Star Wars Carcassonne Comes Stateside

It might have been a licensing tussle between Hasbro, Disney, Hans im Gluck Verlags, and Z-Man games, but after all that wrangling, it looks like Star Wars Carcassonne will finally arrive in the United States. Z-Man has acquired the rights to do one print run of this Carcassonne variant to bring it over sometime later this year.

Star Wars Carcassonne is a 2-5-player game that sees the Rebels, Empire, and Bounty Hunters going out to take territory. The game takes the tile-laying elements of the original Carcassonne and changes around some of the concepts. New tile types, like Trading Routes, Merchants, Asteroid Fields, Explorers, Planets, and Conquerors replace Roads, Robbers, Cities, Knights, Cloisters, and Monks. On top of that, territories can now be challenged; players can roll dice to see who truly influences that tile. Finally, that pesky farmer that’s so hard to explain is no longer in the game.

There’s some new game modes that people can try out as well. Because the Rebels and the Empire have two colors for each faction, there’s the possibility of playing a team game where 2 Rebel players cooperate with each other against 2 Empire players. So between the 2v2 mode and the direct conflict elements the game, Star Wars Carcassonne looks interesting enough. I don’t think I’d get it myself since I don’t really need that many Carcassonne variants, but if you’re a big fan of the Star Wars franchise, that alone might do it.