Castles of Burgundy is a German game by Ravensburger. It has the feel of other similar games, and like most German games while competitive, there is not any attacking other players. This game is fact is free of any war elements of all kinds.

The theme of the game is 15th century Burgundy, where you play as a prince devoting your effort to building your estate via trading and building. While thematic, no knowledge of actual history is needed to play, and I don’t think playing the game will teach you any history, but it will develop planning and decision making skills.

The game board is small, but organized sensibly and isn’t cluttered. The setup is quick if you keep the pieces organized in the box as mostly it just involves just shuffling some tiles. It can be played by all 4 players on a small IKEA 4 place table (A table that barely fit even the main board, never mind the cards, of Arkham Horror.) There is a player board for each player that is also small and well organized. All play happens on the main board and on the player boards, with a supply of tiles to the side. The standard player boards are all the same, but there are 8 other ones that are different, for advanced play. They are sturdy, but you could laminate them if you felt the need, so long as they would still fit in the box when you got done.

The rulebook is only twelve pages and is written clearly with only one small rule that is translated poorly. As with any board game, I verified the rule by going to Board Game Geek. The rules have a sidebar alongside all the rules with a summery for easier lookup of rules as you learn. The two sections you will need open the most (what Building tiles do, and what the Knowledge tiles do) are right near the end and are easy to turn back to. There is also a summery of the building tile effects on the player boards.

To learn the game, I highly recommend just setting up the game and going through a couple turns. Some of the rules make more sense when you can see the board and the different tiles. The game is divided into 5 phases, and each phase contains 5 rounds. Every one of them plays the same. There’s setup at the start of the phase. Every round involves all players rolling their dice (and you can plan while the other players are going) and making an action with each of them. If for whatever reason you can’t do an action, or don’t want to, with one or more dice in a given round, an option is taking worker tiles. This is one of my favorite mechanics of the game. Worker tiles allow you to adjust the dice up or down, so you aren’t a slave to the dice like you are in games like The Settlers of Catan
(I use an option rule when playing Catan to combat that.)

While each round is the same, the choices available are constantly fluctuating, keeping you on your toes. The main point is to move tiles from the game board to the player board, then from the player board convert the tiles to victory points. Some things give you points right away, but a large portion of your points come from the Knowledge tiles you take which give you points at the end game.

I’ve only played it two-players, but it appears that the scoring scales nicely for more players, awarding more points for actions because they are harder to do with other people vying for the same limited resources.

The board is also set up to scale from 2 to 4 players without any additional setup, just fill in the spots with a number lass than or equal to the number of players, and leave the other spots empty.

Both games I played (even though one we played wrong due to my own error) ended with scores less than 10 apart. Scores can be as high as 299, as far as the score track goes. I don’t know that there is a hard limit.

As the game ends at the end of the last phase, thus always at the same time, and the fact that the rounds go very fast, it’s a fast paced game, and can actually easily stopped at the end of a round and is easy to pick up again. Your long term strategies should be fairly obvious at any point of the game, so your not likely to forget what you were doing. This is good when you have two kids under the age of 4 who might at any time wake up or start assaulting their sibling.

Castles of Burgundy is a fantastic game, and will get as much play as possible. It’s fast setup, and fast game play, means there is more of a chance to work it into our frequently interrupted life.

Of course, when the kids are old enough, we’ll be playing it with them.

Erin got the game Castles of Burgundy to review and we are finally getting to play it.

I took this picture when we took a break for dinner.

So far I really like the game. I will post a full review later.

The Cast:

Pilgrim Righteous Fire
Gets into trouble by being self-righteous
Helps people by enthusiastic encouragement

Pilgrim Leavett Nethers (not exactly a naming convention according to the rules, but oh well.)
Gets into trouble by running away
Helps people by shaking his hips

Pilgrim Lively Strong
Gets into trouble by being too friendly
Helps people by taking the moral high ground

Pilgrim Soapy Bebop (my character)
Gets into trouble by being melodramatic
Helps people by playing jazz music

The Game

Melanie’s planet was swallowed by a whale. She would like us to help her planet to bot get swallowed any more. We arrive at the whale, and there is some confusion in the story as to when we entered the whale, so just keep that in mind as you read. Slightly edited to keep in the 3rd person and same tense.

Righteous Fire called out to Melanie. When she heard, she cried out and Righteous fire assured her they’re there to help.

The whale heard the haughtiness in Righteous Fire’s words, and knocked the pilgrim senseless, and he started falling.

