Review on 🏰 Ravensburger Castles of Burgundy Dice Strategy Game by Bankroll Reed

My family (four ages 10-40) and I have played this game 6-8 times since we got it and we love it. The box itself is small, making it easy to carry and likely to fit in most jacket pockets. The game's components are simple but of decent quality, the instructions are fine (including examples so you understand how everything works), and the game takes around 15 minutes if everyone knows the rules. I also like that there is no cap on the number of players. Sure, the box says it will play up to 5, but there's no reason it can't play more. This game is great to play on the table, but it can also be played on a plane, in a car, in a restaurant - pretty much anywhere except the cinema. the concept of this dice game is similar. You have a game board representing your kingdom that you must complete in order to get the most victory points. But unlike Castles of Burgundy, where you fill your game board with tiles from the main board, this version of the dice game lets you populate your kingdom directly based on the value of the dice rolled. During each round, the dice are thrown once, and everyone at the table shares the result of the throw to fill in the numbers on their mat with a pencil. As in the original, you can always do something with the values on the dice, so that you are never prevented from moving further because of the values rolled. If the dice values are preventing you from building anything in your kingdom, you can get a "worker" instead, which you can use to change the dice value on your next turn. The decision making in this game isn't as interesting as in the original, but that's the price you pay for playing 15 minutes without tiles. In my opinion, this game has two downsides. First, player mats cannot be reused. A notepad is included in the box and a player pad is printed on each double-sided sheet. Each player picks one to play the game. Because each sheet has a front and back, you can use the sheet for two different games, but after that they're basically garbage. I'm worried that heavy players will burn up the court pretty quickly and a replacement doesn't seem to be available at the moment. Second, the game timer is unpredictable. A game is played over three rounds (similar to the original), but the speed of each round is determined by dice rolls. There can be up to 10 moves in a round or just 5, and you never know how many moves you will have before the round ends. There's no mitigating for this unpredictability, but the good news is that while still disappointing, it affects everyone equally. I'm deducting a star for these game design flaws.