A clever tile-laying game. The southern French city of Carcassonne is famous for it's unique Roman and medieval fortifications. The players develop the area around Carcassonne and deploy their followers on the roads, in the cities, in the cloisters and in the fields. The skill of the players to develop the area will determine who is victorious. Carcassonne is considered one of the "gateway" games that opens the world of boardgames to many new players and spawns many sequels and imitators. Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride are frequently cited as the others in the Euro genre.

This year will continue the format using a hybrid of multi-player games in the first round advancing 16 winners to single elimination two-player games.

1. Format
The following rules will be used for this tournament:
a. Only the basic Carcassonne game will be used (no expansions to include The River). Make sure you only have the 71 regular tiles plus the one starting tile and eight followers (aka Meeples) in the game. In 2-player games, one straight road tile will be removed so each player has an equal number of turns.
b. Scoring is calculated using the Rio Grande Scoring rules:
· Completed cities with two tiles count for 4 (four) points.
· Farmer score: The player(s) with the most farmers in each field receives 3 (three) points for each completed city adjoining the field.

2. First Round
a. Round 1 will use a multiplayer format with the winner of each game advancing to Round 2.
b. Players will be randomly assigned to tables. Target is 4-player games but 5-player games (random selection) will be used if there are more than 128 participants in the first round.

3. Rounds 2-7
a. Players will be randomly assigned to tables. Four people will be assigned to each table. Players with Spades/Clubs will play each other in the first round as will players with Hearts/Diamonds. The winner of each game will play the winner of the other game at their table in the next round.
b. The final round will consist of the two undefeated players competing for 1st place with the loser receiving 2nd place in the tournament. The two losers from the semi-final games will play a 3rd place consolation game with the loser receiving 4th place in the tournament. The four losers from the quarterfinal games will play in a consolation bracket with the winner receiving 5th place and the runner-up 6th in the tournament.
c. The start player will be randomly selected by the players.

4. Tie-Breakers
Ties will be broken in the following order:
a. Most unused Meeples remaining at the end of the game
b. Most points from farmers
c. Reverse turn order at start of the game (i.e. person who went last has highest tie-breaker)