may already be on the table.

Early on, prefer cities you can close in one or two tiles. A completed two-tile city with a coat of arms scores 6 points. That is a strong opening turn, and your knight is back for the next one.

Roads as meeple banks

Roads score only 1 point per tile, so new players dismiss them. But roads close often, and many tiles end a road. A traveler on a road is rarely stuck for long.

Think of early roads as a safe place to park a meeple when the tile you drew offers nothing better. A 3-point road that returns your meeple is better than a meeple left in your supply with nothing to do, and better than a knight lost in a city that never closes.

When a monastery pays

A monastery placed in the opening is one of the best plays in the game. The map grows outward from the start tile, so a monastery placed close to the center tends to get surrounded by everyone’s tiles, not just yours. That is up to 9 points for one meeple, with the table doing the work.

Two warnings. Place it where open spaces around it are likely to fill, not on the far edge. And if you already have a monk waiting, think twice before a second.

Farmers in the opening

Hold them. A farmer placed on turn three is one of seven meeples gone for good. In a two-player game you take about 35 turns, so the six meeples you have left must cycle many times. In a four or five player game you take far fewer turns, so you run short less often, but every turn spent on a farmer is a turn not spent scoring now.

The exception: a tile that places a farmer on a field already touching two or three cities that are about to close. That is rare in the first ten turns.

Leave yourself room

Every tile you place changes which tiles will fit later. A few habits help:

• Don’t wall in your own features. Placing a tile that leaves your city needing an awkward shape is a self-block.
• Build next to open space. Features in the middle of empty table grow and close more easily.
• Watch the edges your tile creates. A tile that creates an odd hole next to your monastery can leave a space that nothing fits.

A good opening, in numbers

There is no perfect target. As a rough check for a four-player game, after ten turns a strong opening often looks like this:

• Two or three completed features scored.
• Four or five meeples in your supply.
• One feature in progress that you expect to finish soon.

If you have zero meeples in your supply at turn ten, the opening got away from you. The meeple economy lesson shows how to recover.

For more on reading the tile mix and deciding what to chase, the Carcassonne strategy guide has a section on tile odds.