Castles of Caladale - Review

So the wife and I played both Kingdomino and then... Castles of Caladale tonight.

Both of these games have very basic rules, with Castles having the even more basic rules set.  Well, needless to say, we both loved Kingdomino, but the real surprise was how great CASTLES OF CALADALE was.

The rules are laughably simple, to the point that I thought this would be like a baby game.  You pick a tile and add it to your castle.  Themes and edges need to match, and you get extra points for a completed castle (sky showing all the way around your castle), but the clincher is that you can rearrange your castle pieces whenever you want to.  I thought this would make Castles of Caladale an unbelievably easy game. 

Boy, was I wrong!!  I spent the entire game rearranging and redesigning my castle due to certain end of game scoring bonuses and penalties.  The game was over, and both of us spent about another 10 minutes fiddling with our castles to make them as points efficient as possible.

I had many more problems than my wife did.  I took tiles that I, at the end, could not place, and no matter how hard I tried, could not complete my castle.  I must have spent an additional 30 minutes fiddling to try to get as high a score as I could.

Finally, we scored our castles and unbelievably, even with my incomplete castle, I won by 1 point!!

Uhhh, oops...

That's not all together true, as I recounted, I found many more incomplete castle walls and in the end LOST by about 5 points. 

So, what did we think of Castles of Caladale??  WE LOVED IT!!  It has all of the makings of a Spiel Des Jahres game.  Unbelievably simple rules, almost too simple, but with deep choices to make. It also has that puzzley feel to it.  It also comes with a timer if you want to limit the length of player's turns, this is called the "Timed Variant."

This one is a definite keeper!!

The wife is the one who wanted me to make sure I took pictures and did a write up on it.

She said...

"LEAVE IT ON THE TABLE!!"