G@mebox author Marco Klasmeyer writes about the game:

Introduction:

The people of Carcassonne take off for new coasts and far away countries. The players discover the surrounding areas and are confronted with the dangers of the wide sea and rough mountains. Thus they discover the vast new land. Strategic planning and the skills of their conquerors and attendants such as seafarers, robbers, and discoverers will be essential for the players' success.

Description:

Carcassonne - Neues Land (New Land) is based on the well known playing mechanism of Carcassonne.

You have several tiles with different landscapes printed on them. You draw a tile and place it according to the depicted landscapes on the table like a puzzle. In contrast to the classic Carcassonne where you can build cities and roads with surrounding plains in this derivate you build or - speaking more correctly - discover different landscapes and islands with mountains and plains and some scattered cities. Carcassonne - Neues Land consists of 84 landscape tiles, 25 conquerors in five colours, one score board and 5 boards with short rules.

Each player is equipped with one board of short rules (for an overview of possible scores) and 5 conquerors. One has to be placed onto the score board. In the game the players take turns in clockwise order. In his turn a player has to draw a landscape tile form the supply stack and find an appropriate location where to place it (it is actually easier to use the bag from one of the Carcassonne extension sets for drawing a tile secretly). Every tile depicts up to three landscape types and might additionally contain a city. Each tile must fit into the scenery, so each area (plains, water or mountains) must be contiguous, hence no hard change or interruption of landscape is allowed at neighbouring tiles. After placing a tile a player has the opportunity to either place a conqueror onto that same tile or to take back an already placed conqueror. This evaluates the corresponding region. A placed conqueror occupies exclusively the whole contiguous area of either mountains, plains or water. It is not possible for a player to place another conqueror into the same region or area. But by cleverly placing the conquerors two separate areas might join later in the course of the game. In this case each player can separately evaluate the region whenever he decides to do so. There is no concurrency or competition in evaluation.

When it comes to the evaluation of areas and regions special rules apply depending on the region type, the completeness of the area and sometimes the number of cities within the region. A region is complete if there is no possibility to extend it anymore, i.e. all sides and borders are laid out and finished. A region to which landscape tiles can be still added to extend it is considered as incomplete. Complete and incomplete regions score differently:

1. Plains: Incomplete plain regions count 1 point per landscape tile and complete plain regions 2 points per tile. The presence of cities does not matter.
2. Mountains: Incomplete mountain regions count 1 point per city within that region AND in all neighboured plain regions. Complete mountain regions count 2 points per city. The size of the region does not matter.
3. Water: Incomplete water regions count 1 point per city at the surrounding coasts. Complete water regions count 1 point per city AND additionally 1 point per landscape tile.

Evaluation:

Carcassonne - Neues Land is a very nice version in the series of Carcassonne. In contrast to the original version and their extensions, you do not expand cities or roads by placing tiles. Here you discover and build the land and landscape itself. The existing cities are only of additional value in the game. Furthermore the way how to place your game tokens (conquerors) differs. In the original version it is not allowed to take an already placed token back to your supply, but in Neues Land you can decide when you want to let an evaluation take place. Of course it is more advisable to evaluate completed the regions and areas instead of incomplete ones, but at some times there are good reasons to do so. For instance, if you have run out of conquerors or if the region a conqueror explores is very difficult to complete (a tile needs to fit at three or four borders). So instead of waiting for the appropriate landscape tile, which could take ages, a player can decide during his turn to take back a conqueror and evaluate that region regardless of its completion state. On the other hand only four conquerors are available for each player, so there is a constant lack of free tokens. As a consequence it is quite difficult for a player to force a shared evaluation with another player of the same region by cleverly placing a neighboured landscape tile. On the other hand there is the funny situation that one player owns the mountain region and his opponents own the plains around it. So for each city placed in a plain region the player might also add a point to his opponent owning the mountains. This might lead to some tricky strategies for gaining the most advantage. This behaviour corresponds to the farmers of the original Carcassonne, who benefit from all cities built around their land.

After all Carcassonne - Neues Land keeps the proven puzzle element of the game and brings in new modifications of evaluation regions and areas. However, the landscape tiles have a simpler design than the original Carcassonne with its beautiful cities and detailed roads, villages and cloisters. Thus, although the game is challenging on its own terms, a seasoned Carcassonne-player should think twice before adding Neues Land to his collection.