Hey PI-Fans,
Are you troubled by strange noises in the middle of the night? Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic? Have you or your family ever seen a spook, spectre or ghost? If the answer is “yes,” then don’t wait another minute. Pick up the phone and call the professionals…
Okay. Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, maybe consider this week’s shelf arrival Mists over Carcassonne, a cooperative reimplementation of the board game classic that sees players band together to build the prefecture before it is swallowed by an overwhelming malevolent mist.
Designed as a standalone expansion for classic Carcassonne, Mists over Carcassonne introduces Mist Tiles to the traditional game of roads, fields and cities, which when placed on the board, come replete with their own complement of ghosts meeples. These ghastly supernatural interlopers serve as a ‘death clock’ of sorts for the game itself for if players run out of ghost meeples, they lose the game.
Ghosts can be driven off in a variety of ways ranging from forgoing scoring to closing off mist spaces (similar to Carcassonne cities and roads) and returned to the stockpile, reducing the imminent threat for a time, but the main challenge comes from the players having to score a certain number of shared points before one of the myriad ways to lose (such as running out of placeble tiles) occurs.
As far as strategies go, Mists over Carcassonne really switches things up compared to the regular game, encouraging players to forgo defensive placement in favor of potential scoring and supposedly optimal tile placement for scoring sometimes leads to the entire zone getting overrun by ghosts.
If you are a fan of the original, this is a delightful spin on the Carcassonne formula, and a welcome addition to any gamer’s cupboard.
