I’m Canadian, so any jokes about White Castle as a fast food chain are pretty lost on me. Although, thanks to Harold and Kumar, the references are not completely lost in translation. The White Castle, in my context, is a die drafting game designed by Sheila Santos and Israel Cendrero, and published by Devir in 2023. In The White Castle, players control clans as they vie for victory points by amassing influence in the court, managing their resources wisely, and by having a veritable army of staff amongst the bridges and walls of the Himeji stronghold.

The White Castle, has players trying to advance the standing of their clan with the daimyo of Himeji Castle in feudal Japan. And right out of the gate, I felt intrigued. Dice drafting/worker placement? Yes! Tight resource and a penchant for combos? Yes please! Feudal Japanese theme? Sounds like my kind of game!

I’ve mostly played The White Castle on Board Game Arena, and I’ll admit that my first play didn’t leave me with the best first impression. Thankfully, I joined a casual tournament, which meant I was locked in to play at least 6 games. And once I started diving into the game, the more meat and depth I found to plunder. I didn’t realize it at first, because I was playing asynchronously, but the game only lasts 9 turns.

I feel the need to say that again. The entire game lasts for 9. Turns.

But despite its abbreviated length, The White Castle is full of combos. Every time you play, you have the urge to try again to see just how much more value you can squeeze out of those 9 turns.

9 turns spread over 3 rounds. At the start of each round, you roll the all the dice and arrange them on the bridges in ascending numerical value. On your turn, you simply take one die that’s on either end of the cardboard bridge, and do something with it. The main board has an ever-changing pyramid of actions, and your personal board has some actions that will slowly get more and more valuable as you start to spread your meeples throughout the court.

Immediately, there’s some consideration on which side of the bridge to take the dice from. Every action has a cost printed on the board, and the difference between the printed cost and the die you place to take the action will either cost you or earn you money. So obviously you want to take from the right side to earn that cash, right? Well, taking from the left side will earn you your lantern rewards, which will shower a bevy of benefits as you slot more and more cards onto your player board. But you’ll likely need to pay a couple coins for that privilege.

The actions themselves are pretty standard Euro stuff. Earning resources, coins, and influence, but the way the actions can chain together is where the game starts to hum. Each player has a staff to manage, including gardeners, warriors, and courtiers. Each offer benefits for placing them out, and are linked to each other in subtle ways.

The courtier action will have you paying pearls to send your meeples to the castle, and ascend up the social hierarchy. Each spot they land on in the action card pyramid, they take that action card and drop it onto your player board, pushing the card that was on your board down to your lantern bonus slot. This lets you have an action card all to yourself, potentially robbing your opponents of its abilities.

I don’t want to just skip over those Lantern rewards, as they can be incredibly valuable. Each subsequent card you add to that row improves the resources you get every time you trigger the lantern bonus. It’s vaguely engine-building, but again, with only 9 turns, you’ll be limited in how many times you’re able to add cards to that row, and how many times you can goose your engine. But it is truly satisfying when you start the game getting a single coin as a benefit to getting 4 or 5 rewards from taking a lower value die. Even better when the dice on the bridge happen to be all 5’s.

The warriors require iron to be placed, but will give you a random benefit that is established at the start of the game. Sometimes you can turn their benefit into a profit, making it feel like the game is paying you for putting them out, while other games the benefit won’t match the cost. At the end of the game however, the warriors earn victory points based directly on how many courtiers you managed to sneak into the castle.

The gardeners live near the bridges, and getting them out early can feel key, as between each round they’ll trigger some income for you. But only after rounds 3 and 6. After that they’ll give you a meagre amount of points at the end of the game, but they seem to exist as a trap for players who don’t realize just how quickly these turns can fly by.

Some turns are quick and simple. But others will let you combo 2 or 3 actions or benefits together. That cadence of “I do this, which gets me this, which triggers this to earn me that” feels fantastic. You line something up, trigger a main action, which gives you another action, which triggers a Lantern reward, which nudges you into something else… and suddenly you’re able to accomplish so much more in those 9 turns than you ever thought possible.

Of course, that tightness does hamper you, too. The game is restrictive. Dice spots fill up fast (in 3 and 4 player games you can stack die on top of each other, making the action slots a bit less tight, although the coin costs will swing wildly), resources are often scarce, and sometimes you’re staring at your options thinking, “What can I even do with this?” The Well action exists as a bailout, but going there feels a lot like a wasted action, and when you only have nine turns, that’s a significant cost.

That tension is what makes it interesting, though. Every decision matters, and I’ve definitely felt my approach shift over multiple plays. Early on, I was so focused on getting my gardeners out in the first round to maximize their value. Now I know that I have to come out swinging. Every turn is precious, and if I’m not doing something meaningful right away, I’m already behind.

There’s also some hidden interaction at the bridges. I said before that the gardeners will earn you income after rounds 3 and 6, but they only do so if there’s at least one die on that bridge. More than once I saw someone stacking up their gardeners on a specific bridge, so I drained it of dice, leaving their workers out to dry. More often than not you won’t be specifically targeting denying someone’s income, but it’s just one more lever to pull, one more consideration when you’re trying to decide between two die. Something you always need to keep in mind.

I particularly appreciate how variable the set-up is. The action cards are all different for every game, and which colours of die trigger which ability is all random. Every game is a new puzzle to interact with. That said, all the changing information can lead to analysis paralysis. If you or your play partners are prone to that, you’ll feel it. Especially when someone snipes the action card you were counting on, so you need to reconsider your entire strategy over again.

All that said, I’ve had a blast with The White Castle. The combos, the tension, the variability from the dice and card setup, it all comes together in a way that makes each game feel just a little different. The dice rolls alone can completely change how a round plays out, and the shifting card availability in the castle keeps you on your toes.

It feels very short. I don’t know if I mentioned this yet, but it’s only 9 turns long. I’m often left with a feeling that if only I had just one more turn, I could have really achieved everything I set out to do. Except for maxing out that passage of time track, I have no idea how someone could manage to get to the end of that.