There aren’t a lot of deduction games that I enjoy. At least, competitive deduction games. I really enjoy solo logic puzzles, but when deduction becomes a competition, I freeze up and my brain becomes a puddle. It probably doesn’t help that the people who make up my regular game group are brutally smart, I always feel like I’m playing catch up. It’s probably because they’re SO much older than me.
Sorry, I’m off track. Cryptid is a deduction game by Hal Duncan and Ruth Veevers and published by Osprey Games in 2018. Playing Cryptid is quite straightforward. The concept is there is a Cryptid on the map, and each player wants to be the one to discover it. To facilitate this, all players are given a single clue pertaining to where the Cryptid could be, and when all the clues are collated, only one hex on the board satisfies all players clues.
Players take turns asking each other if the Cryptid could exist in a specific hex. If yes, a disc goes down. If no, a cube goes down. When someone thinks they know where the cryptid is, they announce their search by placing their own disc on that space, then all players either place a disc or a cube. If all players placed a disc, the searching player is declared the winner.
The first thing that pops is Cryptid’s map. It’s eye-catching! Vibrant colours depicting 5 different terrain types, and really, hexes always look good. A handful of wooden landmarks dot the landscape, and getting closer to the board, you’ll find animal tracks in the bear and cougar habitats. Everything is distinct and clear, which is vital, as the last thing you want getting in your way while playing Cryptid is hard to parse information.
The clues that get doled out have to do with proximity. Things like “Within 1 hex of a water space” or “within 2 spaces of a cougar habitat” or “on either swamp, or mountain” Each of these clues gives players a tiny slice of the puzzle, something that whittles the potential spaces down by ~60%. It’s kind of fascinating that with these clues, only a single hex on the board satisfies all the conditions. I keep expecting to find a fault, an instance where there’s more than one hex, but it’s true, every time.
Cryptid should flow quickly. Each turn is simply pointing to a hex, and asking a player “Here?” and receiving your answer with either a cube or disc. Unfortunately, as with any game that has significant cognitive load, player turns can drag on as they sit with their head in their hands trying to figure out the perfect space to ask a question.
There’s risk in asking a question. If the query returns a ‘no’, then you must also place a cube somewhere else on the board, giving all players more information about your clue. If you haven’t figured it out yet, that’s the real goal of the game. Figuring out what everyone else’s clue is, and finding that single hex that satisfies all the clues.
My brain burned while playing Cryptid. I struggled to keep all the other players clues in my head all at the same time. It was also a very quiet game, where we all just sat staring at the board, sometimes grunting as a cube or disc got placed, until finally the search happened, and the cryptid was discovered. But then an explosion of discussion on what we all thought each other’s clue was, made for quite a good experience.
I hold some reservations toward Cryptid that are not its fault. Things like, if a player misinterprets their rule and makes a mistake with their cube, it can completely break the game. Also, if you play with others who are incredibly logical, there’s nothing that’s going to help you overcome your opponents. All the information is right out on the board, and a players’ ability to parse the information is what determines the winner here.
Cryptid is a pretty little puzzle. There isn’t much variety to the gameplay, each time you shake up the map and drop new landmark locations, but that’s about it for discovery. It’s the kind of game that can be likened to a Sudoku, it’s a great puzzle, but every time you come to this game, it’s going to give you the exact same experience. That’s not a negative, but it will feel worn after several plays in quick succession.
It’s kind of fascinating to read some of the BGG forums, where people claim to have written a python script that can reliably find the Cryptid within just 2 turns. If you were inspired, you could train yourself and figure out the key to this puzzle. I’ve also seen a lot of people who have created deduction sheets to lessen the cognitive load of keeping each player’s clues in your head. Personally, I feel that the choice to omit deduction sheets from the game was intentional. Most of the game is happening inside your head, the workout of deducing the location is a huge part of the experience. Relegating that whole part of the game to paper turns Cryptid from a cerebral puzzle, to a checklist.
