Z-Man Games | Mists over Carcassonne | Board Game | Ages 8+ | 1-5 Players | 35-45 Minutes Playing Time

Really well balanced game. Love it

My wife and I are keen co-operative game players, although we do enjoy a game of Carcassonne (plus the ‘Inns and Cathedrals’ and the ‘Builders and Traders’ expansions) played to our non-competitive house rules. When I came across Mists of Carcassonne it seemed the ideal game for us, combining full co-operation with Carcassonne’s simple tile laying elegance.The game comes with a scoreboard, a level target summary board, new meeples, some tokens, 60 tiles and a bunch of ghosts. The object of the game is to co-operate to reach the level target (for example, a score of 50 and 75 for levels one and two respectively) before you run out of tiles or ghosts. Tiles are placed following the traditional road to road and city to city rule and complete features are scored as per the standard game although joint/double scoring is possible if meeples of different colours are placed on an un-joined feature prior to completion. Instead of scoring points towards reaching the level target, players may opt to remove up to three ghosts from a single tile.The majority of tiles contain mist (there are only 12 normal tiles) and playing one of these requires the placement of one or more ghosts from the supply onto the tile. Once an area of mist is fully enclosed (like for a city), instead of scoring, its ghosts are returned to the supply. The rules allow a mist tile to be laid adjacent to a field, although the road and city continuity rule has to be followed. A mist area created in this manner cannot be enclosed so the ghosts remain locked on that tile. This really, really grates and looks really, really horrible, so much so that we can’t bring ourselves to do it, the downside being that it makes the game much harder (we’ve not won a level two game yet, although we have come close). The five cemetery tiles introduced in level two are a nasty business. Each time a ghost is added to a mist tile a single ghost is also added to an open cemetery. Cemeteries can only be closed by having all four sides matched, whereupon its ghosts are returned to the supply. This is very difficult if you play without the ugly field/mist boundary thing and you very quickly run out of ghosts.For those of a competitive nature, the game can also be played as an expansion to the main game but this just introduces yet another way of being unpleasant to your game buddies so it is not our style.Unfortunately, we have not found ourselves enjoying this game. With so many mist tiles it is very difficult to complete a feature of more than four of five tiles as you have to keep the number of un-enclosed mist areas to a minimum to avoid running out of ghosts. The whole game feels unbalanced, the level targets are arbitrary and the ghastly mist/field boundary thing just looks like poor design – I’m surprised it got through play testing. It’s almost as if the game creators saw the rise in popularity of co-op gaming and decided to rush out any old thing, firm in the knowledge that many loyal Carcassonne fans would hand over hard earned cash. Ker-ching!There is, however, a BIG however. In a last-ditch attempt to rescue the game from the graveyard known as the back-bedroom wardrobe, we decided to incorporate the tiles into the standard game just to see how it played with our semi-co-op house rules. Imagine our surprise! It works really well. The mists and the limited ghost supply add a frisson of risk to the game; it is now possible to lose rather than just running out of tiles & totting-up the scores. With so many tiles, a game now takes about three hours and a lot of table space but is a very enjoyable and highly co-operative experience, noticeably more so than the standard game.I’m afraid that, out-of-the-box, Mists of Carcassonne still only warrants a three-star review; as a standalone co-op game it just doesn’t work for us.Rulebook: 9/10 Complexity: 4/10 Component quality: 10/10 Replayability: 7/10 Gameplay pace: 9/10