The Castles Of Burgundy
The Castles Of Burgundy
CUSTOMER REVIEW
Vine Customer Review of Free Product (What's this?) Our family has a passion for some of the more niche board games, and we have a pretty prodigious collection. While we do enjoy the old standbys like Sorry, we're always on the hunt for interesting new games that, while maybe complicated to learn, will offer us many years of intriguing gameplay. We also like games that are very well made, unlike most of the highly commercial, flimsy products on the market. I'm happy to say that The Castles of Burgundy fits both of those requirements.
First off, the game is very high quality, as is typical of Ravensburger games in general. We own several Ravensburger games and have given some away as gifts, and everyone who's played them remarks on the quality. The game board is a nice, thick cardboard as are the various tiles used in the game. The markers are wooden, which always impresses me. I really like my games to have a minimum of plastic whenever possible. Overall, this game should wear very well.
I will admit that the first time we played, we were a bit intimidated. However, we're fans of games like Carcassonne and The Settlers of Catan, both of which are a little confusing on first play. Castles consists of five phases of five rounds so, though it took a while to set up and figure out the initial aspects of play, by about the third or fourth round of the first phase, we began to get the hang of the game and, once we did, it really took off from there.
There were three of us playing: myself, my husband, and my eight-year-old daughter, who enjoys the more challenging and strategic board games. All three of us loved the game right from our first time playing. My daughter loved it so much, in fact, that she kept begging us to play it again. Our initial game was on a weekend night and we let her stay up late to play. Our second game took place on a weeknight and, again, she was up a little past her bedtime so we could finish. In other words, this isn't a quick game.
However, it's a great deal of fun and will appeal to a variety of styles as there's no one strategy that guarantees a win. The basic premise is that you have an estate and, by adding various assets to your estate, you try to win the most victory points, which results in winning the game. Victory points are earned in a variety of ways: whenever you add a farm to your estate, you get points for each animal; if you add knowledge tiles to your estate, they earn you various bonuses; etc. Each turn consists of rolling two dice, which you then use to carry out one of four actions: taking a new tile, placing a tile, adding workers to your estate, or selling goods.
This is a very cerebral game in that you need to pay attention to what other players are doing while also mapping out various scenarios in your head to try to determine what your next actions should be. My daughter fared very well against me and my husband, though she didn't win either game. Still, after a very few pointers from us, she soon figured out how to strategize and she surprised us both with some of her approaches.
I'm very impressed with this game and it's an excellent addition to our collection. It's one of the most fun games I've played in a long time and it definitely holds its own against some of the very superior European strategy games. Honestly, just writing this review has given me a hankering to pull the game out and give it another go with the family tonight.
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Published: 2014-11-17T02:07:00-08:00
The Castles Of Burgundy
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