With a new expansion up for preorder and several plays under my belt, it’s time to not discuss my interest in the game but to explore if Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is a game for you because while there are a ton of great games out there, sometimes it can be tricky to know if a popular one is right for you and the people with whom you play.

This is the resulting cooperative game from a collaboration between Stonemaier Games and Bezier Games, mashing up the worlds and mechanics of Between Two Cities with Castles of Mad King Ludwig. In an architectural pastiche of cross-section castle-building, players will endeavor to build the most sensible collection of rooms but their efforts will be split between two construction projects. One with each of the players adjacent to them. And they must truly pay attention to each of these budding castles because the lesser of the two will be the player’s final score.

It’s cooperative. It’s competitive, to an extent. And it’s an interesting simultaneous drafting game worth picking up the hammer and nail for.

Overview

Each player builds two castles. They will be filled with rooms of different types. Get enough of those room types in one castle and you’ll unlock some bonuses. But some rooms have placement restrictions, so you’ll need to be mindful of those.

No matter the player count, there will be two rounds in which players can plot out the design of their respective castles, grabbing two tiles from a rotating, dwindling selection. One tile for each castle.

Then players will confer with their building partners as to what tiles should go where. It’s important to plan with your partner but also to ascertain whether they’ll be able to get the needed rooms. Sometimes redundancy works better than luck.

At the end of two rounds, whoever has the highest-scoring lesser castle wins. Your worst work is what you’re judged by so do a good job all around!

Theme

The king demands a castle! You are a world-renowned master builder who has been asked by Mad King Ludwig to help design his castles. Projects of such significance require the expertise of more than one person, so for each assignment, you are paired with another master builder to execute your grandiose plans. Will your planning and partnership skills be enough to design the most impressive castles in the world?

And that’s all well and good, but at the end of the day, you’re the master-builder here. And the king is mad so will he really know what’s good design versus bad design?

This is the kind of place where you can store your scythes (I see what you did there, Stonemaier Games…) next to your dressing room which is near your wardrobe room that has outdoor access to the gold-filigree geranium that you recently installed in the gardens.

Does it make sense? Maybe not.

Would an interior design snob be appalled? Probably.

But this is your castle! Make it however you want to and revel in all the absurdity of the moment. You can create one massive tower with floors underground as well or you can have a sprawling horizontal maze with abundant outdoor landscaping.

Accessibility

One thing that stands out about Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is the scalability of the game. It can support 2-7 players but the playtime doesn’t really increase proportionally to the player count.

Players are always working with the two adjacent to them. No more, no less. So those two rounds should roughly last the same amount of time whether you have 3 players or 6 players.

That design factor alone makes the game very accessible to a large number of gaming groups, small or large.

And then the cooperative nature of the game means that you can bring in players who are uncertain as to the mechanics or the depth and guide them through the experience in a non-controlling but meaningful way. Having a dialogue about the best types of rooms and the ways that a castle could score will bring them in with discussion rather than quarterbacking.

It’s a game that I would happily play with regular gamers and also with those new to the hobby.

Gameplay

While the excess of tiles at first might overwhelm you, the differences between them are minor.

Each room has a specific scoring bonus that can be achieved depending on its placement or the placement of other tiles in relation to it.

Each room belongs to one of several room types, which offer bonuses when three or five of each kind have been constructed in a castle. Those bonuses can help you do more in a turn than what’s normally allowed.

Build castles up, down, or outward, following the rules for where each tile can be placed.

Acquire tiles. Schmooze with your building partners. And get a castle off the ground.

That’s what it’s about. That’s all you really need to know. And the gameplay holds up given the time it takes to play and the number of players that can be accommodated.

Modes of Play

There is a two-player variant that helps you overcome the absence of the essential third player, but other than that, this is a one-stop castle-building shop.

Take tiles and put them in a castle. That’s all there is and it’s all you really need with this game at the complexity level that it’s at. This is a solid introductory game but it’s also a good appetizer in a bigger night of games for players with heavy strategy games in mind. Or it can stand alone as its own joy with any type of crowd.

Fun is the modus operandi. No other variant needed!

Innovation

Most games would have your best score be simply that—your best score. But the subversion of that expectation in Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is vital because it guarantees cooperation. You can’t neglect one castle in favor of another. You can’t allocate all of your decision-making to one castle with the best tiles going that way. If you do, you’ll almost certainly lose. You have to work diligently with each partner to ensure the best chance of success.

That’s not the end of the cleverness, though. If you have two castles, you also have two chances to win. The design element enables players to mitigate the influence of bad luck, poor teamwork, or inexperience by giving everyone another opportunity to succeed.

More chances to win while reinforcing the cooperative nature of the game. That’s something that should be praised in board game design.

Pricing

As with many Stonemaier Games titles, you’re getting -high-quality game production at a reasonable cost. The full $45 is in the mid-tier of retail game prices, but you can also get this on sale pretty easily, through the publisher’s website or other online stores, which makes it even more palatable.

With the two Game Trayz inserts and the wooden tiles, it’s something that should stay in good condition in your library for some time. The recent expansion, Secrets & Soirees, provides even more staying power to the game if you consider buying that. It will also fit in the original game’s box, for those that like to consolidate for space-saving reasons.

Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is…