Lively Strong shouted “Hello! It’s wonderful to meet …” and dove into the whale’s mouth and toward Melanie, but clotheslined himself on the trees.

After waking up from a concussion, he gave the tree a lecture about where to grow.

Leavitt whipped his hips in a clockwise motion, causing the whale to get nauseous and flip upside-down, and his tail struck Righteous Fire back up into the air.

The world tumbled in the whale’s tummy, making Melanie toss her cookies, which grossed out Leavitt, so he flew off to avoid the smell, which made Melanie sad.

Soapy Bebop played a mystical jazz tune which cleaned the mess and smell from the house, so Leavitt returned.

But in his high state of emotion he is filled with melancholy and wept loudly into his sax, which emitted a noise so piercing that Menalie’s cat’s head explodes.

Righteous Fire enthusiastically began to list gross meals to the whale, encouraging it to upchuck the world.

Pilgrim Lively Strong decided to console Melanie by giving her a hug.

Lively Strong’s hug squeezed a little to hard and Melanie said ‘Ouch.’

Leavitt Nethers, as the world was being spewed from the whale, tried to run out first, slipped, and was in danger of being eaten.

Wiggling his hips vigorously, he was able to propel himself into the air and out of danger.

— At this point, we used all the goal words (you try to use them before the game is up) and got the Parades (good) ending (as opposed to the bad Pitchforks ending.) We then wrote a little ending to the story.

Melanie thanked Soapy Bebop for cleaning her house and putting her cat, who was dying of cancer, out of its misery and saving her a veterinarian bill.

Melanie expressed her admiration for Righteous Fire’s ability to enthusiastically encourage the whale to throw up.

Pilgrim Lively Strong released Melanie from the purely platonic embrace (don’t ask) and walks (probably flew, really) into the sunset.

Leavitt, well satisfied with with work, looked down on the group as he floated, hips circling like a propeller. He heard Soapy’s music and realized he could do more good by shaking to the rhythm and became Leavitt Salsar.

Afterwards, the stones you have the most of determines what part of your character changes. Two changed their first name, the other two their second.

Righteous Fire became Insecure Fire
He gets into trouble by not being confident in his abilities, because things didn’t always go as planned.

Leavitt Nethers became Leavitt Salsar
He helps people by dancing salsa, because it’s better than just shaking your hips.

Lively Strong became Fool Strong
He gets into trouble by being aloof, overcompensating for being too friendly and causing problems.

Soapy Bebop became Soapy Sweepy
He helps people by cleaning up messes, deciding that mystical music is too unpredictable,  but that cleaning up messes is always good.

There’s a lot more to the game that I wont cover in detail, but the book has lots of setting to paint the worlds and skies the pilgrims play in, and explains each bit of the game fantastically. The art is top notch, as well. The target age group is 12+, but our group was 27+, so it was I think it came out different than if there had been young teens playing. The cats head exploding was a little outside the theme of the game in my opinion, but I was the only one who had actually looked at the book and read the setting and whatnot. It was kinda hilarious, though.

Lots more is explained on the game’s page if you want to know more specific details.

I think everyone should give this game a try. Anyone can play, really. It’s simple, fun, whimsical, and creative, which are all things I like.

Setting and Materials

It’s for 1st level and comes with six characters ready made. The sheets are on nice coated paper, but are hard to write on without a dry erase marker. Also, one had a typo saying a power did 2d17 + 7 damage.
Even if your players really like to make their own characters, the fact that at this time there is nothing about Dark Sun in the character builder required they use these characters unless they want to miss out on the new Dark Sun powers. Plus magic works entirely differently in Dark Sun, so a traditional magic user wont work in Dark Sun.

The setting of Dark Sun is a post-apocalyptic setting in a fantasy world. In Dark Sun, the easy magic takes energy from everything around it. For example if a wizard cast a big spell, the plants around might wilt. One power the character has will actually damage team mates if you make it stronger. Despite there being ways to use magic without causing harm (but it’s harder to do), everyone just kept casting spells until the world came to ruin. Now all magic and those who use it are shunned. The world is a wasteland.

Metal is scarce in the desolate world, so most weapons are ceramic. On a roll of a 1, you can reroll but risk breaking your weapons, or take the automatic miss.

The maps provided are large and very nicely drawn. You can use them for any kind if arena combat in any setting.

Gameplay

I ran with 4 players, so I just picked one of the two provided back stories for all the characters. The characters are divided into two groups of three, so I picked the story that matched the majority of the characters.

