Coming Soon... Castles of Mad King Ludwig

I've got a new game! Look:

I've been wanting this game for a long while and - thanks to Father's Day and an over-generous wife - I finally own a copy.

So here is a brief intro post detailing the game with some unboxing photos. Then, soon, I will tell you what it's like building castles for The Mad King!

Castles of Mad King Ludwig (Bezier Games) is a tile-placement game for 1-4 players in which you are tasked with building a castle for Mad King Ludwig. This is achieved by buying room tiles and placing them in front of you, connecting them to create a crazy castle layout. Building rooms earns you points, and connecting the right combination of rooms will earn extra points.

Each player in turn gets to take on the role of the Master Builder. The Master Builder starts the round by drawing room tiles and placing them in the order they wish on the Contract board, setting the prices the players will pay. Then, starting from the Master Builder's left, each player chooses which room they will buy and build, paying the Master Builder. The Master Builder goes last, purchasing from the remaining available rooms and paying the bank. Then the next player takes on the role of the Master Builder and restocks the Contract board with room tiles, rearranging them as they wish.

The art of Castles lies in setting the prices for rooms strategically; hopefully steering your opponents away from rooms you wish to own without paying too much yourself, and trying to get the most money out of people. There are bonus cards which reward extra points for collection certain types of rooms, but I will go in to these in more detail in my main post, along with the various room bonuses and the point system.

So, I will be back in a while (after June's Bestie) to express my first impressions of Castles of Mad King Ludwig.

Coming Soon... Dead of Winter

New game time!

I'm very excited about this game!

I've heard nothing but good things about Dead of Winter, and now I finally get to play it. It's been a highly anticipated game for me and my fellow gamers, so I thought I would share my first experiences of it with you in detail.

So this is sort of just an intro post to explain that coming soon will be a longer post chronicling our attempts to survive the Dead of Winter.

And an excuse to post loads of photos.

If you don't know the game allow me to give you a brief overview:

Dead of Winter is a zombie apocalypse game for 2-5 players. You each play a group of survivors tasked with keeping the colony alive by fighting zombies and searching for useful items like food, fuel and weapons. There is a specific objective for the players to complete, however each player also has a secret objective that they need to achieve in order to personally win the game. There is also a chance one player will be a traitor tasked with sabotaging the main objective. Players can chose to vote players out of the colony, however, so the traitor had better keep their head down and blend in if they want to stand a chance at winning.

One of Dead of Winter's great features is the Crossroads system.

There is a deck of Crossroads cards that are drawn from at the beginning of a player's turn by the player their right. The card details a specific situation that could occur during a turn. If the right criteria are met the player holding the card interrupts the game and reads out the scenario detailed on it. Each card features a difficult decision to be made either by the active player or the by the group. These cards create surprise moments of tension within the group.

Anyway, I have overstayed my welcome. Join me soon for more Dead of Winter fun.