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The Castles of Burgundy - The Dice Game signals that even the publisher doesn’t really believe they found new gold here.
I Unlocking resources
in time
So, how does the game work? Radiat-
ing out from a starting castle, players ex- pand to neighboring hexes. To do this, they pick a combination of a color and a number die result, of which there are two of each. The color defines the type of ter- rain that can be chosen – but only if the number fits. In the cities, for example, all numbers must be different, while all num- bers have to be equal in pastures. Rivers can only be marked with a five or six, cas- tles only with exactly the number found on one of their already-acquired neigh- boring hexes.
Notwithstanding the luck of the dice, which resources you unlock by complet- ing an area will be a deciding factor. For
example, every completed city gets you one worker. This can then be used to change a number on a die, once. The re- striction that you can only use one re- source per round requires some timing. If you turn on many bonuses as the game is coming to an end, it’s likely many of them will go unused.
Whether there are other players play- ing and what they do is only of marginal interest, even if it is better to complete a particular terrain type first to get a bonus, as in the original. The paper version moves this rivalry to the abstract, howev- er, and doesn’t offer players the opportu- nity to snatch someone’s pieces away in order to slow him down. On top of that, your actions are often determined by the roll results, and you ultimately can’t do anything other than what you just did. And if these facts still do not suffice to spoil your interest in what the other play- ers are doing, then consider the confusing and tiny pieces of paper, which needlessly obfuscate whatever it is they wrote down.
Lofty feeling of expansion is missing
The Castles of Burgundy - The Dice Game works best solo or with two. To un- derstand how the mechanics of a detailed board game can be transformed into a (admittedly also detailed) dice game is interesting. As in the original game, dif-
ferent approaches can lead to victory. In addition, the pad of paper contains four different boards with differ- ently arranged color hexes that provide some variety. Okay
then!
The game feels different than
the original. No big surprise. You can’t just take away the variety of
hex tiles, the tactile puzzle aspect, and the sublime feeling of expanding across a map, and expect it to end up the same. The Castles of Burgundy - The Dice Game should therefore not be compared to the board game, but to other representatives of the one-throws-and-all-participate- genre. But even then, there are better op- tions that generate more engagement with less effort, ones that feel more like a game and less like accounting, ones that have something special and don’t just im- itate their big brother. And ones that have components that support playing the game instead of making it more diffi- cult. Udo Bartsch/sb
Title:
Publisher: Designer: Artist: Players: Age: Duration: Price:
The Castles of Burgundy - The Dice Game
alea
Christoph Toussaint Harald Lieske
1–5
about 10+ years about 20 minutes about 13 €
Reviewer Playing appeal
Udo Bartsch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
L. U. Dikus* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Matthias Hardel**. . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Wieland Herold*** . . . . . . . . . . . 5
* Unacceptable strain on the eyes.
** Does the world need a dice game of a dice game? Otherwise okay - actually it would be okay with a decent pad of paper.
*** The mechanics work, but the paper pad is an impertinence.
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