After convincing the players that they should escort the caravan instead of trying to rob it (Players are a necessary evil), we got underway for the first section of adventures. There are two groups included, we only played the first. I game them five days worth of food each. I did this because failing some skill challenges had penalties for running out of food. I figured 5 would be enough if they did well, but not too many to avoid trouble if it camie.

The first part is a set of skill challenges. They are of an easy difficulty. If the players pass, they get a bonus to the next challenge or avoid misfortune. I didn’t tell the players they were running skill challenges. I just asked for some skill rolls to start, then presented situations based on what the skill challenges provided. This worked really well. They even got more food for hunting and catching some animals. I did make a ‘mistake’ on one. They should have avoided the first combat, but instead I didn’t read the whole thing and gave them a surprise round against the attackers. I think this worked out better, as the combat was fun. Due to having two less players, I removed two minions and one of the three bigger baddies. This worked out perfectly. One of the characters almost died, but not quite. That’s about right if you ask me. One of the bad guys had a poorly worded power:

Barbed Spear

Requirement: The raider must not have a creature grabbed
Attack: Melee 1 (One creature); +7 vs AC. While the raider has a creature grabbed, it can use Barbed Spear against the grabbed creature only.

This seemed to contradict itself, so I just didn’t use it.

Once they were done with the skill challenges I revealed that they had passed all the skill challenges. Everyone agreed that in this case not telling them they were participating in a skill challenge was a good choice.

The next section is where the PCs discover the caravan intends to capture them and sell them as slaves. I set up the map with all 7 bag guys (reduced from 10 due to having less players) and put the PCs on the board. This took a few minutes. Two of the snipers had shots, then the first PC went and in one attack bloodied the main traitor which triggered the city guards to show up and end the combat. All that setup time essentially wasted. Perhaps part of this was my fault, I think the enemy was supposed to be in the tent, not in the doorway, but on the other hand, the character could have made it there anyways, so maybe not.

Next was a skill challenge to see who the city guard believes. The result was the guards believed that the PCs were in the right, but wanted to put them all into the arena to give the caravan slavers some comeuppance. This is where things started to go terribly wrong.

A rule of the arena was no direct attacking of the opponents. Instead the goal was to have the most coins (large ceramic ones) in your teams coffer at the end of five rounds. The first mistake was I rolled initiative normally, where each player has their own, and each group of enemies has a single initiative. (two groups in this case.) What happened was the PCs got higher than all baddies, rushed for the coins and to block the enemy coffer … and aside from a couple good moments, the rest of the ‘battle’ was essentially boring. Had I given each PC and enemy their own initiative (which I recommend you do,) things might have been better, but I am not sure. It lasted way to long. Also, had the players just focused on the five rounds, it would have gone faster. It’s hard to focus on something boring though. Even adding the trapjaw monsters didn’t make it more interesting.

Overall, the skill challenge and first combat were great, the second combat took longer to set up than complete, and the final fight didn’t work at all for the group. I thought it would spark lots of roleplaying, but aside from the thri-kreen having four arms and taking two coins, nothing special happened.

I haven’t looked at the next adventure in the pack, so it might be better.

Still, if you get a chance to get a copy of this, the maps are super nice, and the skill challenge section is a fine example of how I think they should work in game.

The Squash workout took me a bit to get the controls to respond right. Could have been me or the controls, don’t know.

I saw the trainer’s arm movements get choppy once or twice. Seemed odd, since I don’t think anything out of the ordinary happened.

Do I get extra points for trying to defend myself from an 18 month old while trying to do sit-up type exercises?

EA Active More Workouts is really what EA Active should have been in the fist place (a whole heckuva lot like Wii Fit Plus is what Wii Fit should have been). But, that aside, it is really a better product.

The warm up/down section is a real improvement, and the several of the same workouts are improved in the presentation and approach. The obstacle course melds several new and old workouts into one event, making them less dull. The boxing is also improved by more moves and variety.

Overall, I’m liking EA Active More Workouts. It’s not as fun as a workout as playing Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, but I bet it’s more effective all around. I’ll keep you updated on my fitness progress and experience with the various Wii workout software and hardware I’m using.

In short, the game is buggy and sometimes frustrating, but I really had a fun time playing it.

