Disclaimer: A copy of Between Two Castles: Essential Edition has been provided by Stonemaier Games for review purposes
In a lot of other media types, mash-ups and crossover events are some of the most exciting moments. In comic books, having Spider-Man appear alongside the X-Men had fans frothing, heck, Deadpool & Wolverine was the second highest grossing movie of 2024. In music, mashups were exciting, combining the best and iconic moments from several songs into one banging track. While board games have had some iterative designers, such as Uwe Rosenburg with Agricola and Caverna, or taking an existing game and putting a new spin on it, a la The Crew and The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game, there really haven’t been a lot of direct mashups.
Stonemaier Games already has a pedigree of inviting collaborators to use their games to build something bigger and better, like taking the Wingspan game by Elizabeth Hargrave, and spinning off the more complex Wyrmspan by Connie Vogelmann and the less complex Finspan by designers David Gordon and Michael O’Connell, but again, these are iterative designs. New games standing on the shoulders of giants, borrowing core mechanisms, but introducing new ideas.
In 2018, Stonemaier games released a true mashup. Designers Matthew O’Malley and Ben Rosset took their game, Between Two Cities, and smashed it into Castles of Mad King Ludwig by Ted Alspach. If you’ve never played either of those two games, let’s talk briefly about how Between Two Castles: Essential Edition plays.
Sitting between each player, lays a castle. Each round, you’ll pick nine tiles into your hand. You’ll choose two to keep, and place the rest face down next to your neighbour. When everyone has made their pick, everyone reveals the tiles they kept. Then, you place one of the tiles they kept into each of the castles on either side of you. Each of your opponents will do the same. You’re collaborating with your neighbours, trying to build both of your castles to be the best they can be, as the castle of yours that scores the lowest will represent your individual score at the end of the game. Once you’ve placed a tile into both castles, you’ll pick up the seven tiles your opponent left you, pick two again, and on and on the game plays until you’ve completed two whole rounds. Then, you’ll score each of your castles and declare a player the winner.
If you have played Between Two Cities, you might be thinking “That’s exactly how Between Two Cities plays, where’s does Castles of Mad King Ludwig come into the picture?”. Well, how each tile scores is lifted directly from CoMKL. Each tile is a room, from activity rooms, to dining halls, to outdoor gardens. Each type of room has a different scoring objective, such as being adjacent to other rooms of specific types, or earning points for all the tiles of a type in a single row or column. In addition, when you get 3 rooms of a single type into your castle, you earn a bonus based on that room type. If you’ve played Castles of Mad King Ludwig, all that will sound very familiar.
Now we understand how each parent game donated its traits into Between Two Castles, I’ll briefly touch on what separates the 2025 Essential Edition from the 2018 original. And the answer is functionally nothing. The Essential Edition contains the original base game, the Stories and Soirees expansion, plus the two promo tiles that have been released. But if you were just looking at the player aids and the rulebook, you’d never know that the secret rooms or the ballrooms were originally expansion content.
Now, I said above that Between Two Castles feels cooperative or collaborative, and it does. You are working with your two neighbours to build the best castle possible, because your individual final score is equal to the lower score of your two castles. But it’s still a competitive game, there is only be one winner at the end of the night. But the friendly nature of the game ensures that no one has bad feelings during gameplay, except for the pangs of jealousy as you watch your partner to your left confer with the person to their left as they decide which of the two tiles they drafted are going to go into your shared castle.
Between Two Castles: Essential Edition plays up to 8 players seamlessly. Much like how 7 Wonders scales up in player count so easily, each round you’re only really interacting with two other people. Your hands of tiles will flow around the table, and much of the thinking time and decisions happen simultaneously. There aren’t many games I’m willing to play at 7 or 8 players outside of party games, but I’d consider this a contender against 7 Wonders if I know that everyone at the table has some experience in the board game hobby.
All the rooms score differently, and you earn a different bonus when you get 3 or 5 rooms of the same type in your castle, which can spiral out the number of choices you need to make. Teaching Between Two Castles is kind of a pain, as by the time you’ve explained the 9th room type, no one really remembers what the first types of rooms do anymore. Thankfully, the game comes with 8 player aids which do a fantastic job of reminding you of the important information, once you have the context of the rules in your head.
Ever since I first laid hands on Wingspans rulebook, with it’s wonderfully luxurious linen finish, Stonemaier Games production quality has been second to none in my eyes, and that remains true here. The rulebook is big and clear with helpful examples, the tiles are thick and beautifully illustrated, although some of the iconography on the tiles is a bit small. The GameTrayz contains the game beautifully, and makes it a breeze to ‘setup’. You literally plop the trayz onto the table, and tell everyone to grab a stack of tiles. Bang, you’re already into the game. For ease of access, Stonemaier games earns top marks.
I had played Between Two Cities once before, and thought it was pretty fun. I am a big fan of Castles of Mad King Ludwig, so I was excited to experience this mashup. What I found was a fun, easy to teach game that felt friendly and collaborative. Everyone was working with their partners well, conspiring to maximize the points on both their castles. The tile drafting created some interesting decisions as you can pick tiles, knowing what your partner is going to get next round, and just hope that they (literally) pick up what you put down. Between Two Castles has the satisfaction that comes from building and pulling off a plan with a partner that makes cooperative games so popular, while also giving providing one player the satisfaction of victory over your opponents.
Many of the scoring objectives are going to pull you and your partner in opposite directions. Maybe you’ll be wanting to place a specific tile because it’ll score 4 points for the orange tiles in a column, while your partner will want to pick a specific colour tile to gain the bonus for having 3 rooms of a single type. When you start triggering those bonuses, the game really starts to sing. The downside is that some of the bonuses can make for some much longer turns as players take time mathing out how to maximize their points, between drawing new tiles, or cards and placing everything perfectly. A slight frustration when they spend 10 minutes debating where to put something, and the difference between the two options is a single point.
Onto the question that needs answering. Is Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig greater than the sum of its parts? For my money, no. As a big fan of Castles of Mad King Ludwig, I’m left feeling sad that the bidding mechanic and whimsical and wacky castle designs were stripped away. But there is no denying that Between Two Castles is the more accessible option. It’s cooperative drafting, fun scoring style, seamless scalability, and polished production make it a fantastic choice.
Between Two Castles: Essential Edition is a wonderful game. If you have larger player counts, it’s an obvious pick, as it scales from 3 to 8 players perfectly. It’s fast, unlike many other games that can support that many players, it’s gorgeous, even if the iconography is a bit small. There are two solo modes and a 2 player variant, the expansion content is folded in so seamlessly that you’d be left wondering what’s different between the essential edition and the base game. The puzzle tickles my brain just right, and while it doesn’t surpass the heights of the original Castles of Mad King Ludwig, Between Two Castles offers a unique and interesting spin on the scoring mechanics from CoMKL. This game is well worth a spot on my shelf.
