(Please review the following on the basis of informative/useful you found it:)
Carcassonne
2-5 players / 8-10 and up / 45 minutes(?)
Players build an old French town together, trying to control different
kinds of areas so that only they score when those areas are completed.
On their turns, players must draw and add a single tile to the board so
that it matches any nearby tiles, and may put one of their pieces on it
to take control of an area no one controls yet. When an area is finished,
the controlling player gets some points and all pieces there go back to
their owners. “But how could more than one person have pieces in an
area according to what I just read,” you ask. The answer is that while
you can’t get into a controlled area, you can place a tile in such a way
that multiple areas become one.
There’s also permanent piece placement for end-of-game scoring
that you should start playing with after a couple of games.
Some notes:
The fewer players, the better, according to the gaming community.
A widespread house-rule that makes the game faster without really
changing it: Players draw their tile at the end of their turns instead
of the start of their turn, letting them think on other players’ turns.
An expansion is a separately sold box that adds elements to a game;
Carcassonne has a ton of them. “Traders & Builders” is probably the
first one you should get should you choose to go down that road.
(There are also numerous alternate versions* of the game, each with
its own little twist. However, they are not generally compatible with
the expansions – even if they were, the visuals wouldn’t match.)
There’s even a much-simplified kids’ version, My First Carcassonne.
As a variant, you can have players draw 3 or 4 tiles and only draw
another 3/4 after playing their last tile (make sure the number of
tiles in the game is divisible by [player count]x[hand size]).