Players: 2-5
Playing Time: 30 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
The Components
Castle comes with:
- 4 castle walls
- 56 character cards
- 115 tokens
- 1 bag
- 1 rulebook
Castle Walls: These "walls" are printed on medium weight card stock that's only finished one one side.. They're full color, but have a pretty plain gray-brown castle wall and tower on each piece. Four of these walls go together to form a 4x4 "courtyard" grid for the game. They're not particularly evocative, but work fine.
Character Cards: These square cards are printed full-color on medium-weight card stock with rounded corners. They're simply designed, but also contain a lot of information, including: a name and general card type (as a color), to the left; rules for card placement, on the top; a large, attractive picture, in the middle; and special powers for the card at the bottom. Overall these are quite nice, relatively easy to use (though for some reason I sometimes missed the special placement rules at the top in many of my early games), and evocative.
Tokens: These are wooden tokens in the five player colors (black, beige, red, green, and purple). There are more of the colors intended for two-player games (beige & black) then those intended for 3-5 players (red then green then purple). These are pretty noramtive wodden pieces.
Bag: A black cloth bag; I don't know why it's here and it's not listed in the instructions, but I'm pretty sure it came with the game. Right now it's being used to separate the cards and pieces used for 2-player play from those used for 3+ players.
Rulebook: A short 4-page rulebook printed full color on glossy stock. It's a pretty terse description of the rules.
Whenever I lay down the Castle walls I think the game looks a little cheap, but it must be admitted that the rest of the components (mostly the cards, but to a lesser extent the rules as well) are high quality and easy to use; thus I've let the game eke in a "4" out of "5" for Style: above average.
The Game Play
The object of Castle is to empty your hand (and personal deck) of cards before your opponents do by playing various personalities into the Castle.
Setup: The game of Castle begins with the initial deck of 56 cards being divided up. Each player gets a hand of cards (5-9 cards, depending on number of players) and a deck of cards (4-13 cards). In addition an exchange (10-12 cards) is set up to the side of the board, with all those cards face-up.
The castle is created in the middle of the board, with the four cardboard strips forming four broad areas: the courtyard (16 spaces in a 4x4 grid), the walls (4 areas of 4 spaces each), the towers (4 areas of 1 space each) and the outside (a somewhat indeterminate space).
Each player also gets all the tokens in a specific color and play begins.
Order of Play: Each turn a player gets to perform two actions from the following list. This may be one each of two different actions or the same action twice:
- Draw a Card; or
- Exchange a Card; or
- Play a Card
Draw a Card: Take a card from your personal draw pile.
Exchange a Card: Take a card from the exchange and put a card in the exchange.
Play a Card: Play a card from your hand into the playing area. There are play restrictions and most cards have special powers as well. Whenever a card is played the person who played it places an ownership token on the card; as we'll see shortly this is most relevant when cards are "sent back".
Play Restrictions. To start off with, each card is played to one of the specific areas of the board (wall, courtyard, tower, or outside). There's also a fifth type of card, the Knight, which can be played only on top of other cards.
In addition, some cards have further restrictions on where or when they can be played (e.g., the Ambassador is a courtyard card which must be the last card played to the courtyard; the Ghost is a tower card that can only be played to an occupied tower; the Lady in Waiting is a courtyard card that must be placed adjacent to the Queen or Princess; and the Mistress is a courtyard card that can't be played if the Queen is in play.) As the board gets more crowded, some of these restrictions can be very restrictive.
Special Powers. Most of the cards have special powers that occur when the card is played. A few are wacky, such as the Fool which causes everyone to pass a card to their left and the Herald which causes the King to be played if someone has it. Most powers, however, fit into four general categories.
Some cards Move a Card. This allows the playing player to move a card of the specific type to a new place on the table.
Some cards Send Back a Card. The returns the specific type of card to the owner's hand.
Some cards Manipulate Tokens. They may remove ownership tokens or swap them around.
Some cards offer Protection. They keep other cards from being sent back. (The most notable possessor of this power are the knights, who protect whatever card is under them.)
