OhMyGod!OhMyGod!OhMyGod!OhMyGod!OhMyGod!I want this set. I want it printed. I want it now...wait, I don't actually have The Castle with me... whatever! I've seriously been wanting this set since I fell in love with The Castle back in 2010. I loved the strange mechanics, the outer wall, and the bonuses. This improves on all of those! I was so ticked off when Reiner announced the expansion only to have RGG hedge on it for so long. Then with the Z-Man switch and The Castle going out of print, things only got worse. I had fingers crossed that the expansion would be included in a future Z-Man reprint, but that's clearly not an option either now.This expansion needs to be printed! It is a large expansion (18 tiles!) with two new meeples per player, two of which have never been made before (the others are just Mayors). This was never designed for print-and-play and really needs a formal print run. Spielbox? CundCo? Z-Man? 999 Games? Delvir? That Russian distributor? Somebody, please!...okay, rant over.
The other followers are those of hunters and gatherers.
Moving beyond the issue of printing etc for the moment, what are people's first thoughts about the game-play and aesthetics of this expansion?Here are some of my initial comments:- It's a more significant expansion than I expected, with lots of new elements (Element of the Week lives on!). Yet for all the new elements, the rules seem fairly simple and easy to understand, which is nice. The artwork of the chapel seems to fit in quite well with houses and towers.
- Sorry to be the one to make such a pedantic comment, but aerie is spelt two different ways (aerie/arie) in the rules, and yet another (and perhaps more common) English spelling is eyrie. All that said, it would have been a lot simpler and easier if they had called them nests instead.
- I don't think I like the aerie scoring. Since it scores the same points as the largest keep, this either means that one player wins them both or (perhaps more likely) that one player has the most aerie tokens and another has the largest keep, and the points are just split. And in a two-player game, I don't think rules that lead to splitting the points should be encouraged.
- I also don't think it's great that the aerie tokens can run out and then still need to be used, so that they are taken back from the players who have already earned them - this seems a bit messy. I realise that this is because the falconer can generate extra aerie tokens that aren't accounted for in the nest tiles, but I still think there could have been a better way around this.
- I like the increased points as the chapel gets larger. It gives the chapel a purpose and something that distinguishes it from houses and towers. The calculation of these points seems a bit messy (i.e. the value increases by one more point per additional tile than it did with the previous number of tiles), but I guess you can learn the values by heart pretty quickly.
- The gates only seem to serve to make the castle walls bigger to allow for more tiles. Hopefully they fit in well with the rest of the castle walls visually because the walls are one of my favourite things about this game.
- The king follower is a nice addition - like the prophet in Ark of the Covenant but usable multiple times. And I like the rule that you can't use the king to complete a feature. You need to plan it a bit more in advance than that. In practice, I guess players will try to use their king for chapels, while the other player tries to close down any possible expansion of that chapel.
I don't like the scoring either. It doesn't make any sense in that it's not new, it's just doubling an already existent mechanic. Why would they do that and why would they name the expansion after that? I feel like this feature was one of the reasons why the expansion was held up for so long at RGG and why Knizia finally felt it was only worthy as a PnP.
I like the variant rule where the gates stop point gain. It's a bit cruel, but can mean that players must plan their point gain more strategically.
Started by Hylian87
Started by supertopix
Started by Whaleyland
Started by jungleboy
Started by Decar