As I said above, deduction games are not my forte. Cryptid is an excellent game for those who like deduction puzzles. At the end of the day, I’d happily play Cryptid again, but it’s not one that I’ll ever be requesting to play. I much prefer Alchemists, where if my deductions fail, there are more game elements for me to focus on. I can still publish my findings, and in the event of catastrophe, poison a student for my own enjoyment.
SCOUT by Kei Kanjino and published by Oink Games has got to be one of the most widely popular little box of cards Oink games has published so far.
Each card in SCOUT is double-sided, with different numbers on either side. Each round begins by dealing out the whole deck to all players (with certain cards removed in less than full player count games). When you receive your cards, you are not allowed to re-arrange them in your hand. What you can do, is choose to use the top or bottom side of your hand, flipping the entire collection of cards over in one movement.
Each turn, players either Scout, or Show. When you show, you pick a set of cards from your hand (either cards of ascending or descending value, or, a collection of identical numbers) that are adjacent to each other, and place them on the table, making it the ‘active show’ Each subsequent player may either Scout, which has them taking one card from either end of the show and adding it to their hand, giving the player whose show is being picked apart a victory point, or, play a competing show by playing cards from their hand with more cards, or higher value cards, than the current show. If you beat a show, you take the defeated show into your play area, to count as points after the round is over.
Once per round, players can perform a special “scout and show” action, which allows them to pilfer a card from the existing show, then, immediately play their own show.
The round ends when either someone has no cards left in their hand after a show, or, every other player scouts after a show. The cards left in your hand are negative points, while the cards you’ve collected from beaten shows are positive points.
SCOUT is a brilliant little game. It’s light and easy, so anyone can get into it, but it’s not too light that it becomes mindless. I like the first moment where you get your hand, and you try to figure out which way you want to keep your hand. Which side has more immediate Shows, and which one has the potential for a much longer show. Both are important, and the importance can vary wildly depending on the player count.
Because the round ends if your show gets back around to you, in a 3 player game a show of just 4 cards could bring the round to an end, if the other players are unlucky enough. Speaking of luck, there is a pretty large element of luck in that you can get really hosed on how the cards are dealt out to you. If that bothers you, stay away from SCOUT, there is no way to mitigate bad luck. That said, there is strategy to be plumbed, which has kept me engaged throughout all my plays.
I don’t know what exactly what parameters need to exist for me to decide that luck is okay, but in the cast of SCOUT, I’m fine with it. There are no stakes, no lost time or wasted game nights when I get boned by bad luck. Just reshuffle and play it again, no biggie.
I love the hand management aspect of the game. It’s so satisfying when you can play strategic Shows to have the remaining cards in your hand fall perfectly into place. Similarly, when you have a 3,4,5,7,8 in your hand, and your opponent plays a 6. The moment when you can scout and show and drop a massive 6 card run onto the table gets the whole table exclaiming. That said, there is tension in hording a handful of cards. Sure, you might play a 6 card run next turn, but when the player before you drops their final 4 cards from their hand and saddles you with a bunch of negative points, it stings!
I could talk negatively about the theme of poaching circus staff from each other, but I don’t really feel like this criticism takes away from the enjoyment of the game. If the names and professions were scrubbed from the game, and they were just numbered cards, I’d be totally fine with it.
SCOUT is a great game, and one that I recommend without recommendation. Its tiny box makes it easily portable, its light ruleset allows nearly anyone to sit down and start playing after 90 seconds of rules. It’s fast, allowing players to hop in and out as needed. SCOUT will be one of the few games that I’ll be bringing on my travels this summer, and I’m sure more than a few new fans will be created.
Sometimes I feel like I’m becoming a curmudgeonly old man. Bitter at the world and have a deep disdain and loathing for ‘fun’. Soon I’ll be chasing the roaming street youths off my lawn with a stick, how dare they play? Everyone should be out working! No one wants to work anymore!
Sorry about that. Ticket to Ride by Alan R. Moon and published by Days of Wonder in 2004 needs no introduction. In a world where the latest and greatest board games get a mere 10,000 copy print run, Ticket to Ride has eclipsed 10 million copies sold. It is eminently popular, beloved by many, and I just don’t understand why!
