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The Castles of Mad King Ludwig, released in 2014 by designer Ted Alspach, asks players to build one of King Ludwig’s castles, room by room.
King Ludwig II of Bavaria was indeed a real person, and while he was not necessarily mad, he was mad about castles. During his 22-year reign, he built a series of castles including Castle Neuschwanstein. This fantasy castle was the inspiration for Cinderella’s Castle at two Disneyland theme parks.
In 2012, Alspach released his acclaimed Suburbia of which Castles of Mad King Ludwig is considered by some the spiritual successor. While they do share some similar mechanisms, they are different games in their own right.
Building Your Castles
Each round, one of the players will be the Master Builder, who arranges the available rooms for purchase and determine their prices. The other players then get the chance to either buy a room or a hallway/staircase to connect rooms together and pay the cost to the Master Builder. Then, at the end of the round, the Master Builder moves to the next player, giving them the opportunity to earn money and chose the prices of buildings.
When players buy rooms, they add them immediately to their castles, scoring immediate points and possibly gaining/losing extra points for rooms adjacent to it. While some rooms work well beside each other, two bedrooms, for example, a bedroom next to a workshop does not. This poor match of rooms can be done, but points will be lost and no-one will be getting any sleep with all that hammering!
Each room has a set number of exits leading from it. By joining all of these exits to other rooms, players will gain a bonus action depending on the type of room. A food room, for example, bestows the completing player an additional turn; the outdoor room gains money on completion; while the utility room gains a bonus card. Rooms cannot be completed by blocking a door, so room placement is important.
Each game has a set number of favour tiles – it seems King Ludwig could be a little demanding – that can gain player’s end game points. And there are also bonus cards that players both start with and gain during the game. These are secret objectives that can be worked towards to gain more end game points. Of course, the player with the most points at the end of the game wins.
Components
There are three main components in Castles of Mad King Ludwig; the cards, the room tiles and the money. To be honest, the quality of these components is a slight letdown. The cards are small, which is annoying for large handed people such as myself. Based on the first printing, the cardboard quality of the rooms and money is not the best. While not bad, they could be better.
Artwork
Like the components, the artwork is good, although not great. It has a cartoony style which takes away from the theme a little. This art style makes the castles look less like Bavarian castles and more Disney. Again not a big thing, but for me it took away from the feel of the game.
Gameplay
Where the components and artwork let the game down a little, the gameplay makes up for it in such a way that you forget about those small issues. The Master Builder gets to set the price of rooms. This forces the other players to pay him more for the rooms they want. This makes for some interesting decisions on both sides:
‘I know he wants this room, so I will make him pay more, but not too much, because if he doesn’t buy it, I won’t get the money."
The adjacency rules and room completion bonuses give players other decisions to make... "I may lose points putting this next to that room, but it completes it and gives me a bonus action..."
Like its predecessor, Suburbia, Castles of Mad King Ludwig is a spreadsheet game. This means having a spreadsheet to monitor points would be invaluable. By placing a room, not only must adjacency be factored in, but it might cause extra points because of other rooms that were placed earlier in the game.
That isn't a bad thing, but for those not so good at maths, it can be a little more stressful.
Castles of Mad King Ludwig - Overall Thoughts
Castles of Mad King Ludwig is fun, mid-weight, euro style game about the economics of building a fantasy castle. It's easy to pick up and it can be a fun puzzle to add rooms in just the right way. How the Master Builder sets room prices adds player interaction, in a 'take that' fashion without the meanness. I would highly recommend it.
