Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

A brief overview of what one gets with this game: - cheap cardboard components with glossy thin player mats - barfy-looking artwork - a theme so thin it is starving - two colored six-sided dice are the central component of the game, and they are used to determine your possible actions on your turn - point salad so severe it is a virtual point salad bar - fiddly to set up and difficult to put away ... so did I accidentally give it five stars? No. The Castles of Burgundy is among my favorite games of all time. I am always willing to play this game. It does not satisfy on any of my more predictable measures of a board game I love, but it succeeds in what a game is ultimately all about - gameplay. Everything in the way this game flows is so perfectly honed that I forgive it for not having much of a theme, for having "goods tiles" that are not even described in any other detail other than the dice number you have to roll in order to sell them, hell, for being centered on dice rolls. The game is light on strategy but as a tactical game, it is the best I have ever played. For how under-produced the production is, there is always a myriad of decisions that can be made on every single turn. You have fifty decisions to make total in the game, with two dice rolls every single round, with five rounds in every phase (phases not named thematically, but named A, B, C, D, E) - and the goal is to optimize those decisions in such a way that fills your manor with tiles that do have names for theme purpose, but they really amount to nothing more than scoring points here and there. You can use a dice to take tiles offered on the main board that matches the dice number you rolled. You can use a dice to play tiles corresponding to a dice number on your player mat. You can use a dice to sell goods. And you can use a dice to generate two workers (which can modify the number of any dice). Also if you have some silverlings (the scarce money in this game) you can buy from a market in the center of the board. And that is about it. But it is so fun. Really, really fun. And with how many possible things each tile can do once added to your manor, the way the game comes together, and the paths to victory, can be near-unlimited. All of the different types of tiles can do so many different things, but it never feels overwhelming to learn what they all do, or paralyzing to find the perfect use for them. There is not a linear order that you have to take your actions every turn. The rules are tight, but they are not restricting. This is a game that has everything I hate in a game, yet totally makes up for it, ALL of it, with its gameplay design and brilliance. It is a title every tabletop fiend should own, even if they don't usually like Euro games. A point salad with all the fixings.