Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Today's review is of the 2018 release, Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig.  For 3-7 players, it takes an hour.

Overview
King Ludwig, a nineteenth century Bavarian monarch, was wild about castles, building many magnificent structures during his reign (though the age of fortification was long past).  In Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig, you and your partners will try and satisfy the mad monarch.

This is a tile placement/drafting game with a twist- each player is responsible for half of two castles (one on either side of him).  No player has their own structure; each are shared.  There are two rounds.  For each, the players take a stack of nine shuffled tiles, choose two, and pass the remainder to the left (round 1) or right (round 2).  Each then places their tiles- one in the castle to their left, one to their right- based on overall placement guidelines (like you must have one side flush with an existing, you can build up, out, or down, based on existing structures, etc.) and discussing with their partner on that side.  Then take your new stack of seven, choose two, and do repeat the process until the stacks are down to one tile each.  Discard this tile and begin round 2, drawing a new stack of nine.

castle in progress; image from here

At the end of that draft, total the score of each castle.  Throughout the game, bonuses are reached once a castle has 3, and then 5, of a given type of room (like dining room, sleeping room, etc.), which increases the castle's point value.  Each room also has a score on the bottom- often for what's surrounding it (like "2 points for every dining room adjacent to it").  A player's score is the lower score of their adjacent castles (if Dave has his left castle as 47, and his right as 58, his score is 47).  Highest score wins!

Review
I like tile placement games, and I enjoyed this one.  There is a lot going on, and it's important to synchronize (so everyone's drafting and placing at the same time) or it gets chaotic.  Sharing castles was a neat twist (though I can't help but think a variant where each has their dedicated structure would also be interesting).  Scoring at the end takes forever, but it's still fun.  And, it goes up to 7 players- unusual and appreciated.

game trays- well designed!  image from here

The art is good, the theme interesting (some room names are deliberately funny), and the storage trays are really well-designed (a rarity, and quite satisfying).  The attention to detail is nice, too- each castle token included in the game represents a different real-life German castle.  Overall, I think this is a good game, well worth a look.

Rating: A