A few nights ago my wife and I played The Castles of Burgundy for the first time. I saw it at an online retailer for more than half off and snatched it up. It looked to be a rather complex game and seemed a bit intimidating. The learning curve was a little steep due to the number of different components, but once we got the feel for it we realized it is an awesome game.
My wife and I both compared it to Settlers of Catan about half way through our first game. It is quite a bit more complex than that due to the number of different pieces but the play itself is on about the same level. Both players are trying to expand their territory through the purchase and placement of building tiles, knowledge tiles, ships, castles, mines and pastures. There is also a goods selling mechanic for a small income. Income is not necessarily needed to win the game as many tiles when placed allow you to acquire other tiles. The game was designed for 2-4 players.
A main board holds the expansion tiles and goods tiles as well as having a track for turn order and a track for points. Each player receives their own board to place tiles on in a hexagonal layout made up of hexagonal spaces numbered from one to six. Six double sided player boards are included in the game and are numbered from 1-9. Four of the sides are numbered 1 so you can play a game where everyone is on equal ground. The other 8 boards are arranged completely differently. This allows for different strategies in placement of tiles and some seem like they would be difficult without a little luck (maybe that luck should be better planning).
Gameplay is divided into 5 phases, each with five rounds. One round consists of all players taking a turn. Players roll to determine the starting player with the highest roll going first. Play then follows in clockwise order until all players have taken their turn. The turn order rotates so that each player has a chance to be the lead player. This can be altered through the purchase of tiles so that some players always go ahead of others.
Each player has their own set of dice and all dice are rolled at the same time. Since everyone sees what the other players have rolled, this is an interesting mechanic to encourage planning ahead. Players roll two six sided dice with the lead player rolling a third die. The third die determines where goods are placed that turn and is not used to help that player in any way.
In order to acquire one of the many different tiles that will be on the board at any given time you must “spend” one of your two dice. You can only take a tile from the section for which you have rolled. This seemed at first to be severely limiting. However, you can spend dice to buy “workers” that can be expended to modify your dice rolls +1 or -1, allowing for much more control on your turn than just relying on the luck of the dice.
Once a tile is purchased from the main board it is placed onto your player board in a queue or staging area. There are only three spots to store these tiles before placement. To place a tile you must spend a die to place it in a corresponding hex space on your player board. Placing these tiles give a number of different benefits, from taking another tile off the main board, to awarding victory points or allowing additional points at the end of the game, to static bonuses for things like selling goods or placing more tiles.
The tiles are placed in groups of like colored spaces. Once a group is completed you score points for that group. Each phase gives a different amount of bonus points for completing them. The sooner you can complete a group the more bonus points you will get.
There are over 200 tiles including 26 different knowledge tiles to research, 8 different types of building tiles to populate your towns, 6 different types of goods to sell, and 4 different types of livestock to graze your pastures. Also in the box are silverlings (money tiles), bonus tiles, victory point tiles, worker tiles, nine dice and eight player pieces.
When I first opened the box and began popping out all these pieces I became worried that it was too complex and would be a bit overwhelming. Perusing the rules only further reinforced this idea in my mind. I was determined to play it at least once though, so I watched a video of someone explaining the game over the course of one phase of play. This made jumping into a game so easy and suddenly made the rules and the board setup make sense. Each player board also has a pictorial of what the different tiles do and what actions you can take. Once you get a play or two under your belt everything you need to know is basically right in front of you.
In our first play through we started with the basic number one board as suggested in the rules. My wife won by a score of 164 to 149. She developed a bit of an economic engine providing her additional income and workers every time she sold goods. She also purchased knowledge tiles that gave her bonus points at the end of the game for the total number of goods sold and the number of different goods sold. Normally you do not score points at the end of the game for the goods sold so she ended up with quite a few extra points.
In the second game we flipped over our boards and each played with different numbers. I won with a score of 145 to 98. My board was grouped into a lot of two hex sections allowing me to score groups rather quickly gaining me many more bonus points than my wife. All the early bonus points allowed me to run away early and she never really caught up.
Both games played out pretty different from one another and our own play styles differed greatly with the unique boards and variety of tiles purchased. It looked a little bewildering at first glance but we easily picked it up within a few turns.
The Castle of Burgundy is a fantastic game. It seems to have a tremendous amount of replay value and appears that it will be a regular in our rotation. I would definitely recommend this to other people and am surely going to suggest we play this the next time we have friends over.
educatedgravy 