by Liko81
The wife and I have taken a break from regular boardgaming for the past year or so, as little one #2 has come along making it that much harder to get time when both children are asleep and when we don't want to be sleeping as well. However, my wishlist didn't go unheeded, and in addition to The Hive Ladybug expansion, Castles of Burgundy made it under the tree with my name on it this year.The Castles of Burgundy is a dice-rolling, action-taking game with parallels to several other Eurogames. I found dashes of Le Havre, Catan, Stone Age and a few others hidden under the surface, but overall the game's look and feel is relatively unique among my collection.
The game consists of a central board made of pressboard, a selection of double-sided player boards (four of them with the same layout, the rest with a unique layout for more experienced players), a pair of dice and two movers in each player color, and a large assortment of hexagonal estate development pieces, square goods pieces, octagonal "silverlings" used to make special purchases, and myriad other chits. I was a little disappointed in the thin paper printing of the player boards, as I'm used to the heavier pressboard for games like Agricola; however, I came to understand the necessity after seeing how many boards come with the game. They probably still could have made it work, but the materials are very playable.
Players take the roles of 15th-Century French princes, looking to develop their "estates" into the jewels of the Burgundian countryside. The player who does this best will accrue the most victory points and win. There are several ways to get victory points; the primary way is to build up your Estate with mines, pastures full of animals, cities, and of course the eponymous Castles. The more you build, the more points you get. However, like any development game, there are twists. In addition to building up, you can develop trade in the form of receiving and selling Goods, or you can develop certain "Knowledge" tiles which give you various advantages in the game.
The game consists of five "phases", each of which has five "rounds", during which each player gets one turn, so each player gets exactly 25 turns in the game. On their turn, the player rolls two dice, which determine their possible actions for their turn. Round and phase maintenance consists of placing goods on the board and clearing and re-supplying available development pieces.
The thing I found most unique was how the dice were used. Each player gets a pair of dice, and the starting player also gets a white die. The white die determines where Goods are placed on the board, and the player's dice determine exactly what they can do with their two actions in a given turn. Unlike many games, a high-value roll is not necessarily a good thing; the dice are used individually, and the value of each die determines things like which "depot" on the main board you can take development pieces from, or where you can place said pieces on your own estate. To help you get that elusive die value that allows a needed pickup or placement, you can use workers, which you obtain a few different ways. Each worker can be used once, and when used, can "nudge" the value of a die roll by one in either direction, including going "around the corner" from a 6 to a 1 or vice-versa.
Overall, I liked it. The unique use of dice, somewhat like Backgammon's endgame with a dash of Stone Age's tool mechanic thrown in, was novel and refreshing, while the game was easy to get into rhythm. The mechanics of various buildings is a bit complex (there are several types, each with their own effect when placed in your estate), and all the knowledge tiles are unique; between these two sets of hexes, you pretty much have to have the instruction manual or other cheat sheet handy for several plays, even after you've grasped the flow and strategy of the game. The scoring, for similar reasons, is also a bit complex; with so many ways to score victory points, you have to make sure you've read and re-read all the rules for scoring VPs, then look back at them to make sure you're scoring right. This ought to improve with more familiarity, gained through additional plays.
The wife liked it too; the rhythm of the game is easy to get into once you've played a few rounds, and after the same time the basic strategy and tactics are evident. Her biggest complaint was the lack of a sand timer; my need to analyze all the various options available to me led to a disproportionate amount of waiting on her part, and she felt the game could benefit from a 60-second hourglass to speed play. Honestly, I feel with a few more plays under both our belts, we'll be more confident in a quicker decision; in this first play the delays were a combination of thinking through the novel combinations of options, and re-reading the rules for various types of buildings and knowledge tiles to be sure what they do and therefore their value in a given situation.
Overall, we say buy it. But, be prepared for a first play closer to an hour and a half than 30 minutes, and you might want to swing by the D&D section of your FLGS for a one-minute sand timer to make sure turn times don't get even further out of hand.