The mother of all modern tile placing games, Carcassonne(2000) by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede, is an indisputable classic and a point of reference for gamers and game designers. The Son of Kark is an adaptation of the core mechanics of this great game to fit the tiles in the Green Box.

At a glance:

2-4 players

30 minutes

Complexity: medium

Components used:

All 36 tiles

7 cubes/tokens pr player, players select one colour each

Pen and paper for noting scores

Setup:

Shuffle the tiles in a face down stack. Take the top tile and place it face down on the table. Take the next tile and place it face up next to the previous tile. With 3 or 4 players, remove one or two tiles from the game, respectively, to ensure every player gets the same amount of turns. Select a starting player randomly.

Play:

On your turn you must draw and place one tile, and you may place a token on this tile.

Placing tiles:

After looking at the symbol on the tile, you can choose whether to place the tile face up or face down. The tile must be placed adjacent to at least one other tile already on the table, so that they have one shared side. Note that you can not place a tile face down adjacent to another face down tile.

Placing a token:

You can choose to place a token either in the center of the tile, or on the corner of the tile where it intersects with three other tiles. A token in the center of a face up tile is known as a Market, and on a face down tile as a City. A token on an intersection is known as a Crossroad. You are only allowed to place on a Crossroad if it is complete, i.e. there are four tiles touching in the same corner.

Scoring:

Your placed token may score points later in the game, depending on where it was placed

  • Market: You own this symbol until someone else places a token on another tile with the same symbol. When that happens, you return your token to your stack and score one point for each of these symbols currently on the table.
  • City: One point for each different symbol surrounding the tile, including diagonally. Return and score when you have 6, or when the tile is completely surrounded.
  • Crossroad: Crossroads score points only at the end of the game. Each token on a crossroad has influence on all 4 adjacent tiles. For each of the symbols, and counting cities as a symbol, award 5 points to the player with the greatest total influence on that symbol across the board. If two players are tied, they get 3 points each, 3 players tied get 2 points each.

Winner:

Play continues until all tiles have been placed. Now all tokens on the board are scored according to the rules above. After scoring Markets and Cities, remove these tokens to make it easier to calculate the Crossroads.

The winner is the player with the most points.