Base price: $70.
1 – 4 players.
Play time: 75 – 90 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 3
Full disclosure: A review copy of Castles of Mad King Ludwig was provided by Bezier Games.
The nice thing about board gaming these days is companies are starting to release updated editions of games I got into playing board games with. Is my copy of 7 Wonders a little worn? Yes. Is it compatible with Armada and Edifice? No idea. But now there’s a shiny new version that probably has even nicer card backs than some of my slightly-chewed ones (I used to have some truly garbage friends who would absentmindedly put game components in their mouths). It’s tempting. But I digress, as usual. This review’s about Castles of Mad King Ludwig, a 2014 title from Bezier Games that really captured my imagination. So let’s talk about that.
In Castles of Mad King Ludwig, players take on the role of builders serving under the eponymous monarch as he seeks to fulfill his life’s dream: build the weirdest castles on God’s earth. Could he have been interested in governance? Yes. Was he? No. So you need to fulfill his whims and build some of the strangest, most threatening castles to ever grace the countryside. Do doors need to go anywhere? It’s just a suggestion. External entrances? At least one, probably. Outdoor rooms right next to indoor rooms? Sure, why not? The sky’s the limit. Each round, players will get to purchase a room from the Master Builder (another player who sets the prices) and add the room to their Castle. The rooms are worth point on their own, but generally rooms will score more points (or lose points!) based on the rooms they’re next to. Nobody wants to sleep next to the Flute Room. It makes sense. As you complete rooms, you’ll get additional bonuses which will help you build the ultimate castle. But be careful! The King’s Favors are set at the start of the game and they’ll be awarded to the player who best follows Ludwig’s whims. What kind of castle will you build?
Overall: 8.75 / 10
Oh, Castles of Mad King Ludwig. Honestly, I think it’s a classic in a lot of ways. It’s got basically everything you could want from a puzzley, tile-laying game. You can build a castle, which is honestly enough to appeal to most people and pretty much where some of y’all could stop reading this review. Would you like to build your own goofy castle? Yes? Then Castles of Mad King Ludwig is going to appeal to you. You can have a spooky basement with a Crypt and a Bottomless Pit and something only suspiciously named “The Hole”. It’s got it all. That’s truly going to be enough for a lot of people, myself included. My last game, I insisted we throw strategy out the window and build castles almost entirely on vibes, and we did, and it was great. Perhaps leaning into the best parts of what made the original so loved, Bezier saw fit to update this second edition with the improved tile art and GameTrayz to make setup less heinous (my first edition has all the tiles in Ziploc bags since someone didn’t provide any organization in the box). Both are excellent choices, and the new board being scoring and placement helps. The tiles feel bigger, too, which is always pleasant.
Of course, not everything is sunshine and flowers with Castles of Mad King Ludwig. If I were to name a game with a near-fatal flaw with some players, it would be our dear and beloved Castles. The problem essentially boils down to this: if you’re playing with players who are susceptible to analysis paralysis, you’ll find that this is a game that will quite nearly put them in the ground. Each round, the Master Builder player is entitled to organize the tiles for purchase, assigning them values based on how much they think those tiles are worth. Players then buy tiles from the Master Builder, and the Master Builder buys their tile of choice from the bank. It’s how you make money (well, a major way) and how you keep your opponents in check. Naturally, players lean into this as a key analysis point and they want their tile market choices to be perfect. I’ve seen players spend upwards of ten minutes just agonizing over this, trying to look at everyone’s castle and calculate their points and it’s truly, the closest thing in board gaming to hell, short of someone insisting that their Monopoly house rules add more money to the game but it’s fine. My personal solution to this is a one-minute timer that any player can flip to just get the Master Builder to hurry up, but there’s all sorts of reasons why that isn’t the Actual Rule. Can’t just rush important strategic decisions and claim players have equal agency; that’s not how brains work. While this is a big problem, it really is my only actual problem with the game. Second edition made all the cards bigger and, while the game can be weird about table space, just plan ahead, a bit.
I really could talk about Castles of Mad King Ludwig all day; it’s right around there with Burgle Bros. as the first couple games after BANG! and Catan that got me really excited about board games. Little 20-something Eric was just dragging that big box everywhere asking “Do you wanna build a castle?”, which, I hadn’t (and still haven’t, actually, now that I think about it) seen Frozen so it’s fine. It’s a game that flexes well across multiple player counts and player types, from the folks who want to play aggressively strategically to the players who will have just as much fun throwing the tiles into the market and building their castle the way they want so that all the rooms make sense. There’s a love of player freedom inherent to that kind of play, and it’s one of the places where Bezier did their strongest work. You can see what it inherits from Suburbia, and while it sacrifices some of Suburbia’s deeper strategic impulses (not many), it really cranks up the fun factor to give the game a unique character. And, again, people just want to build weird castles sometimes; can you blame them? If you’re looking for your perfect castle, you want to pretend you work for the imminently-deceased King Ludwig, or you just enjoy strategy and tile-laying (two great tastes that taste great together), I’d definitely recommend you take Castles of Mad King Ludwig for a spin! The second edition is really quite definitive.
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