A game of Ticket to Ride begins with a map. Tones have been printed, so pick your favourite region and go to town. Each player gets a hand of 3 destination tickets, of which you must at least two. Players start with 4 train car cards in their hand, and a pile of plastic trains on front of them. On a player’s turn, they can choose to do one of the following 3 actions:
Take 2 normal coloured cards from the face up display, or the face down draw deck. Unless you take one of the wild face up cards, then you only get to take one.
Play cards to place your trains on the board, and score points for doing so.
Draw 3 more destination cards, which you must keep at least one of those cards, but you can keep all the cards if you wish.
Players continue taking turns until someone has less than 3 trains left. Everyone gets one more turn, then the game is over. At game end, players reveal their destination tickets, and earn points if they were able to connect the two cities on their tickets, and lose points if they failed to do so. There’s also a 10 point bonus to the player who has the longest continual path of trains. Then, the player with the most points is the winner.
Listen, it’s not that I think Ticket to Ride is a bad game, because it’s not! It’s more that I just don’t understand why it’s so popular. The turns are fast and simple, sure. It’s rules-light, so the whole family can play, okay. There’s a constant stream of new expansions to keep the experience varied, check. But I just find the core of the game utterly uninteresting. So much of the game is just “draw two cards”. Over and Over again.
In 2 and 3 player games, all the double routes are knocked down to 1, making the game tighter at 3 players. I know skilled players can and will watch what routes another player places, and specifically try to get in their way, but at my level of play, it’s fairly arbitrary. There’s no hate drafting going on, each person is just trying to complete their routes. Yes, you could be keeping track of what cards everyone has drawn, and deduce what they can and cannot play on, but in reality, it’s a crapshoot. Destination and hand cards are hidden, and without all that forethought and really watching the board, you don’t know what the other players want to do, and blocking each other becomes accidental, which is frustrating for the person being blocked and boring for the one who is doing the blocking.
I often find that as the end of the game is drawing near, everyone fills up their hands with useless cards as they mill the deck, trying to get one or two last routes to complete a ticket, ending the game with a mittful of useless cards. Turn after turn is wasted drawing cards from the top of the deck, waiting to draw 2 yellow cards, because nothing else really matters, isn’t my idea of fun. I also hate the idea that some winning strategies can really be to just horde cards for the first 20 turns of the game, then just start placing down routes that work for you.
I played one game recently where I kept two cards with the Vancouver destination. I was 3rd in player order. The first player played 3 trains from Vancouver to Calgary, and the second player played 1 train from Vancouver to Seattle, locking me out of Vancouver for the rest of the game. Like, come on!
I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum, but Ticket to Ride is a hard pass from me. Alan R. Moon has designed games I like a lot more, like 10 Days in Europe, Elfenland, and Incan Gold. There’s other route building games that I like a lot more, with actual decisions to make, like Thurn and Taxis and Hansa Tetunoica. Almost anything else would be a better use of my time.
And before anyone gets on my case about how the Europe map has stations that allows you use other players routes, I know. I played it, and it helps the getting blocked out part, but I still find the core of the game boring. Thanks for reading.
Way back in 2003 I picked up my first manga. The Monthly Shonen Jumps just started getting stocked at the local pharmacy and while my mom was looking over the newest set of romance novels that had just come in, the bright colours and exciting cover lured me in. I was instantly hooked, and started saving up my pennies to buy it every month. This was the start of my fast descent into what would be a decades long anime and manga obsession. I was already a hopeless nerd, with my love of reading and voracious Super Nintendo habit, I was already an outcast in my tiny village, so, in for a penny in for a pound, may as well embrace the nerd-life.
Over the next few years, I managed to convert two others to my hobbies. Together we devoured the Shonen Jump every month, discovered fan translations online (that we downloaded via our pitiful dial-up internet), and spent every favour we could with the librarian of our high school to include some new manga on her yearly book orders.
