The Castles of Burgundy

My number 16 favorite game of all time is The Castles of Burgundy by designer Stefan Feld. Stefan Feld is sort of board game designer royalty. In comic book terms it might be like saying, Steve Ditko (co-creator of Spider-Man), or in RPG terms saying, Dave Arneson (co-creator of D&D.) With over 30 board game designs to his credit, and most of them very well received, Stefan Feld has quite the track record, and The Castles of Burgundy is arguably his most popular game.

The Castles of Burgundy is a dice-placement game. On your turn you roll two dice and who ever is "first player" for the round also rolls a third die. That third die acts to provide some goods to players on their turn and this changes every round. Your dice provide you with actions you can take. You have a number of options here with the dice value determining, the what, where, or how much based on the actions that you choose.

Actions include: taking a settlement tile from the game board with a number matching your die, and placing it in a waiting area on your player board; taking a settlement tile from the waiting area on player board and placing in your "kingdom" in a hex with a number that matches your die; selling goods with a number matching your die, or taking workers that allow you to adjust the number on one of your dice.

Settlements have powers that will help you do more things or earn more victory points, and victory points are how you win the game. The Castles of Burgundy is an awesome kingdom building game. Julie and I love dice games and worker placement, The Castles of Burgundy is both. If the game has any negatives, it would be that it's not the prettiest game. The main board is at once drab and too busy.

Luckily, Julie and I have backed a revamped super-version of the game on Game Found (a crowd funding site specifically for board game projects.) This version promises to improve the functionality of the original game components while making everything look a million times more awesome (and adding a new expansion to boot!)

I fully expect the new deluxified version of The Castles of Burgundy to push the game even further up the list of my favorite board games, but for now being the number 16 greatest game of all time isn't too bad!

Join the Facebook group to discuss this and other cool things! 

Or feel free to leave a comment below!

(Below are extra pictures from the Gamefound Campaign for those who are interested!)