When comparing Codenames vs Carcassonne, the Slant community recommends Carcassonne for most people. In the question“What are the best board games?” Carcassonne is ranked 3rd while Codenames is ranked 42nd. The most important reason people chose Carcassonne is:
The rules are pretty basic for Carcassonne, with first time players being able to grasp its concepts quite quickly, making Carcassonne a great gateway game. Every turn the player draws one tile from the pile. They then must place the tile adjacent to a tile that has already been placed in a way that the edges match. There are four types of terrain on the tiles – roads, cities, monasteries, and grassland. After the tile is placed the player can choose to put a player figure, a.k.a. a meeple, on the tile to potentially score points. If a meeple is placed on a road, then the player will score one point for every road tile until the road ends in an intersection or a city. If the meeple is placed on a city, the player will receive two points for every city tile until the city is fully walled off. If the player chooses to place the meeple in a monastery, then they will receive one point per tile until the monastery is fully surrounded by tiles. Lastly, if the meeple is placed on grassland, then it’ll only score points at the very end of the game, giving three points for every city in the field. The player with the most points wins.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Nearly endless replayability
You will almost never play the exact same game twice. You could play this game for years and you'll still have to stop and think of clues to give your operatives or ways to interpret what's been said to you. Codenames comes with 200 double-sided codename cards, of which you use 25 per game. Moreover, there are 40 key cards showing the layout of the agents that can each be orientated in 4 different ways.
Pro Can be played by a lot of players
With an official player count of 2-10 players, there really isn't an upper limit to the number of players that can play Codenames together, which makes Codenames a perfect game for big parties or other events with a lot of people.
To play, players divide into two teams with each team having 1 Spy Master who gives clues to the rest of the team. This means that adding more players doesn't change the way the game is played, merely how many people the Spy Masters are giving clues to.
Pro Players can easily drop in and out of the game
Codenames is a very accessible deduction game, where players guess words based on one clue from the Spy Master. A lot of people have been in the situation where a game is already in progress, but someone shows up and wants to join in - with Codenames this isn't a problem. A player can easily join a team and take part in the debates for the correct guess. There is no plot, no intricate mechanic that needs to be explained to people before they can play. You could even switch the players after every turn, and it wouldn't change the gameplay.
Pro Hilarious
The game can lead to some hilarious moments when either guessing the answer or debating to find it. The key is to understand the Spy Master's thought process, but this is a harder task than it might seem at the start.
Since the Spy Master can't speak, the team often miscommunicates, which results in laughter for the other team and some frustration for the guessers, more often than not accompanied with a comment about how bad the Spy Master is. The debating process can be quite funny as well - the operatives might argue about who's right and what the Spy Master might've thought, or be completely confident in their guess and still fail. No matter the outcome, when the game ends the Spy Master can finally vent all of his built-up frustration, which can result in some good laughs too.
Pro Easy to learn for beginners
The rules are pretty basic for Carcassonne, with first time players being able to grasp its concepts quite quickly, making Carcassonne a great gateway game.
Every turn the player draws one tile from the pile. They then must place the tile adjacent to a tile that has already been placed in a way that the edges match. There are four types of terrain on the tiles – roads, cities, monasteries, and grassland. After the tile is placed the player can choose to put a player figure, a.k.a. a meeple, on the tile to potentially score points.
If a meeple is placed on a road, then the player will score one point for every road tile until the road ends in an intersection or a city. If the meeple is placed on a city, the player will receive two points for every city tile until the city is fully walled off. If the player chooses to place the meeple in a monastery, then they will receive one point per tile until the monastery is fully surrounded by tiles. Lastly, if the meeple is placed on grassland, then it’ll only score points at the very end of the game, giving three points for every city in the field. The player with the most points wins.
Pro Near-endless replayability
Carcassonne will pretty much never feel dull, there are so many possibilities and variables in the game not only because of the randomness, but also because of the simplicity and the variation count.