Now, I’m not really here to tell you about my anime and manga roots, although it’s important for context later. Thanks to Shonen Jump’s inclusion of the Yu-Gi-Oh series, we eventually got into the de-fictionalized card game. That was a fairly special time in our lives, having a close group of friends all equally invested into a TCG as each other. We’d develop metas, craft specific strategies against certain decks, and our worlds were rocked every time someone got an awesome new card and revealed it for the very first time during a match. This special time in my life is exactly what Millennium Blades by D. Brad Talton Jr. and published by Level 99 Games seeks to replicate.
Cards, cards, glorious cards
Millennium Blades is a TCG simulator for 2–5 players. Each game takes place over 3 years, with each year containing a deck building phase and a tournament phase. During the deck building phase you’ll be dropping fat stacks of cash to buy random packs, buy and sell singles on the used market, all in an effort to create both a tournament winning deck and an impressive collection in your binder. In the Tournament phase, players take turns playing a single card from their hand, resolving the effects to earn points. At the end of the tournament, the player with the most points is the winner, and earns victory points. At the end of the third tournament phase, the player with the most victory points is the winner.
It sounds simple when I condense the game into a single paragraph like that, but like most TCGs, the basic rules of the game are fairly simple, but the devil is in all the cards effects and how they interact. First off, the stack of cards that makes up the pool of potential cards is absolutely massive. And, that’s not even all the cards that are in the base game! Prior to your first game, you’ll need to combine several sets of cards into a huge deck. Each set features a different mechanism or twist that can interact with other sets in various ways. On one hand, it’s a pain if you’re pulling apart that store deck every game. On the other hand, you can just leave it assembled for several plays, and refresh it when it’s getting stale.
The other pain point is ‘assembling’ the currency. Yes, Millennium Blades uses paper money, but it’s wads of bills taped together to give it more heft. It’s incredibly effective at evoking the feeling of throwing down entirely too much money on a coveted single, or getting a huge influx of cash from selling your rarest card. Paper money gets a bad rap in board games, so much so that I have a difficult time thinking of the games I’ve played in the last decade that use just plain paper money. The cash stacks in Millennium Blades don’t look as nice as, say, the Iron Clays from Roxley, but they’re simultaneously hefty and cheap feeling, so players have no reservations about flinging them across the table, creating a small mountain of spent currency. There’s a childlike fantasy whimsy the throughout the production, and it shows up even in the cash.
Millennium Blades, the game, is broken into two parts. The preparation phase and the tournament phase. Unfortunately, to play one, you kind of have to know how the other plays. The preparation phase is where all players build their collections and try to craft a winning deck. This phase is broken into 3 real-time chunks, where new cards and money are injected into the system. This phase lasts literally 20 minutes, and in those 20 minutes players are frantically heads down reading dozens and dozens of cards trying to figure out a combination. It’s genius that the cards that go into your collection need to share an attribute while being a different star value, and those cards are ineligible for tournament play. You’ll find yourself with the card that would be perfect in your deck, but it’s also exactly the missing value in your collection, so you choose to rework your deck with a different strategy, but then someone just sold a card into the market that could fit into your collection, so you pick it up and start rebuilding your tournament deck, only to find the combo you thought was awesome is 2 cards short, so you start looking for alternatives, and then the timer goes off.
Like many real time games, Millennium Blades gives players a frantic feeling. Playful stress in being under a time crunch that can and will force players to take actions they’ll regret. Selling a card for money only to realize its true value later. There are so many things to consider during the real time phase, and you’re constantly being barraged with new information, that it’s impossible to make a fully calculated choice on every card. Eventually you’ll just default to “Not a fire card? Then into the sell pile it goes!”
There’s real effort here to try to impart the feeling of collecting cards from a TCG. Every 6 minutes, you get new cards to mull over. If they don’t match your deck or your collection, then they effectively become money. You sell singles to the market to buy more cards. Your friends will unwittingly sell cards that would be perfect for you, so you snap it up. There is some anxiety here, when trying to decide which cards to sell and which of the many packs you should open up. There’s a rule in the book that explicitly forbids ‘take-backs’. If you make a mistake, you’re supposed to just own it and live with that regret. Anyone who’s made a bad trade, only to realize their folly later, is intimately familiar with that feeling.
