How to Play Carcassonne: The Gifts

Game Objective

In Carcassonne: The Gifts, you and your friends are building the landscape of Carcassonne, expanding roads and cities. The main objective is to receive gifts by helping other players expand their features. These gifts offer special actions that can help you score and manipulate the game in your favor. The victory condition is determined by the score at the end of the game, following the rules of the base Carcassonne game.

Preparation (Setup)

1. Separate the 25 gift cards.
2. Shuffle the 25 gift cards to form a face-down deck.
3. The rules of the base Carcassonne game still apply.
4. You can combine this expansion with others, but there are no official rules for these combinations.

Game Flow

This expansion only modifies action 1. Place a tile of the standard Carcassonne game flow. Actions 2. Place a meeple and 3. Score are performed normally, as in the base game.

Receiving a gift

You receive a gift if you place a tile in such a way that it adds to another player's road or city. This means that:

• The expanded roads or cities must belong to someone other than yourself (after the tile has been placed), following the majority rule.
• If your tile adds to multiple roads and/or cities, you still only receive 1 gift.
• When receiving a gift, you must draw the top card from the gift deck, look at it (without showing anyone), and place it face down in front of you.
• If all gift cards have already been distributed, shuffle the discard pile to form a new gift deck.
• If, in a rare case, all gifts are "unopened" in front of the players, you do not receive a gift.

Opening a gift

After drawing a tile, but before placing it, you can open exactly 1 gift. To do this:

• Flip over one of your gift cards.
• Resolve the action described on the card.
• Then, place the card in an open discard pile.

Actions and How to Play

The The Gifts expansion introduces 5 types of gift cards, each with a unique action:

Synod

• Place a meeple from your supply on any unfinished monastery (if possible).
• The monastery may already be occupied by one or more meeples – yours or other players'.
• The monastery may also be unoccupied.

Road Sweeper

• Score any unfinished road immediately.
• You do not need to have a meeple on the road.
• After the road is scored, the player's meeple is returned to their supply.

Cash out

• Take one of your meeples from a feature (city, road, monastery, or field), return it to your supply, and score for it.
• You score 2 points for each meeple that is on that feature – including the one you are taking back.

Take 2

• In addition to the tile you just drew, draw another one.
• Now, choose one of them and place it according to the usual rules. The other tile is shuffled back into the face-down tile deck.

Change on the lie

• Change the position of one of your meeples on a tile.
• If your meeple is on a road, a monastery, or a city, lay it down in a field on the same tile.
• If your meeple is lying down in a field, place it – standing up – on a road, city, or monastery on the same tile.
• You can place your meeple standing up or lying down on segments that are already occupied.
• You can only change the meeple's position from lying down to standing up or from standing up to lying down.
• Moving the meeple within the three segments – road, city, or monastery – is not allowed.

End of Game and Scoring

Refer to the manual for details on this section.

Tips for Winning

• Strategically Receiving Gifts: Try to place your tiles in a way that expands other players' roads or cities to receive gifts. These gifts can offer significant advantages.
• Meeple Management with "Cash out": Use the Cash out card to retrieve your meeples from features and score, especially if the feature has many meeples, maximizing your points and freeing up meeples for new actions.
• Flexibility with "Change on the lie": The Change on the lie card allows you to adapt the function of your meeples on a tile, switching between features such as roads, cities, monasteries, and fields. This can be crucial for scoring in fields or for securing a feature you wouldn't otherwise be able to.