boardgaming in photos: The Castles of Burgundy, Innovation, A la Carte

This was my second time playing The Castles of Burgundy. The last time I played it was 2013. After 9 years, I had forgotten almost all of the rules. The only thing I remembered was I needed to position myself such that no matter what numbers I rolled with my dice, there would be something useful I could do. I found this principle still very useful. If I only play this game for the third time 9 years from now, I'll probably still remember this rule of thumb. 

I played with Han and Allen on boardgamearena.com. We used the advanced side of the player boards, so the starting estate was not at the centre. In the screenshot above, the left half is the shared central board, and the right half is my player board. There were four dark green spots for me to pick where to place my starting estate. I picked the one on the right because there were more possibilities for expansion. 

Every turn you roll two dice and use them to perform actions. The two most common actions are picking a tile from the main board to put in your storage area, and placing a tile from your storage area onto your player board. The die values restrict where from the main board you can claim tiles, and also which locations on your player board you can place tiles. When placing a tile on your player board, the colour must match too. One currency in the game is workers. They allow you to change your die value,  one step per worker. You can spend a die to take 2 workers. 

Throughout the game you are essentially doing your best to fill up your player board, and you try to score as many points as possible as you do so. Whenever you complete a group of same-coloured tiles, you score points based on how early in the game it is and how big the group is. The different types of tiles have various powers, and they either give you special abilities or help you score more points. 

We were at the end of Stage 4 out of 5 stages, so it was near game end now. I had filled all the grey spaces on my player board and claimed a bonus for being first to do so.

These two were Allen's and Han's player boards respectively. Allen had filled all dark green and yellow spaces. Han had filled light green. 

Whenever you fill a blue space, you get to claim goods from the main board. One more action type you get to perform is to sell such goods to earn points. There are six types of goods, each associated with a different die value. You need to roll a specific number to sell a specific type of goods. 

Nine years later, I looked at my first review of the game, and found that my opinion was mostly the same. The Castles of Burgundy is a very popular game, and I can understand why. I probably won't turn down a game but it's not one I seek out to play. I like In the Year of the Dragon and Notre Dame better. 

I played another game of Twilight Struggle against the AI, this time playing USA. In Europe I managed to gain control of East Germany, which was satisfying. It was nice to control Finland, an immediate neighbour of USSR. It meant I scored an additional 1VP every time the Europe region was scored. 

Younger daughter Chen Rui said she wanted to play A la Carte. I consider this a children's game and she's not exactly a kid anymore. I must say this is an eye-catching game - the pan, the stove and those spice bottles. 

The core mechanism is pouring just the right amount of spice from the bottle, no more and no less, and without pouring out any of the translucent salt pieces. This is novel. This is a light and simple game. For me the novelty wears off quickly. I am not the target audience.  

I taught Chen Rui Innovation, one of my favourite games. She said it gave her a headache. That is understandable. It is a quirky game with some unusual mechanisms. Every card in the game is unique, which means there is a lot of read when you are new to the game. It's not an easy game to digest. 

She foiled my plans. I had planned to use my blue Translation card to claim the World achievement. To do that I needed to have coin icons on the top cards of all my stacks. I managed to orchestrate that, and by my next turn I would be able to claim the achievement. Unfortunately for me Chen Rui used a dogma to give me a red card, covering my top red card which had a coin. The card she gave me had no coin. I didn't have any other red card with coins in hand. I never managed to claim this achievement. 

Our game ended in the 6th epoch, which is normal. I won by 6 achievements to 3, but Chen Rui did well in that she managed to score 45 points by then. We were still in Epoch 6. If we entered Epochs 7, 8 and 9, she would have been able to claim the respective epoch-specific achievements immediately.