You don’t see many big box eight player games these days, but with Between Two Castles Essential Edition, Stonemaier Games offers up the perfect option for those occasions when you have a full house, and a smaller game won’t cut the mustard. Featuring the base game of Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig and its only expansion, Secrets and Soirees, this mildly rebranded update is both good value, and good fun.
Between Two Castles Essential Edition is the third game to carry Stonemaier Games’ Essential Edition moniker, and it follows both Viticulture Essential Edition and Between Two Cities Essential Edition. Ironically, Between Two Castles Essential Edition is now very nearly the same game as Between Two Cities, with the original idea of the game being to take the “theme” of Bezier Games older classic Castles of Mad King Ludwig and hybridise it with the mechanics of Between Two Cities from Stonemaier Games.
With all that nomenclature out of the way, let’s focus back on Between Two Castles Essential Edition which is a relatively simple tile placement game that is made marginally more complex by its unique partnership mechanism, some light drafting and a lot of iconography. The really unique twist here (lifted directly from Between Two Cities) is that each player will build two castles during the game, but each of those castles will be placed between them and their neighbour (one left and one right) with whom they will share the corresponding castle.
Each game of Between Two Castles Essential Edition takes place over two rounds, with the players taking nine tiles (conveniently stacked at the correct height in the brilliant insert) at the start of the round and then choosing two of them. When everyone has done so, they’ll place the remaining seven tiles to their left (in the first round) or their right (in the second round). Players are then free to discuss which of the two tiles they have taken will be placed into their castle, and where it will go.
Once each player has placed one of their two tiles into each of the castles to their right and left, the players will all pick up the stack of seven tiles that was just passed to them, and then they’ll repeat the process. Eventually, this means that everyone will be choosing two tiles from an available three, and at this point that lone tile will be returned to the box.
In terms of what tiles you would want to draft and why, well that comes down to scoring. Every tile in Between Two Castles Essential Edition offers a chance to score in some way. Food room tiles (with a yellow border and a goblet symbol) score two points each for rooms of a particular type placed above, below or to the side of the food room — as shown on the food room tile itself. Underground rooms will often score for specific types of rooms above them, whilst outdoor rooms might score for connected runs of rooms of a particular type.
This is where the complexity of Between Two Castles Essential Edition does come to the fore. This is quite a mathematical game, and whilst the numbers in terms of specific tile score are usually fairly low (certainly less than ten and often less than five), there’s still a lot to process when you are reviewing nine different tiles in hand, and have two different castles beside you to think about when choosing. That said, Between Two Castles Essential Edition is light and breezy enough that it’s rarely taken so seriously that it causes serious analysis paralysis.
In addition to the mathematical element, there’s also a bit of challenging iconography. That mainly comes because the tiles themselves are smallish, but what space there is on them is mainly taken up by artwork. This is probably the right decision, as this is a game that needs theme in order to give it life, but I’d also say that the icons (shown in the top left and right corners) and the scoring (along the bottom) could be maybe 20-30% larger). Even if you can read them, there’s an awful lot of icons and colours to process.
There are a few rules on tile placement within your castle as well, although most of these are straightforward enough to remember after being told once or twice. If you imagine that all castles are being viewed from the side (like an 8 or 16-bit platform game) then you’ll begin the game with nothing but a throne room. This represents your ground floor, and only rooms that can be placed “below” the ground can go lower, whilst almost any room can go on the same level or above the ground floor. Outdoor rooms can go anywhere ground level or above, but nothing can be built on top of them, whilst no room can be built without a room below it (unless it’s on the ground floor).
I have definitely played games where we’ve had six or seven players and whilst I’ve tried to keep an eye on everyone, we’ve missed situations where a room has been left “hanging” in mid air, or has been built underground when it shouldn’t be. Again, I don’t consider Between Two Castles Essential Edition to be such a serious game that this matters — so usually we just allow that “pair” of players to place the room somewhere that makes a bit more sense. I guess if you were playing with experienced players and this kept happening, you might need a house rule to create some kind of consequence.
I already feel that I’ve commented enough about some of the more fiddly aspects of Between Two Castles Essential Edition as they are all kind of linked, but the last thing that should be mentioned is probably scoring. With five, six or more castles to score, scoring in Between Two Castles Essential Edition is a bit of an ordeal because each and every room has to be scored separately. Most range from simple to medium scoring, but some (those that need symbols across the whole castle to be checked, or even a small number of special tiles that score for adjacent castles) can get more complex.
Returning to more positive matters, Between Two Castles Essential Edition does feature a really nice aesthetic and when I referred to the importance of the art earlier, I really meant it. This is a game where you could end up with a castle filled with stupidly impractical rooms. I built a castle that had nothing but games rooms in it — plus a pit of despair and a kennel. The rooms are simply artwork and a title, but the stories and banter at the table was what made the game fun.
Additionally, you just don’t see games that have a good bit of weight like this that also support five to eight players and still retain a decent level of pace. A single game of Between Two Castles Essential Edition can be over and done within about an hour, even with a fairly inexperienced group of players. That’s quite incredible really, and whilst I think the game has limitations, the sheer versatility of Between Two Castles Essential Edition wins it serious brownie points. As with most Stonemaier Games products, there’s a well-featured Automa mode to enable solo play, and a variant for two players as well.
With all that said then, Between Two Castles Essential Edition could well occupy a unique slot in your collection. Playable at literally any player count you’re likely to see (and some you probably won’t), Between Two Castles Essential Edition really shines at around four to six players. It’s a mathy, puzzly experience that will definitely result in a few rules gaffs over the first few games, but it’s neither long enough nor heavy enough that anyone in their right mind would be too bothered by that. Almost every time you play, Between Two Castles Essential Edition generates good conversation and plenty of laughter, and for that plus the player count, it’s staying in my collection.
Between Two Castles Essential Edition is available from Amazon and, of course, various other retailers.
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