Hello. My name is Matt and I am a boardgame geek. There, I said it.

I suspect I will touch on my passion for boardgames a few times on this gratitude journey. Lately, I have been really wanting to go back to one of my old favourites and play Carcassonne. Carcassonne was one of the first Euro Games that I played and certainly one that has held up over the years as far as being enjoyable. Over the years, Kathy and I would spend an evening with a bottle of wine and a game of Mega-Carcassonne (main game with many of the expansions added in for good measure. With all of the extra tiles, this would end up taking a couple of hours or so. A fun way to spend the evening. I know there are many who really only enjoy playing the base game; we find quite a few of the expansions add some great twists to the game. Once you get to having a lot of expansions in play, it is best to only play with 2 or 3 people.

The anniversary edition of the game just came out. More meeples, more tiles, more options for play. I recall one of the files on boardgamegeek is an option chooser for Carcassonne. It has many of the various expansion rules broken down to a single image on a piece of paper. Before starting the game, you place coins on the options you are using for that game. Makes for an easy to use game selector and a good visual reminder for what options are in play.

Here’s to the meeple, a modern icon for the boardgame hobby. Here is to Carcassonne. The game has given me countless hours of enjoyment and I look forward to many more sessions.

How old I am! I’m eighty years!
I’ve worked both hard and long,
Yet patient as my life has been,
One dearest sight I have not seen—
It almost seems a wrong;
A dream I had when life was new,
Alas our dreams! they come not true;
I thought to see fair Carcassonne,
That lovely city—Carcassonne!
~ Gustave Nadaud