Tournament Rules
Carcassonne World Championship
Basic tournament rules (last updated April 2024)
The current national Carcassonne champion of each country will be invited to take part in the Carcassonne World Championship Finals. Each player may participate only in ONE national championship per tournament season (with the exception of the MSO online tournament). In principle only someone who either has the appropriate nationality or lives permanently in the organizing country may participate there. If exceptions to this rule being made by a national tournament organizer (which happenes sometimes) the corresponding player is not allowed to play in the finals and the next ranked player who fulfills the requirements will be invited instead.
Publisher Hans im Glück and Spielezentrum reserve the right to let other people take part as well (because they have qualified in another way or it was decided that they have earned a wildcard).
During the Carcassonne World Championship Final we will stream the event and take photos for press release and social media channels. The players agree to this when they take part in the championship.
Rules of the Final (last updated April 2024)
The tournament uses the Swiss system, applying the Buchholz-method (or Solkoff) as a tiebreaker (the lowest result of an opponent is discarded) in a starting preelimination phase. The preelimination is a 6 round tournament at two player tables.
After these six rounds the best eight players play a quarter-final game (QF1: place 1 vs. place 8, QF2: place 2 vs. place 7, QF3: place 3 vs. place 6 and QF4: place 4 vs. place 5). The starting player is the player with the better results in the preelimation.
The winners of the quarter-final games play the semi-final games. In this round the winner of the 1st quarter-final (QF1) plays against the winner of the 4th quarter-final (QF4) and the winner of the 2nd quarter-final (QF2) against the winner of the 3rd quarter-final (QF3). The winners of the semi-final games play the final, the losers play a game for rank 3.
The starting player in the elimination rounds is the player with the better results in the preelimation.
In the unlikely case of a draw / tie in these games (quarter- and semi-final round) the starting player loses automatically.
The two winners of the semifinals duel for the title of World Champion. The starting player in these finals is the player with the better position in the preelimination.
If the game ends with a tie (which is extremely unlikely), then the the starting player loses automatically. The same is done with the losing players of the semifinals – they play off which player will take place 3.
The standard Carcassonne box is used for all games. The final match will likely be played at a bigger version of the standard box. Therefore the players will get more time at the chess clock (see below).
In all games chess-clocks will be used. Each player may take up to 15 minutes for his own game - if he uses up all his time, then the player loses. The player activates the other player’s clock as soon as he finishes his move - this means AFTER he calculated the points (own and from the opponent). Tiles are set finally as soon as a player let them go - players are not allowed to change their decision of placement of tiles (and of course meeples) after they let them go.
Explanation Swiss system:
In the preelimination games the number of victories will be counted (in the case of a tie, here each player gets 0,5 victories). We will use the Buchholz (Solkoff) method to resolve ties. This means that for every player the number of victories of his opponents will be summed up. For this the result of the weakest opponent will be discarded. If there are still ties, then we use the Bucholz (Solkoff) method with discarding the best and the worst result. In the case of ties with this method, the difference of victory points over all five games will be summed up and used as tie-breaker.
The schedule for the first round will be determined by drawing lots. After that the schedule will be determined by the current ranking, where the players ranked 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6 and so on will compete against each other. In addition to that we will take care that players do not have to play against each other twice (if possible). Then the next suitable player in the ranking will be determined (this will be done actually by a software solution). In every game the starting player is the player that has started fewer times. In case of ties the player placed at position one in a game by the software is the starting player.
Rules of the Carcassonne Games - Explanations:
All games are played only with the basic Carcassonne game, with the following rule variations: Cities with two tiles give four points (not two). The Farmer’s value is calculated like this: For every meadow the number of farmers is calculated and a player with the most farmers receives 3 points for every city at that meadow. Note that every player can get the points for one city in this manner more than one time!
Clarification for the game play:
During your opponent's turn you may choose and look at your next tile. But beware: the new tile has to be at anytime above the tabletop, so it is clear which one you've chosen. Make sure, you don't mistake your chosen one with another! You may look at it (secretly), but at the beginning of your turn before you add it to the "board", let your opponent have a look at it, which one it is.
In case of an "edge of the table" event you can stop the chessclocks and rearange the tiles in the other direction to get more space. If this is not working we will provide another table to solve the problem.