At this point, trying to review a game like 2011’s The Castles of Burgundy is kind of like trying to review a Toyota Corolla, or a pizza. Everyone already has their own experience and opinions have already been formed. The Castles of Burgundy is a staple of the board game hobby, and it often comes up as the best ‘next step’ game for players who are ready to graduate their tabletop games into something a bit deeper and more complex.

Playing The Castles of Burgundy is simple enough. Each turn, all players roll both their dice, then in player order, they use both their dice to complete actions, such as taking a tile from the centre board into your personal supply, placing a tile from your supply onto your personal board, getting 2 workers (which will allow you to modify your dice), or shipping goods that you’ve collected for some points and silver.

The crux of the game is the pips of the dice dictate which spots are available to you. If you’re taking a tile from the game board to your player area, you can only take a tile from the area that corresponds with the pips of the dice you’re using. The same applies when placing a tile from your player board into your countryside, you can only place a tile on a spot that matches the colour of the tile, and the pip of your die. Of course, you can always use workers to modify your die pips to offset impossible situations, if you have them. You can always spend a die action to generate two workers, but that feels like a total waste of an action, so plan your turns wisely.

Every tile you place into your player board benefits you in some way. Many buildings give you a specific bonus action, grey mines will earn you silver every round, animals earn you points, yellow monastery tiles will either give you a persistent power, or, offer end game victory points. Furthermore, completing a province (a collection of same coloured spaces) will earn you victory points. More points the larger the province, and more points the earlier in the game you manage to do so.

All of these restrictions and bonuses makes The Castles of Burgundy feel like an intricate puzzle. Every action leads to more actions, and you’re constantly fighting between your short term gains and long term goals. Despite this complexity, the actual gameplay is broken down into bite sized pieces. On your turn, you have 2 dice. Some turns do spiral out of control when a player manages a wild combo of special actions that feels almost unfair, but for most of the game it’s just players quickly taking or placing tiles, then informing the next player it’s their turn.

The points in The Castles of Burgundy are plentiful and come from almost everywhere. The trick of the game is amassing more than your opponents. It doesn’t matter if you managed to score a respectable 186 points if everyone else around the table flew through the 200 point threshold. With points coming from a myriad of places, it can be hard to prioritize any one objective, especially when many of the big point scoring opportunities require more than the 2 actions you get on any given turn.

The most common criticism of The Castles of Burgundy is the bland, beige player board. There’s nothing exciting about a grid of hexes with dice printed all over the place. The next most common criticism is the luck factor, which inevitably comes up in any game where you roll dice to dictate your actions. It’s crushing when you roll double 2’s for four turns in a row. You exhaust all you can possibly do with those numbers, and end up burning actions to generate more workers in a desperate attempt to do anything. Further to that, it sucks when other players just happen to roll exactly what they needed every round. That said, there are 25 dice rolls per game, the luck should balance out with that many rounds.

In the years following the original release, two more editions have been produced. In 2019, Alea and Ravensburger published a new edition with updated artwork and a couple expansions included (the pictures in this post are from this version), then in 2021 Arcane Wonders crowdfunded a lavish new edition. While I haven’t laid my hands on the latter, I recently played with my friends copy of the 2019 edition, and felt quite disappointed. The new art is lush and colourful, but the iconography on the tiles is incredibly small and hard to read. I have read that this edition is more colourblind friendly, but it’s still not perfect. I vastly prefer my old copy to this newish edition.

As I said before, The Castles of Burgundy is a modern classic at this point. It’s been over a decade since its original release, some would argue it’s prolific designer Stefen Feld’s best game. It’s the kind of game that everyone who is interested in the board game hobby should play at some point, and while the original version is a beige map with a boring cover, the gameplay itself holds up spectacularly. It’s wildly satisfying to play and offers a great experience, even after a decade of playing board games.