The Tournament phase is comparatively simple, you selected 8 singles, 2 items, and a deck box, then players take turns playing a single card to their tournament row one after the other until they’ve filled up their card rows. Every card does something different, and can earn you points at different times. Some of the best cards only earn points at the end of the round, and goosing a single card for a boat-load of points is really just painting a target on that card’s back, as some cards can trigger clashes which results in a card being flipped face down, effectively voiding the card all together.
The Tournament phase feels short, comparatively. In the collection phase, you spend 20 real minutes just reading and preparing and reading, and sorting. Then in the tournament, you only have 8 cards to worry about, and a plan on how you want to play them. Sure, some unexpected moves from the opponents can make you pivot, but there’s only so much you can change when you’re in the thick of tournament play.
That isn’t to say that the Tournament phase isn’t important, or fun. The two halves of Millennium Blades make a whole, cohesive game. The Tournament phase gives purpose to the deck building phase, and vice versa. I love the fact that you keep your tournament deck in the subsequent rounds, and you really could just run a winning deck again, but now your opponents have seen your tricks, and will have baked in specific counters to your old deck, and you’ll find yourself ground into the dirt. Adapt or be left behind, as they say.
Millennium Blades is a fantastic game. It absolutely nails the “CCG-Simulator” game that it set out to emulate. Nostalgia is a tricky thing, and Millennium Blades hits me right where it hurts. From the dozens of on-point references to 90s anime and video games, to the actual betrayal I felt when I got targeted during a tournament. When I play Millennium Blades, for a brief evening, I’m not a 30-something year-old father of 2 kids and husband. I’m suddenly 14 again, back in my buddy’s basement, salivating over the sweet mythic he pulled from the pack he bought last Friday. Drinking soda, blasting tunes and playing game after game after game, refining our decks each match until the sun rose the next day. All my adult worries abate for an evening, and I’m just a kid playing a game again.
I’ve had so many fun moments playing Millennium Blades, and the real praise here is that it actually makes me feel something. A tall order for a board game to do, but it does. I wholeheartedly recommend Millennium Blades, especially if you have any experiences with TCG/CCGs and/or anime and video game knowledge from the 90s. To this day, I haven’t had an experience that nails the meta commentary or pulled at my nostalgia heart strings as well as this game does. Do not pass on Millennium Blades because it was published 8 year ago, this game about collectible card games and the gamers who play them, offers a timeless experience.
If you’ve been following some of board games largest and best creators on social media, you may have noticed that trick taking games are enjoying a bit of a renaissance at the moment. With dozens of fascinating games appearing, all with their own interesting spins on the genre, it can be a little intimidating if this is a genre of game that you haven’t spent a lot of time with. From Cat in the Box, to The Crew, to Jekyll and Hyde, to Ghosts of Christmas, all of these games are “Trick taking +” for the new millennium.
Going WAY back to 1997 for a moment, I want to introduce NYET! by Stefan Dorra to the mix. NYET! is a semi-coop trick taking game where the players determine the parameters for the round. Let me explain. In a round of NYET!, all the cards are dealt to the players. Then, beginning with the dealer, players take turns choosing one of the aspects of the round to be covered up. It’s less bidding for what to do, and more vetoing. Maybe your hand is void of blue cards, so you ensure that blue is not the trump for the round. Maybe you have nothing but low cards, so you really don’t want each trick to score for much, so you cover the 4 point spot. Around and around the table, players place their tokens on a little board, determining 5 aspects. The first player, how many cards are discarded, which suit is trump, which suit is super trump, and how many points the round is worth.
Once the parameters have been set, the first player chooses their partner, and the game commences! Like any other trick taking game, a lead card is played, players must follow if possible, if not possible, can play any card from their hand. The highest value card played that matches the lead suit takes the trick, unless a trump is played, then the highest trump card takes the trick, and the winner starts the next round. One more hook, if you take a 1 from an opponent, it’s kept as loot. Once all cards have been played, score points based on the board for every trick and loot you and your partner managed to capture. The first player to pass 100 points is the winner.
