Castles of Mad King Ludwig
In the tile-laying game Castles of Mad King Ludwig, players are tasked with building an amazing, extravagant castle for King Ludwig II of Bavaria…one room at a time. Each player acts as a building contractor who is adding rooms to the castle he’s building while also selling his services to other players.
90m
1 - 4 Players
Ages 13+
143245
I enjoy this more than Suburbia for the more relaxed feel, more attractive theme, and the price setting auction which requires me to keep some attention paid to what others are doing (this is really where CoMKL adds interaction between players compared to Suburbia). The initial setup really blows though, makes me want to play 2 or 3 games in a row as a result, and like Caverna, I highly recommend either making an insert or buying a custom one. Second, the same number of turns regardless of player count looks nice on paper, but causes the game to stumble as you remove the tiles at random (In some ways, I'm curious how it works if you do a 2p game with 3p tile counts, sure, it takes longer, but how does that fit). Still more attractive in terms of desire to play than Suburbia for us. I really wish there was more value paid to the a constrained castle vs just this perpetual sprawl that it almost always morphs into. Getting pieces that match castle goals almost always trumps the adjacency benefits of doing urban-style density.
2018
It's like Carcassonne and Alhambra had a child and it was smarter and prettier than both of them. Supersweet art. Some interaction through price-setting of tiles and decisions whether to spend more or less depending who the master builder is.
Akado
I like that there's a ton of stuff going on in this game if you pay attention, but you don't need to if you just want to have fun and build a weird castle. The random elements of card/room draws mean that new/casual players can be competitive, which is a huge bonus. Traded it on, as it was a bit fiddly to play with the family, and gaming groups wanted to play other games instead.