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.
afjb
Fun tile-laying game -- first one I have tried. Only playing solitaire for now and am using a variant posted on the geek. Fair amount of strategy. It's cool to see the castle you create develop and expand.
agent_herring
I wonder what would happen if people started playing "Castles of Mad King Ludwig: the couples edition". You know, exactly the same game, but this time each castle is built by a pair of two human beings that, preferably, share the same roof in their non-boardgaming life. HE could finally impress HER with his Tetris-skills and create the optimal room plan, SHE could design the perfect harmony between living room curtains and grotto lighting. BOTH could discuss whether it might be a good idea to have the theater room directly adjacent to the kitchen. After the game is over, they could go back to their real home and, even though it will be much less impressive than the fantasy castle they just created, they will still happily agree that their fictitious castle was obviously MUCH better than that hell of a garden massacre that Liz and Pete were building. I really wonder when relationship therapists will realize the possibilities of this game ...