There’s a few things in NYET! that are just fascinating to me. First, the board offers a dramatic, dynamic game. Each round, you assess your hand and then veto the aspect that would be most devastating to you. Some rounds you’ll have several things in your hand that, if they go right, means you’ll have a killer turn. On the other hand, someone arbitrarily vetoing the yellow 1’s as super trump can leave you with a handful of loot that you might have to give away. Those 1’s can either be the most valuable thing in your hand as a super trump, or, the worst thing in your hand as loot for your opponents.
There is no way this ends well
The next thing that makes NYET! shine is the fact that the start player every round chooses who their partner is going to be. Shifting alliances means the scores will rise unequally, and there’s a surprising amount of information that can be gleaned from what your opponents chose to veto. There will be times when you think the player across from you would meld well with your hand, but they’re in the lead. Are you going to assist them in earning more points, or do you choose one of the other players in the hopes you’ll close the gap?
The other fascinating aspect is that your partner won’t always be across the table from you. There were a few times in our plays where we got caught in a nasty pincer trap. The first player would lead a card, my partner and I would follow, and the lead player’s partner would come in with the hammer and win the trick. Not leading or concluding a hand felt like a tough position to be in, but I find it fascinating non-the-less.
There are lots of moments of tension in NYET!. When playing with odd number of players, the group with fewer players gets a doubler card, which creates some amazing come from behind victories. If you’re not careful, a round could end up with every trick and loot being worth -2 points, causing chaos and strife as everyone tries desperately to slough off their best cards at the right moment. Because the teams are ever-changing, players are playing for themselves. Moments of comradery are short-lived as you immediately stab each other in the back. There is humour and excitement in this trick taking game, especially when someone slams down their super-trump and completely changes the temp of a hand. A game of NYET! never fails to get me and my friends shouting.
NYET! is a fantastic game from a by-gone era. I’m sad that more people haven’t played this, especially as Trick-takings games continue to rise in popularity. NYET! is a game that I love to play, and while I’m not particularly good at trick taking games, the auction board makes me feel like I have just a little bit of control. And the chance that each trick in a round could be worth -2 points adds a tiny bit of chaos that I absolutely love.
I feel like everywhere I look, people are expressing their distress at the#666666 amount of stuff we all have. Our kitchen counters are full of air fryers, coffee machines, and tea kettles, our drawers are overflowing with knickknacks, and our board game shelves are buckling under the weight of triple layered cardboard. People everyone are calling out game boxes that are mostly empty, while praising other games for reducing their footprint on our shelves. Bezier Games looks at this landscape and says, “you know what the people want? Colossaleditions“
I know that Colossal Editions are not for me, but I couldn’t help myself when I saw a new in shrink Royal Collectors edition pop up in our local used marketplace. I hemmed and hawed, sold off my copy of Massive Darkness, and used the funds to procure this big fancy box for myself.
Castles of Mad King Ludwig is a 1 to 5 player game, where players are trying to build the best castle. Each round, the Master Builder takes all the tiles available for purchase this round, and sets their prices by placing each one below a spot on the market track. Then in player order to the left of the Master Builder, all players can buy a single tile, handing their money to the Master Builder. The Master Builder themselves gets the final option to buy a tile, but their money goes into the supply.
Players take the tile they purchased, and place it into their castle, adjoining rooms via doorways, and scoring points accordingly. There are 8 different kinds of rooms in a variety of sizes, and each room has different scoring opportunities. Some tiles will give points by being connected via an open door to other specific types of rooms, while activity rooms have a high intrinsic value, but will lose points if they share a wall with other kinds of rooms. You don’t want a bowling alley next to your bedroom after all. Then there’s the basement rooms, which will offer points based on specific types of rooms found throughout your entire castle, adjacency not required.
Rooms are considered complete when all of their doorways are connected to other doorways. When a room is completed, it triggers a special bonus based on the type of room that it is. All players will have secret goals in which they’ll earn points at the end of the game, and there’s some public scoring objectives that are revealed at the start of the game as well. When the deck of room cards runs out, the game is over, and the player with the most points has pleased the Mad King, and I’m sure the others are banished to the dungeons for their failures.
