Castles of Mad King Ludwig

I bought this game despite having promised myself that I wouldn't buy any new games for a while - but my wife had seen it online and expressed an interest in it. We love playing Carcassonne, and the idea of playing a tile-based building game which also involved building a castle was too much for her to resist! So I bought it. As with most games, it took a little time to understand the rules, but once we got the hang of it, which was really pretty quick, we found this to be very enjoyable. Others have described the gameplay so I won't go into that here. I'll just add a few thoughts of my own.1. Whoever said they think it'll be a Spiel des Jahres contender is spot on. This fulfills a criterion I have for a great game, which is that it is elegant, by which I mean that the gameplay is self-evident and makes sense within itself. There are no rules which seem out of place, it all fits together logically and simply.2. It has high replay value; we've already played it multiple times and I think it will easily become as popular with us as Carcassonne.3. It works well with kids: our 13 year old daughter and 12 year old son enjoy it, and when my wife and I played by ourselves, the kids wanted to see the pictures of the castles we made so they could enjoy the layout and talk about it.4. It works well for 2, 3 or 4 players. Some games are much better with certain numbers of players, but so far we have found no difference in enjoyability. There are differences in dynamics, but not in the fun. My wife also played by herself, by the way (and my son used all the pieces to make one mega-castle, just for the fun of it!), and had fun with it that way too.5. So far, one change we make to the rules: add in more room cards. For example, with 2 players you're supposed to use 22 cards - we used 34 cards last time and it worked excellently. The game didn't seem overlong at all (I didn't time it, but it seemed to fly by!) and the castles were much more impressive! With 4 players, use all the cards.6. Make up a story about your castles! Last time, mine was the 'party castle' (lots of entertaining rooms, gardens, and a nice pumpkin patch off the royal bedroom!), my wife's was the introvert's castle (all private rooms and dungeons, and oddly enough, a vestibule at the far end of the underground rooms, a sort of doctor's waiting room for the torture chamber perhaps?).7. I can see a lot of potential for expansions for this game. I'll be keeping an eye out...

Castles of Mad King Ludwig is one of the most unique board games I've ever played. After reading a number of reviews about how enjoyable it is, I had to see for myself...and I was not disappointed.The basic gameplay involves selecting room tiles from a general pool and arranging them in connection with other previously selected rooms to form your own castle. The objective of the game is to earn the most points during the construction of your castle, and points are earned based on the types of rooms you select (e.g. sleeping, outdoor, activity, etc.), "completing" rooms (wherein every door to the room connects to another room), as well as the placement of rooms relative to other rooms (e.g. whether a sleeping room is placed next to an activity room, etc.). There are additional shared goals and hidden bonus goals that players can use to earn additional points.The rules are pretty intuitive and I found that this was an enjoyable and challenging game for both casual gamers and practiced board game players alike. Game plays well with either 3 or 4 players. Every game is incredibly different due to the shared/hidden goals and the order in which the rooms pop up for selection from the general pool of room tiles. The scoring mechanism is great and the unique, fantastic theme and design give the Castles of Mad King Ludwig endless replay value - this is one you'll want to pull out every time you have friends over for a game night!

Do you remember ever having been told by a parent you can have the last cookie, or piece of dessert, but you have to split it with a younger sibling or cousin and they get to choose which piece to take? Well this game takes this process to the extreme!After the master builder decides on prices for each item, everyone else gets to buy a room and add that room to their castle first.Sounds easy, but wait I can't have the smithy too close to sleeping quarters, and should I build a basement? What about a bunch of gardens? Oh, and the master builder's income comes from selling rooms. So, do I really want that expensive room, it will give the builder a bunch of money to buy rooms the next turn when someone else gets to be the master builder?The game can start out slow as everyone is trying to figure out their own plan, but gets very tactical once you see where people are going. Scoring can be a little complicated for new players, what scores now, and what scores later and both hidden and public goals, but becomes clearer as the game goes on. Components are great, thick punch board and each castle is unique and fun to look at when you are done. Set up can be a bit of a beast with all the different rooms to shuffle, but can be reduced by an insert, like the one from broken token.Overall, a great you split I choose game, once you know the scoring, I would put this solidly in the mid weight category of games, I personally always want to play it twice, to try new configurations.

Great game for all types of players, you can be strategic if you’d like, you can just build a castle if plannings hard. And it can be understood in a single round

Este es un juego realmente excelente. Aparenta ser complicado y difícil, pero no lo es. Al jugarlo uno se familiariza mas fácil con los componentes. El diseño es extraordinario y muy bonito, una vez que terminas tu castillo, quedas realmente satisfecho con lo que se construyó, a pesar de no haber ganado. Hay varias formas de obtener puntos e ir a la victoria, por lo que se mantiene entretenido, divertido y se puede jugar nuevamente sin problemas. Personalmente esta entre nuestros favoritos. (Hay gente que se queja por los componentes, al ser "solo cartón", pero hay que recordar que uno paga también por la ingenieria, el mecanismo del juego y el empeño de los creadores; que esta más que merecido) P.D. No es dependiente del idioma, con que una persona lea y explique no hay problema. Aún así se explican solas las tarjetas con las imágenes.

Super fun game, easy to learn. Lots of pieces for the price.My only complaint is the storage is quite inadequate and required me to make my own so that the pieces don't go flying everywhere. It is practically a requirement to buy an organizer or make your own or else you will have quite long setup times.

Este es de esos juegos que disfrutan muchísimo sin importar si ganaste o no.Honestamente es súper divertido ir creando tu castillo y está padre que en cada ronda sea alguien diferente quien pone los precios de cada habitación jejeje

Fun game, easy to pick up and play. Shipped early and arrived in mint shape! Lots of reviews out there on the game. Its very fun, lol. As for Amazon, they did there part too!