Cornwall

Today's review is of the 2015 release, Cornwall.  For 2-4 players, it takes 30 minutes.

Overview
You are laying claim to the regions of Cornwall- the beautiful forests, villages, mountains, meadows, and swamps that dot the land.  You have three different kinds of meeples (small, tall, and fat) worth 1, 2, and 3 respectively.  On your turn, you
- draw a tile (each tile has three landscapes)
- place the tile (according to placement rules) to increase the map
- receive coins (if you extended 2 or 3 terrain types by your placement)
- buy your meeples back from the pub, if desired and relevant
- place your meeples (you can place one on each landscape, meaning three per turn, but each beyond the first costs coins.  Also, you must pay one coin for each meeple already in a region that you wish to add to)
- check to see if any regions (a contiguous stretch of the same landscape) are completed.  A region is completed when a landscape with a village is added to it, or it's completely enclosed, or it cannot be added to further.
- score completed regions (scoring depends on the presence of Cornwall flags (which double tile values), and overall majority (add up the values of each players' meeples in that region; the highest score wins the points for that region)
- place meeples that were in scored regions in the pub

The game ends when all tiles have been placed and scores tallied.

game in progress; image from here

Review
This game is very similar to Carcassonne.  The main differences:
- a tile has three landscapes, not one
- you can place up to three meeples per turn, not one
- there are three different kinds of meeples
- you can place meeples in a region that already has other meeples, if you pay coins
- regions are scored as soon as they cannot be extended further
- you have to pay to get 'used' meeples back, by paying one coin to the pub

Overall, I liked it more than I suspected.  There are plenty of meaningful decisions, and like Carcassonne, sometimes you have to help others (by completing their regions/etc.) to help yourself.  It is a good game, but it's so similar to Carcassonne that I see no need to keep both.

Rating: B+