I already knew that I lovedThe Castles of Mad King Ludwig before I bought the Royal Collectors edition. There’s tension and conflicting decisions all over the place. From the Master Builder setting the price of the tiles, to deciding where to put the rooms into your castle and which bonuses to chase down, I’ve never felt bored when playing this game, but I’ll expound on that later. This new edition gives the game a gorgeous face lift. All the tiles are now vibrant and speckled with art and Easter eggs. I found a couple copies of Suburbia littered amongst the tables in my castle. The look of the game is great, but the functionality isn’t perfect.
Starting with the whole Big Box experience. All the tiles and game pieces are kept in 4 trays at the bottom of the box. Generally, I expect a Game Trayz inclusion to assist in setting up the game, but that’s not the case of Castles of Mad King Ludwig. Instead, you need to lay out the board, slot in these green PVC looking holsters, pull all the tiles of each shape out of the trays, shuffle them up, and count out a certain number of tiles of each shape depending on the player count. I understand why this is necessary, as any stacks of tiles that are depleted at the end of the game are worth extra points, but I hate it. It feels tedious, and then I need to put the trays aside for the rest of the game, as they aren’t needed past the initial set up. Then, all the heaviest pieces, the Kings Favours poker chips, the metal coins, and the player pawns are all in a single tray, making it significantly heavier than the rest of the trays. I cringe as I pull that tray out of the box and feel the plastic bowing under its own weight. It hasn’t failed yet, but I have my concerns.
As for the player pawns, there are 20 colours to choose from. 20! In a 5 player game! Someone can say “I’d like to be blue please” and have 4 slightly different options! Combined with the 20 swans, there are 20 foyers as well. It feels even more excessive and unnecessary. On one hand, hooray for choice. On the other hand, I’m probably never going to play with more than half of these pieces, they were created for nothing.
My own production qualms aside, the gameplay of The Castles of Mad King Ludwig remains largely unchanged from its original debut 10 years ago. Each round a number of tiles comes out, the Master Builder chooses the price for each tile, then all other players get a chance to buy. I love this phase, the master builder has to balance making the best tiles expensive, but not unreasonably so. The other players similarly need to choose between giving the master builder all their money and taking the tile they want. The ‘I split-you choose’ bidding mechanism is great for creating delicious decisions.
Then building your castle is its own bundle of trade-offs. Rooms want to be adjacent to certain other rooms, but not adjacent to some. Sometimes you’ll really want to complete a room to earn its completion bonus, but the only tile available to you that round does nothing to help your score. I love building the castles, and seeing how sometimes they sprawl horizontally, and other times they seem to twist in on themselves, creating a crowded and hilarious castle.
The Royal Collectors edition also came with a couple of expansions, namely the Moats, Swans, Secret Entrances, Towers, and Royal Decrees. Each one is a small addition to the game. None of which are overwhelming, but each one being a separate entity that you need to teach. Most of them you could include with new players, but some, such as the Secret Entrances, I would leave out just because they can be quite influential if played right.
It’s hard to say much more about The Castles of Mad King Ludwig, because the summary of my experience is “it’s good! Real good!”. Years ago, I picked up Ted Alspach’s other game Suburbia, and felt like it was the better design. As time has gone on, however, I find myself much more inclined to return to the Mad King’s Castles. The dynamic market feels much more interactive, and I always find looking at each player’s castle a delight at the end of the game. There’s a whimsy here that Suburbia is missing. Not to say that Suburbia is a bad game by any stretch, heck no. But my appreciation for The Castles of Mad King Ludwig has grown over time, while Suburbia has stayed consistent. I love this game, and would play it at any opportunity. Yes, the Royal Collectors Edition has some missteps with the production, and I did read some people being displeased about a new expansion being announced before this “complete version” of the game was even delivered. That doesn’t bother me, I don’t need expansions to this game. I’m so happy every time this hits the table, and I get to play in my little sandbox building a glorious castle.
