Carcassonne: Hunters & Gatherers
Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers is a standalone game in the Carcassonne series set in the stone age.
As in other Carcassonne games, players take turns placing tiles to create the landscape and placing meeples to score points from the map they're creating. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.
Instead of cities, roads, and farms, Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers has forests, rivers, lakes, and meadows. Players' meeples can represent hunters (when placed in the meadows), gatherers (in a forest), or fishermen (on a river segment). They also have huts, which can be placed on rivers or lakes to get fish from the entire river system.
Number of players: 2 - 5
Game duration: 26 mn
Complexity: 1 / 5
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Play Carcassonne: Hunters & Gatherers and 953 other games online.
No download necessary - play directly from your web browser.
With your friends and thousands of players from the whole world.
Free.
Rules summary
Aim of the game
Score the most points by fishing, gathering and hunting. You score with meeples during different times during the game, while huts only score at the end of the game. The game ends when all normal tiles are expended and someone is not able to play a normal tile.
Game-play
Draw a single tile, decide where to place it on the board rotating it as needed.
- Consider placing a meeple (fisher, gatherer, and hunter) or a hut (fishing village on streams only) on an available forest, grassland, river or lake created by the above tile and/or
- Close off a stream or forest to score immediate points (for you and/or others). When closing a forest with a menhir, collect a bonus tile and continue your turn by placing the bonus tile. (You may only gain a single bonus tile per turn.)
Place a Tile
At the beginning of the game and at the end of your turn draw a tile, if available.
At the beginning of your turn place the tile and then decide if you will place a meeple or hut.
If you are unable to place the tile, your turn ends.
Place a Meeple or Hut
Meeple perform different roles depending on how they are placed on the tile. They are placed standing up when performing fisher and gatherer roles and laying down when acting as hunters. Fishers and gatherers only score during the game while hunters and huts only score at the end of the game.
You may only place a meeple (or a hut) on an unoccupied feature (river, forest or grassland) – no other meeple or huts can be in the same connected feature. Features can be joined up by later tiles so that they contain multiple meeples, however: in such a case, only the player with the most meeples in it scores it. (If tied, both score it.)
Fisher
- Fishers are placed on streams (including those at the sides of lakes). They score once the stream has a lake or river-end on each side of the fisher.
- They score one point for each length of the river, plus the total number fish in the rivers and lakes that make up their route.
- After being scored the fisher returns to the owner's pool.
Gatherer
- Gatherers are placed on forests.
- The gatherer scores when the forest is surrounded by grassland with no tile gaps in the interior: the player scores two points for each tile comprising that forest. (If a forest includes multiple parts on the same tile which aren't joined up on that tile, yet are all joined up by the forest, each part on the tile is scored separately.)
- After being scored the gatherer returns to the owner's pool.
Hunter – End Game Scoring
Hunters are placed flat on the board (not standing): they collect points at the end of the game so never return to the owner's pool. The formula for scoring is as follows:
- Score one point (1) for each deer in the grassland
- Subtract one point (-1) for each tiger in the grassland up to the maximum deer – unless the bonus fire tile is in the same grassland in which case all tigers are ignored
- Score two (2) points for each aurochs (ancient cows) – these are never reduced by tigers
- Score three (3) for each mammoth in the grassland – these are never reduced by tigers
Huts – End Game Scoring
Huts are placed in streams or lakes. At the end of the game you score one point for each fish in the river system the hut connects to.
Menhirs
Some forests contain menhirs (large grey stones).
If a player closes off the forest with a menhir in it, and that forest also has at least one meeple in it (belonging to any player), the player who closed the forest immediately takes another bonus turn, drawing a bonus tile from the sixteen (16) available. If the bonus tiles are all used up no bonus turn is granted. No bonus turn is granted if the forest was closed on a bonus turn, i.e. you can not get two consecutive bonus turns.
Bonus Tiles
There are sixteen bonus tiles, typically they will have more animals and more fish, while certain ones have additional abilities:
- Mushrooms (two enhanced forest tiles)
- A forest with mushrooms that is closed gives three (3) points for each mushroom tile in it.
- Logboat (A lake with a person in a kayak)
- When you place the logboat you immediately score two (2) points for each lake in this tile’s river system, including this tile. Huts owned by others do not affect the value (and do not get the bonus points).
- Hunting Trap (two hunters with trap between them)
- You immediately score up to the eight surrounding tiles animals (see Hunter scoring above) – in the same grassland – in addition these animals will not count for end of game scoring.
- Shaman (person in upper left + river + forest)
- You may immediately return one of your meeple to your pool – this meeple does not score for the area they were removed from.
- Wildfire (grassland with tiger and flames) – End of game scoring
- All tigers do not count against deer totals in the grassland where the wildfire is connected to.
- Pit Trap (black pit with spikes) – End of game scoring
- All animals in the surrounding eight tiles in this grassland score double for hunters. Tigers still remove deer like normal, but if a tiger can eat a less valuable deer (outside of the eight tiles) that deer will be selected instead.
- The Raft (three way lake with raft in upper right) – End of game scoring
- This river system scores an additional point for each lake in the river system.
End of Game
Game ends when there are no more standard tiles to be played. At this point any forests or rivers that have meeples on them score nothing.
Scoring hunters and grasslands
Each hunter scores points based on the animals on its grassland.
- Score one point (1) for each deer in the grassland
- Subtract one point (-1) for each tiger in the grassland up to the maximum deer – unless the bonus fire tile is in the same field in which case all tigers are ignored
- Score two (2) points for each aurochs (ancient cows) – these are never reduced by tigers
- Score three (3) for each mammoth in the grassland – these are never reduced by tigers
If multiple players are tied for the most hunters on a grassland, each tied player scores the full points from that grassland. However, if one player has the most hunters, only they score from that grassland.
Scoring huts on river systems
The player with the most huts on each river system scores 1 point for each fish shown in that river system.
If multiple players are tied for the most huts, each tied player scores the full points for that river system.
River systems do not need to be complete to be scored.
The player with the most points wins the game!
In the event of a tie, the tied players share the victory.