There is a lot right and a lot wrong with the game in the technical sense. If I were to review the game solely based of the game engine and implementation, it would not be pretty. That’s not to say it is all bad. There is a lot of good in there too. For example, the combat and gun play work well. The gun fights are the simplest. Poke your head up and point and shoot at the bad guys and duck before they shoot you back. These work very well and are fun. Sometimes you can take out bad guys by using the environment and in a few fights you must. The environment plays a big role in brawls too. You can grab rafters and kick, shove Nazis into fish tanks, and pick up a pipe wrench and smash someone across the face with it. I did have some trouble getting that action, swinging an object, to work at times. While not super picky, sometimes it wouldn’t swing right. I think any attack motion should have swung the object. Combat works by swinging the remote or nunchuck, for left or right armed hits, in three different ways to perform three different punches. This is really nice and they make sense, like you swing up for an uppercut. You duck and dodge by hitting the A and B buttons simultaneously. Grappling is simple as is grabbings items and throwing throwing them. It’s a workout though, so you might be able to count it as working out on your Wii Fit. The whip works really well in combat and out, and adds depth to the game. Sometimes the whip motion icon would appear and not work and I had to move to the right spot, but this tended to be a nuisance, but didn’t break anything.

Some issues I did have were in the non-combat areas. Walking on ledges can be a bit tricky around edges. You can only move along the edge by pressing the control stick in one direction, normally in the direction of the bulk of the ledge, so if the ledge goes left, but there’s a little bit at the beginning that does towards the player, you must press left the whole way. It’s a little confusing, but you can get used to it. Other times I’d fall when hanging on ledges due to this issue. Another problem was things didn’t always work the same. In some scenes you’d shake the remotes to run and dodge falling things (normally the whole temple, of course), but a few times you’d just run like normal. I’d expect the shaking and get squished. Other times an A icon shows up and you must press it to survive a fall or dodge, but once or twice I didn’t get a lot of warning.

The checkpoint system is a good plus to this game. Normally I hate checkpoints systems, but in this case, it’s not bad. A few times I felt they took me back too far, but catching back up was always fairly quick. The game is really a set of scenes as opposed to a free form map. It didn’t feel constricting though, because it told a linear story and each scene takes the story further.

The story itself isn’t either a high or a low point. It’s not terrible, but it’s not fantastic. It’s contrived, and predictable, but it feels like a classic Indiana Jones story, something like the first three films. At two points guns stop working for nor apparent reason, and in one case works just fine a few minutes later (never mind I can’t pull a gun in the brawl scenes, but, hey, most gun fights and brawling is fun, so I wont pick at that). The characters all make sense and all add to the plot of the story. Sufficed to say, I liked it more than the fourth movie, but I’ll need a separate post to get into that.

Many of the little things added to the Indy feel of the movie. The character looks like Indy (as best as the Wii can manage at least), and sounds like him, even thought Harrison Ford doesn’t do the voice acting. I really wasn’t sure if he had or not until the credits rolled at the end. The motion of the character was correct too. When running fast and stopping suddenly, I can’t exactly explain it, but every time I thought it looked right out of one of the movies. Even the combat felt correct, shoving enemies into tables, snagging them with the whip and beating them senseless.  There are of course some car chase scenes with gun fights too.

There were a few bugs I ran across. Once I defeated everyone in a gun fight, the game didn’t move to the next scene, and a few times I ‘fell to my death’ when there was no reason whatsoever that I shouldn’t have grabbed on to the ledge. This happened once when I started to move a big object, but decided to check out somewhere else first, and the camera didn’t properly swap to normal and got all skewed to bad angles.

The camera normally worked good, but I had a few times I got totally blocked from seeing a fight. I figured that should not happen any more, but, it did. Another thing that shouldn’t exist in video games this century is the inability to skip cut scenes and training bits (at least on first play through).

The first training section was actually kind of annoying. I looked at the moves on the in game tutorial (which is really only a list of the moves to use), so I felt ready to play. I started and walked around a bit, solved a puzzle, and when that first Nazi showed up, I was ready to fight! But I couldn’t, because I had to listen to Indy explain how to fight. I wish that was in a real tutorial separate from the game. It’s well done, but I didn’t like where they put it. I hope I can skip it next time I play.

But, you may ask, there are so many problems, you’ll play it again? I will! There are many things to unlock, different game play modes, a Han Solo skin, but above all that, I want to try on Hard mode, and above that even, I really had fun playing, despite all the problems. I’m also looking forward to the co-op story mode. Apparently it has a separate story from the single player mode.

Overall, I enjoyed this game. If you like Indiana Jones and can be forgiving of a not quite ready game (normally I’m not, not this much at least), I recommend you get this game.