How to Play Carcassonne | Official Rules

Game Components

• 70 Land tiles showing roads, cities, fields and monasteries. There is one start tile with a darker back.
  

  The 12 river tiles are not part of the basic game but have the same back as the start tile.

• 40 followers in 5 colors.
  Each player will use one of their followers as a score marker.
• One scoreboard.
• One rulebook and 1 player aid.

Setup

The start tile is placed in the center of the table, while the scoreboard is placed on the edge of the table.

The other tiles are shuffled and placed on a face-down stack.

Each player takes his 8 followers (of his color) and puts one of them on the scoreboard (on number zero).

Now the players decide who can start the game.