Top 5 Stefan Feld Games

It’s been a while since we’ve spun our spotlight onto a designer, so let’s go with one of the most renowned in the hobby. Today’s designer is from Germany, and looking at the notable games list on Board Game Geek, he has a pretty solid work ethic, pushing out games almost yearly. If he skips a year, two come out in the following year which is very impressive. He specialises in Euro style games and a creative use of dice to facilitate gameplay without adding too much randomness. Today’s spotlight falls upon Stefan Feld, and here are some of his best games.

Merlin - PaP Nick

I’m not sure many people would look to Merlin when they think of Feld’s best games, but it’s fair to say that Merlin cast a spell on me. Merlin takes roll and move adds a rondel and a sprinkle of other magic and comes out as smooth as a sword drawn from a stone.

The main mechanism at play here is the rolling of four (unless you are using expansions) standard six-sided dice which you then assign to either Merlin or your knight. Weirdly this reminds me of another game I’ve been playing a lot of recently – Thunder Road Vendetta. You could accuse both of being roll and move games dressed up with other mechanisms, but both prove to be more than just settling for what you roll by providing choice.

In Merlin you assign your dice to moving either your colour knight or Merlin around their rondel and taking the action you land on. While this may sound restrictive the game provides plenty of ways to mitigate the action you land on, and every action is generally useful.

Actions will allow you to gain resources, fight for area control, and apply defences to your own castle walls. It’s a game where you will feel the pressure to do a bit of everything but have to be prepared to turn on a dime should the situation require it. The expansions fill out some of the actions providing a fifth dice, a new rondel and making the area control map more interesting.

There is a lot to explore in Merlin and writing it off as a roll and move could mean you miss a gem of a game. So, step up, steady your feet, balance your body, take hold of the sword handle – who knows what might happen?

Carpe Diem – Craig Smith

Carpe Diem is a 2018 release where each player takes the role of a patrician. Your aim is to build the most lucrative district possible which contains a variety of landmarks and dwellings.

Each player has a grid which has scoring objectives around the outside of it. Each player’s grid will look different, and the objectives can be mixed and matched to increase replayability. The way you collect tiles for your district is by moving your patrician around the main board and collecting one of the available tiles. You can also trade in bread to give you a little more flexibility in your movement.

Once there’s no more tiles for the patricians to collect, the game moves into a scoring phase. This allows players to score points for the components of their district. This is done by placing a counter between two scoring cards in the hope of meeting both scoring condition – be warned though, you lose points for any card you can’t score from.
The game is played over four rounds and ends with a massive point salad with points coming from fountain cards which you collect through the game, your villas, resources, and the frame of your board. The person with the highest score is winner.

Whilst Carpe Diem doesn’t have the acclaim of Castles of Burgundy, I think it’s a very good entry point into the world of Stefan Feld games. Carpe Diem is lower in complexity, but it still offers you that Feld crunchiness of trying to work out the best way of scoring points. Instead of being restricted by dice, you’re instead restricted by the movement of your patrician. It’s a strong recommend for gamers wanting to try a Feld game for the first time!

The Castles Of Burgundy – Seb Hawden

When someone says Stefan Feld, the first thing that comes to my mind is the Castles of Burgundy. Castles of Burgundy, in my opinion, is a perfect blend of an easy to play game with a large decision space. The rules are simple but your options are vast, creating an easy-going experience that even gives seasoned players a bit of leeway to devise strategies and clever plays.

For anyone who has not played Castles, it's quite a simple game where you use your two dice to take actions while filling up your Duchy. You can buy tiles, place tiles and do a few more things to manipulate your turns and thankfully, adjust bad die rolls. There are special rules for each tile type, end scoring tiles and how quickly you can fill your Duchy with various buildings and animals will determine your end score.

There are a few wrinkles to get your teeth into too, like the novel way turn order works and buying and selling goods. Both of these systems add layers onto what is already a fun game, just adding enough complexity to make you think twice about what you want to do with your dice and tiles. Of course, hate-drafting can be a thing but I find in this game people concentrate more on what they want.

Castles of Burgundy is often marked down for its very beige-euro look but I have come to quite like it. (Plus I have backed the new fancy-deluxe version which looks amazing) What stands out is the gameplay though, smooth, quick and very easy to grasp. Every turn is worthwhile, you may not get exactly what you want but you always get something of value to you. I have never had a bad game of Castles, apart from that time Kieran kept taking all the animal tiles, the swine!

The Castles Of Tuscany – Hannah Blacknell

After the absolute mega-success of The Castles of Burgundy, you cannot blame Feld for bringing out a follow-up. The Castles of Tuscany however is a game in its own right despite its famous heritage. It uses a similar theme to the original, and you are still putting out tiles, but you are not placing them in the same way so you will likely not feel like you are playing a particularly similar game. This game is quite a bit quicker to play than its big brother, with only three rounds in total. The turns are quick, the gameplay is easy and setup is much quicker, you can be up and playing in a matter of minutes.

Instead of dice, you will now be using cards to pay for your tile placement. You will be collecting two cards of a type in the matching type in order to play a tile out. As in the original, each building type will have some kind of special action or ability. As you complete areas you get to score them. The points that you accrue in the first round will be scored at the end of round 1, but also again at the end of rounds 2 and 3, so there is a serious advantage to those who are quick out the blocks. The slow build that is so common in Castles of Burgundy play really is going to hurt you here. You need to get points quickly. As the game continues you will be able to upgrade your engine in order to do more on each turn.

If you want something a bit lighter as perhaps a stepping stone to a larger Feld, or you want to get your fix of tile laying but in a quick almost filler-esque game then you cannot go wrong with getting Castles of Tuscany to the table.