More on the Cards: The cards are the thematic color of Castle, and they're quite well done. There are many stereotypical denizens of a Medieval castle and they all tend to have special powers that are really nice matches to the cards' names. My favorite is probably Prince Charming who "Moves a Female Card", though the Mistress isn't bad because she "Moves the King and a Knight"; the Knight tends to leap right on top of the Mistress since she's a pain to play (because she can't be played if the Queen is on the board) and thus should be protected.
Soldiers & Siege Engines: One last mechanic is particularly notable: the interaction between soliders and siege engines. The soldiers go on the walls, up to four per wall, while the siege engines go outside the walls, up to one per wall. Anytime all four spaces on a wall are filled, any siege engine outside is sent back; meanwhile anytime all four siege engine spaces are filled, everyone on the wall goes back. This tends to create a constant back and forth between the soldiers & siege engines as a very important aspect of the game.
Winning the Game: A player wins when he manages to play all the cards from both his deck and hand (9-22 cards, depending on the number of players).
Playing the Game
Castle is one of those games where the gameplay isn't entirely obvious from the rules. It ends up being a constant back and forth, with players playing cards while at the same time getting cards back as they're sent back by opponents. Players try and make good use of protection and token swaps to keep their stuff on the board. Toward the end of the game all of the tower spaces fill up; the courtyard likewise can get full, and at this point players get more desparate about their play (sometimes exchanging unplayable cards).
The siege engines and soldiers can be a real problem, because they can be sent back more easily than most cards. As a result the exchange sometimes fills with soldiers and siege engines, but sometimes players take advantage of this as well, to threaten a player who is too close to going out.
Relationships to Other Games
Castle (2000) was developed simultaneously with another Bruno Faidutti game, Citadels (2000). As the story goes, following the success of their joint project, Mystery of the Abbey (1996), Serge Laget and Bruno Faidutti decided to together build a new game centered around castle locations and characters. They did their initial designs in private, and Faidutti's game, with 60 locations and 8 characters, was nothing like Laget's game with 5 locations and 60 characters. They thus ended up being two separate games; after Faidutti's Citadels was released, he then co-developed Laget's Castle.
On his site, Faidutti says that Castle is not unlike a collectible card game, and he's not far off there. There are many unique cards, each of which has a special power. It's also a classic hand management cardgame where the goal is to empty your hand of cards--as with many classic card games, including Uno and Gang of Four. The CCG-like nature of Castle, however, allows for much more varied gameplay.
As with many Bruno Faidutti games, this one has a lot of chaos implicit in it, here in the ways that cards can interrelate, moving other cards around or sending them back to their players' hands.
This game is also a member of Descartes' "Blue Games" series, which tend to be small, cheap games, many of which can handle a large number of players (though Castle only goes up to 5). Generally, the Blue Games are also supposed to be "fast, amusing, easy to set up and easy to play". Castle fits that bill.
The Game Design
Castle is a fun, fast-played card game. Here's some of the better elements:
Lots of Chaos & Color: There's a lot of chaos (as noted above) and color (implicit in all those characters), which really make the game evocative, exciting, and fun to play.
Simple: Despite that, the game is quite simple and easy to understand, which does it well as a filler.
Some Strategy, Fun Tactics: There is some strategy in the game, based on figuring out how you're going to get multiple cards out of your hand; however the game shines more on tactics, as you figure out what you're going to do each turn with the cards & spaces available.
Here's what I don't like:
Too Many Choices: Sometimes there are just way too many choices for players, between the cards in their hand (which can grow very large), the ones in the exchange, and the option to draw cards. I've seen a number of players get stuck when trying to figure out what to do between all these options.
More Chaotic with More Players: Castle is one of those games that gets more chaotic the more players you have, to the point where you can have very low control with 5 players. I've played it mostly with 2 and 3 and I think it works very good in those configurations. I'd be leery of more.
Overall, Castle is a fun and enjoyable filler game; I have no hesitation in giving it an above average rating of "4" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
Castle is a filler card game by Serge Laget & Bruno Faidutti that has a lot of color, good strategy & tactics, and is fun to play. It's been out a number of years, but remains very fresh. If you haven't played it yet, give it a try.