Carcassonne is going to be a different game every time because of the tiles you and your opponents draw and where you choose to place them. There are over 70 tiles in the base set, which amounts to a lot of possible combinations.
Carcassonne has been around for a while, and this has led to the release of many expansions throughout the years. Each of these provides more tiles, rules, and other variables to the game.
Lastly, you can even introduce many variations that’ll change up the game without owning any expansions, for example, instead of drawing one tile and placing it every turn, have the players manage a hand of four tiles.
Pro Detailed with polish
The board game pieces are highly detailed and colorful, be it lush grassland, a fortified medieval castle, or a monastery in the middle of nowhere. The game is themed after southern France in the medieval ages and the actual fortified city of Carcassonne and the landscape around it. There is definitely some forethought put into the polish of this game that makes much of it intuitive and a pleasure to look at.
On a more practical note, the back of the tile with which the game starts is in a separate color, so it is easier to find when starting the game.
Pro Simple, but allows for lots of thinking if you want
The game is very accessible to beginners, but it allows for quite a bit of strategic play when you get more familiar with the concept. You can either go for long-term strategies with farms, or for quick point-grabs; you can build your own cities in peace or try to mess with your opponent whenever possible. A lot of tactics come in the form of cutthroat play – trapping other players’ meeples, stealing cities, and getting to share points.
Moreover, the last turns of the game can also influence the outcome a lot – players receive some points for unfinished creations as well.
Pro Quick to play
In a regular expansion-less game of Carcassonne it can take 30 – 45 minutes to blast through the approximately 70 tiles.
Pro Accessible
Because of the simple rules Carcassonne is very easy to get back into even after big breaks and it’s great to teach to other people. This means that the people you play with can change without any problems and you can play the game with anyone – children, your parents, your friends, or your partner.
Pro Engaging
The gameplay is dynamic, and everyone’s constantly engaged, managing their meeples and calculating which part of the board is worth fighting over. Even the kids stay engaged since the winner is usually not obvious untile the very end.
Cons
Con Not great for small groups
The game really starts to shine from 4 players and more, which can quite often be difficult to assemble. Anything under that doesn't really work. There's a variation for two players that basically makes you work together against an enemy that gets one agent every turn, but this takes away a lot of what makes the game fun in the first place - the competition between teams, the debating, the strategy, etc.
Furthermore, the three-player variation is either the same as the two-player variant, albeit a little better because of the debating, or a competition between Spy Masters on who can give the best clues to the operative, which can give that player quite a lot of strain.
Con Spy Masters must be kept in check
There are a lot of nuances in the rulebook regarding the responsibilities of the Spy Masters - what kind of clues you can give, how you react, what you say, etc. Of course, there are some variables and flexible rules, but the main gist stays the same. The Spy Master can't show reactions to guesses, be it a nod, a reply, or anything else because this might mislead the operatives or, on the contrary, reveal too much. This can get very difficult in more intense situations, so it's important for the opponents to be on the look out.
Con Requires some higher language comprehension
This wouldn't be the best game to play with people with a limited vocabulary, such as children or non-native speakers. The whole game is based on guessing various words, so players need to be able to understand the words and create associations in order to play.
Con Risk of accidental tile moving
If the game is not played on a flat surface or if you accidentally apply more force to the tile when you're placing it adjacent to another, then everything can shift, which can be annoying to fix.
Con May be a little light for hardcore boardgame players
The game itself is not very deep in design or play, which may be a turn off for the more hardcore of boardgame players though can be good for newcomers.
Con Small official scoreboard
The official scoreboard that comes with the base game only stacks up to 50 points, but proper games of Carcassonne go way past that mark – a game without any expansions can easily reach over 100 points. If you add expansions to the equation, then the points can stack up even past 400, but some expansions feature scoring tokens that help resolve this issue.
Con Highly random
As is typical for a game with a drawing mechanic, almost every action in the game is influenced by whatever tile is drawn and where a player has chosen to place it, so it’ll benefit him the most. The randomness is enhanced by the fact that the players only draw one tile at a time, so you must take what you get.