The game contains 18 dice that have individual pictures on each side. The dice are rolled, and then everyone around the table tries to find common phrases, like I’ve done in the illustration to the left of this review. In one mode of the game, players have about two minutes to find as many phrases as possible on the dice. After the time is up, everyone compares their word lists. If two or more people came up with the same phrase, they cancel each other out, and if someone came up with a phrase that’s a bit of a stretch, they’re voted down by the other players, but every legitimate phrase earns one point. First person to 20 points wins!

Creativity is encouraged, although bending the pictures too much into other things to try and make them fit a phrase probably won’t work. Playing on words is allowed, which means that “peace” can also be “piece”. You can add small words like “a”, “in”, or “and” to help you. Also, the phrases are only allowed to be two pictures long, so my sentence at the bottom wouldn’t be allowed (whether or not it made the other players laugh).

All things considered, it’s a fun game to play with a few friends, and it usually has some pretty hilarious moments. For instance, on one round that showed two dice with a calendar and a penguin on an iceberg, someone wrote “March of the Penguins”. On another round that had an obese man and a parka, someone suggested Chris Farley’s “Fat Guy in a Little Coat”.

There are a few downsides of this game. For instance, if you play this game too many times in a row, you start noticing a few of the same phrases over and over again, which takes a bit of the fun away. Another point is that it doesn’t work to have large groups of people play this, as it gets difficult for everyone to see the pictures on the dice. It’s also more of an adult game… in my experience, younger kids have a hard time coming up with phrases.

Those, however, are fairly minor compared to the actual fun of the game. If you want to see how well you’d do playing this game, see if you can find other phrases on the dice shown here. What about “papercut”? “Cut time”? “Playing with fire”? “Happy hour”? “Clock face”? “Two-faced”? “Time flies”?…

However, I was mistaken. First off, you don’t start off with a static board. The board is made up entirely of square tiles that are built up as you go. Plus, there is no element of removing your opponent’s men. This is purely a strategic building game, and is much shorter than the average game of Risk.

In the game, you are constructing the southern French city of Carcassonne, one tile at a time. The tiles have pieces of roads, cities, and/or fields on them, along with the occasional cloister (monastery). Every time you place a tile, you have the option of playing one of your 7 followers on the tile you just played, claiming a road segment, city segment, field segment, or cloister. Once you’ve placed a follower, he stays there until the road, city, or cloister gets finished (if you place your follower on a field, he doesn’t leave until the end of the game). For every road, city, or cloister that gets finished, the follower on it earns points. Your goal is to get more points than your opponent(s).

There are many strategy games out there – Axis & Allies, Chess, Khet – but this is one of the few strategy games that doesn’t feel like a strategy game. In fact, there’s enough of an element of chance in the game that you could win without doing much strategy at all, which is one of the best things about this game. Literally anyone ages 8 and up could play this game and have fun playing it.

This game came out in 2001, and has enjoyed such popularity that it has spawned many expansion packs and variations. If you do decide to buy this game (and I highly recommend you do), the Inns & Cathedrals expansion is a good one to start with. It makes the roads and cities worth potentially more points without adding too many new rules to the game. If you want more cutthroat competition in your game, the Tower expansion is good for that, since it allows you to actually remove some of your opponent’s followers.

Bottom line: If you can find this game (which can be a little hard to do, since it’s more likely to be found in a specialty games store than your local Wal-Mart) it is very much worth buying.