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[GendoIkari]

Finally learned this last week, after a while of having wanted to. For those who don't know, it's a Feld game. For those who don't know what a Feld game is; play Trajan, Macao, Bora Bora, or Castles of Burgundy. All designed by Stefan Feld, all great, all with a similar feel. Anyway, Castles is the simplest of his games that I've learned... you can teach/learn it in about 5-10 minutes, as opposed to much longer for the others. But the strategy is just as deep.

I've now played twice, and had a lot of fun both times. Both 4 player games; the second time I managed to win on a tie breaker. Which is amazing that you would have a tie in a game where we scored 232 points! Oh yeah, and the English rules for the tie breaker are mistranslated and the opposite of what they should be; luckily I'd been browsing the BGG forums on it recently, otherwise we would have just looked at the instructions and seen that I'd lost, not won.

Anyway, it's a combination of set collection with a little worker placement mechanics. I'm terrible at writing actual reviews, but check it out, it's great.

[Kirian]

For those who don't know what a Feld game is; play Trajan, Macao, Bora Bora, or Castles of Burgundy.

The term I like best is "Feldian Point Salad."  How many different ways would you like to score VP?  All the ways!

[LastFootnote]

For those who don't know what a Feld game is; play Trajan, Macao, Bora Bora, or Castles of Burgundy.

The term I like best is "Feldian Point Salad."  How many different ways would you like to score VP?  All the ways!

Yeah, in a Feld game, all your resources are converted to points at the end of the game anyway. So any action that collects resources is implicitly getting you points, and any action that uses resources is (hopefully) converting them into more points than the resources were worth. Basically any action you take in a Feld game gets you VP (unless it's a bad action in which case I guess it can maybe lose you VP?) It's just a matter of getting sliiiiightly more VP by choosing the best one.

Disclaimer: I find Feld games extremely tedious, though Castles of Burgundy is the one I dislike the least.

[GendoIkari]

For those who don't know what a Feld game is; play Trajan, Macao, Bora Bora, or Castles of Burgundy.

The term I like best is "Feldian Point Salad."  How many different ways would you like to score VP?  All the ways!

Yeah, in a Feld game, all your resources are converted to points at the end of the game anyway. So any Action that collects resources is implicitly getting you points, and any action that uses resources is (hopefully) converting them into more points than the resources were worth. Basically any Action you take in a Feld game gets you VP (unless it's a bad Action in which case I guess it can maybe lose you VP?) It's just a matter of getting sliiiiightly more VP by choosing the best one.

Disclaimer: I find Feld games extremely tedious, though Castles of Burgundy is the one I dislike the least.

Have you played Macao? It's differently the most unique out of the 4 I've played. And it doesn't have any of that "all resources are worth VP" thing.

[AdamH]

I haven't played Castles. I think it's because I usually ask how long it takes to play and the number is too big. Our group tends to fill games up to capacity and isn't this one an "X minutes per player" game? I normally like shorter games and these games are typically much less fun for me. I could also be totally wrong.

Other Feld games I've played are:

In the Year of the Dragon
Notre Dame
The Pillars of the Earth
Speicherstadt
Trajan
Bora Bora
Amerigo

There's a guy in my group who's a Stefan Feld fanboy so he really likes playing these games. I really like hanging out with him so I'll play mediocre games just to get a chance to play with him.

I like Year of the Dragon quite a bit. My only issue with the game is that low-initiative strategies have never worked out for anyone before, many people have tried them (including myself) and nobody has actually won by doing it. So the replayability suffers. Oh well.

Speicherstadt is a good one, very different from other Feld games. If that game took half the time it normally did I'd play it all the time.

The rest of them scream "Point Salad" to me, and that kind of thing just doesn't appeal to me. I don't really like it when the best move is often "what scores me the most points right now" unless it's the last round of the game, I'd prefer to build up for a bit.

[LastFootnote]

Have you played Macao? It's differently the most unique out of the 4 I've played. And it doesn't have any of that "all resources are worth VP" thing.

I have not! I'll give it a shot if I get an easy opportunity. Chances are good that a friend of mine owns it; he owns a lot of Feld games, including AquaSphere, Bora Bora, and Castles of Burgundy. AquaSphere is standard Feld fare, so if you liked his other games, you'll probably like it.

[LastFootnote]

The rest of them scream "Point Salad" to me, and that kind of thing just doesn't appeal to me. I don't really like it when the best move is often "what scores me the most points right now" unless it's the last round of the game, I'd prefer to build up for a bit.

I'm not convinced that the "greedy" strategy is actually the best one in Feld's games, but they still don't interest me. I guess I'm spoiled by Donald X's games where you can have radically different abilities and rules available in each game (Kingdom cards in Dominion, tiles in Kingdom Builder, zones in Temporum). Having different ways available to score points (you can buy a tile worth four points for each cow you have or whatever) isn't enough.

[pacovf]

I think my main gripe with Castles of Burgundy is that there's hardly any strategy. It's nearly only tactics, and trying to avoid getting blocked out of the good squares. I am not super thrilled by games where the last turn feels kind of like the first one.

[DG]

I think my main gripe with Castles of Burgundy is that there's hardly any strategy. It's nearly only tactics, and trying to avoid getting blocked out of the good squares. I am not super thrilled by games where the last turn feels kind of like the first one.

I'm not sure that's true. I've had some fun playing this (about six games) and although it looks opportunistic it is possible to forge a strategy with the bonus tiles and score far more points.

[GendoIkari]

I think my main gripe with Castles of Burgundy is that there's hardly any strategy. It's nearly only tactics, and trying to avoid getting blocked out of the good squares. I am not super thrilled by games where the last turn feels kind of like the first one.

I'm not sure that's true. I've had some fun playing this (about six games) and although it looks opportunistic it is possible to forge a strategy with the bonus tiles and score far more points.

Yeah, there's definitely a few different high-level strategies; though it's true that pursuing one of them will still require you to dabble in the others. For example, you can go heavy on animals, to get a lot of points that way. Or you can go heavy on selling goods tiles. Similar to Trajan; you can either go heavy on building, or heavy on military, etc. But you'll still have to end up doing a little bit of everything. It's like if in Dominion, you had to buy at least 1 of each Kingdom card to do well, but you could still focus on a larger strategy centered around 2 or 3 cards.