Review on 🏰 Ravensburger Castles of Burgundy Dice Strategy Game by Paul Hyde

Burgundy castles - the image of the euro game in the dictionary. You will not like the theme and design, but if you like any strategy, you will be addicted to play. You get a lot of points; Everything you do earns you points or gets you closer to points. You roll to perform actions; Place tiles, ship goods and compete with all other players for the best options on the shared board. Castles of Burgundy is a great example of how awesome game mechanics can trump art style, no matter how boring it may be. The Good In Castles of Burgundy, you always have something to build, even if your dice roll isn't what you expected. , receive or otherwise improve your score. There are options on the board, and many of them allow you to "link" moves together. It's a lot of fun dreaming up a game that gives you three or four more moves, or piecing together the perfect tile ready to score in the next turn. Options available in each round, but rolling the dice limits the number of moves that can be made and makes each round easier. After playing Catan, Agricola, or Dominion, where you always need resources to buy what you need, it's nice to have the only requirement of rolling a specific number. You won't feel like you "never roll the five I need" as is often the case in katana since you can customize the roll to your liking and just roll from 1 to 6. .There are many interesting strategies; Some players will choose a route that earns a lot of points up front, while others may develop a strategy that brings more rewards at the end of the game. Often in our games, someone would win by thirty or forty points, until a late push by someone else closed the gap at the very end. This is not a game where you compete for points; almost everything you do creates something. The trick is to find moves that not only give you a few points, but also a lot of points. Cons The playing fields are small and the tiles are smaller and sometimes difficult to read. The artwork is bland but serviceable and doesn't really relate to what some of the tiles do. Looks alone are probably why those on the fence won't give him a chance. Once you have all the tiles out, the tiles are not easy to shuffle without turning them wrong side and it will take some time to arrange all the tiles on the board. Icon graphics, but not many. You'll play your first few games with a handy instruction book to learn what each tile does. With four players, this may take a little longer, especially for new players. We played 4 players with 2 new players and it took over 2.5 hours. However, it sometimes seems that the scores are related and that everyone gets roughly the same end result if they are of the same skill level. Everyone gets roughly the same bonuses, albeit at different points in the game. In these games, sometimes a randomly picked up mid-game Knowledge tile can change the balance. Often all players have completely different points during the game, but towards the end they will somehow get the same points. An experienced player will almost always beat a rookie, but usually two players of the same skill level are always close. After playing a few rounds, you will appreciate the gameplay design. Everything gives you points, but there's definitely a strategy to figuring out the most efficient way to get points, or what type of points to use at which stage of the game, while keeping an eye on everyone else's board to tile them evade who they have are looking for. With this sleek design, Castles of Burgundy is one of our favorite middleweight games at the moment.