• Designer: Klaus-Jürgen Wrede
• Publisher: Hans im Glück Verlags-GmbH
• Players: 2
• Ages: 7+
• Time: 25 Minutes
• Times Played: 2 (With many more plays of Carcassonne…)

Carcassonne für 2 is a new, inexpensive version of Carcassonne for two players.  The game comes in a nice metal tin that is conveniently travel sized, and it is being released at Spiel ’17.

I reviewed Carcassonne a couple of years ago as part of our SdJ Re-Review series, and there’s a cool history behind the game that I documented in that article.  My love of Carcassonne has grown since then, so I was intrigued enough to get a copy of this two-player version.

It’s currently only available in Germany (and German), but the rules of Carcassonne are so familiar that I was able to play it a couple of times, and I figured people would like to see what’s in the tin.  I got my copy of amazon.de for less than 7 Euro.  The BGG preview lists the MSRP at 6.79 Euro.

Differences from Carcassonne

Note: This review assumes some familiarity with Carcassonne.  If you haven’t played it or would like a refresher, I recommend our article from a couple of years ago.  English rules aren’t yet available for this edition, but gameplay appears to be similar.

Carcassonne is normally played with 72 tiles, but Carcassonne für 2 has only 48 tiles.  There are six meeples of each color (red and blue), and the setup comes in an attractive metal tin with a rulebook.  There is no score tracker, so we used paper and pencil and then left that pad/pencil in the tin.

The tiles use the new artwork, and the tiles vary a bit from those in the base game.  A few of them have the gardens from the newer version of Carcassone, and all of the artwork has the face lift.  You can see all of the times from this recent game that we played:

The tiles are a bit smaller and thinner, which goes with the travel-friendly (and inexpensive) nature of the game.  I haven’t compared the exact tile manifests, but there seem to be disproportionately fewer roads.

The tin is travel sized.  It’s a bit bigger than the typical Amigo card box, but it’d still be portable.

My Thoughts on the Game

Here’s the bottom line: this is a fast-playing, inexpensive version of Carcassonne for two players.  If that appeals to you, then I recommend buying or importing this.  One friend commented that he’d still just go ahead and play the two-player version of Carcassonne, and I suppose that’s a natural viewpoint, but this is small and costs less than 7 Euro (or less than $8 to $9), which is a great price.

Our games have taken less than twenty minutes, which is a few minutes shorter than the standard version of Carcassonne.  Having 24 fewer tiles makes the game go faster, and it also makes it where you’re less prone to running out of meeples towards the end of the game, even if there are fewer meeples here.

I like the tiles they picked for the game, and I think the joys of Carcassonne are here.  On the downside, if you’re not a fan of Carcassonne, this is almost certainly not going to change that.

To me, the most appealing part of the game is the price and size.  I could see myself taking this on vacation, possibly even stuffing a couple of even smaller games into the tin.  (Yes, there’s room for a deck of cards in there too!)

The artwork is attractive — I like the new art — and the metal tin was a nice touch.

Overall, I think this is a decent deal, and I might bring a couple of copies back from Essen (suitcase space permitting) as stocking stuffers for gamer friends.