The White Castle

• Designers: Shei S & Isra C
• Publisher: DEVIR
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 12+
• Time: 80 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

From the publisher:

The heron flies over the Himeji sky while the Daimyo, from the top of the castle, watches his servants move. Gardeners tend the pond, where the koi carp live, warriors stand guard on the walls, and courtiers crowd the gates, pining for an audience that brings them closer to the innermost circles of the court. When night falls, the lanterns are lit and the workers return to their clan.

In The White Castle, players will control one of these clans in order to score more victory points than the rest. To do so, they must amass influence in the court, manage resources boldly, and place their workers in the right place at the right time. [In this game, you will] explore the most imposing fortress in modern Japan, Himeji Castle, where the banner of the Sakai clan flies under the orders of Daimio Sakai Tadakiyo.

The White Castle is a Euro type game with mechanics of resource management, worker placement and dice placement to carry out actions. During the game, over three rounds, players will send members of their clan to tend the gardens, defend the castle or progress up the social ladder of the nobility. At the end of the match, these will award players victory points in a variety of ways.

To set up the game, place the board on the table – you can see the three level castle in the middle surrounded by other features.  Shuffle the appropriate decks of cards and place 1 grey Daimyo card, 2 blue Diplomat cards and 3 yellow Steward cards in the castle.  Also put out 2 Garden cards and 4 Yard tiles in their places. Colored die tiles are placed next to all of the actions in an area, taking care to make sure each area has at least two different colors shown.  

Time markers are placed on the Passage of Time track; there are four sections here, each representing a season.  Note that in order to move into the next season, you have to pay a cost in Daimyo seals as shown on the track.  Each player also puts a marker near the start of the Clan Points track.

Roll the dice of the three colors (5 dice in a 4p game) and then place them in ascending order from left to right on the matching color bridge.  Each player gets a personal board with all 15 wooden clan pieces in the right spots. The 3 resource cubes are put on their tracks on the 0 space – gray iron, yellow food, white mother-of-pearl.  Player markers are stacked on the turn order track.  A market of starting Resource and Action cards is made so that there are N+1 pairs of cards.

The game will be played over 3 rounds, and in each of those three rounds, players will get 3 turns each.  In each turn, a player will take a valid die from a Bridge and place it on an area with a die symbol and then apply the associated action.  Dice can be taken from any of the three bridges, but you must take from the very left or right of the line; that is the current highest or lowest number of that color.  If you choose the left die, you will get a Lantern bonus.  When you place it on an action space, if the die is higher than the number shown, you gain coins equal to the difference.  If the die is lower than the number shown, you must pay the difference.  Further, on the main board, you can stack a die on top of a previously placed die – again getting/paying coins for the difference.  There is a maximum of 2-high on the stacking.

There are four main areas where you can play a die:

• Inside the castle – on the bottom two floors, you’ll find areas to place dice.  Each room has 2 or 3 possible actions, each with a colored tile next to it. When you place a die in a room, you can take any actions which match the color of your die, and you can do them in any order
• Outside the walls – The three main actions (Warrior, Gardener and Courtier) are found here in a row with dice spaces between them.  When you place a die, you can take either of the two actions found directly adjacent to the dice space you placed in.
• The Well – This space is always valued at 1, and there is no limit to the number of dice that can be placed here.  
• The personal domains – On your player board, you’ll see one space for each die color: Coral = Courtiers, Black = Gardeners, White = Warriors. When you place a die, you will gain any visible bonuses (which have been revealed by placing wooden figures from that row) and then you can also take the action shown in right of that row on your action card.

So now let’s talk about those three main actions:

• Warrior –  you take the leftmost available warrior from your board and place him in one of the training yards. The cost, in Iron, depends on which yard you place it in.  When placed, you then take any action(s) shown on tile(s) in that yard.
• Gardener – take the leftmost available Gardener and place it on any Garden card that doesn’t already have one of your gardeners. Pay a cost in food shows on the Garden card then take the action shown on that card
• Courtier – take up to 2 actions: A] pay 2 coins and place the leftmost courtier from your board at the Castle Gates (bottom of the board), B] Pay 2 or 5 mother-of-pearl to move a Courtier up 1 or 2 levels in the castle. If you end on level 1 or 2, take the card from the castle room where you stop movement and place it on your personal board so that it becomes your new action card. You also get a bonus of any light-background colored action on that card  Your previous action card is flipped over and added to your Lantern bonus area.  Deal a new card out to the castle room where you are.  If you make it to the Daimyo’s room, take a Lantern bonus and then place your Courtier in one of the three bonus places if available.  Otherwise just stand in the room like the slowpoke Courtier you are.

OK, so what is this Lantern Bonus – at the bottom of your player board is your Lantern area.  At the start of the game, you start with a single icon here.  As you gain more cards, your Lantern bonus also grows; and each time you get the bonus, you can take all the visible actions here in any order you choose.

After three turns have been played, the round ends.  There will be three dice left on the Bridges.  First, set the turn order.  The player who is furthest on the Passage of Time track goes first; rearrange the turn order markers appropriately.  Now, you activate the gardens, if there is at least one die left on a particular bridge, all of the Gardener tokens directly beneath it are activated and they get to perform the action of the space they are on.  When this is done, collect all the dice, reroll them and place them on the bridges to start the next round.

If you are at the end of the third round, the game ends. After setting the turn order, move to final scoring.  In addition to the points earned through the run of play, score:

• 1 Clan Point per 5 coins/Daimyo seals
• 0-2 Clan Points based on remaining resources in each type
• 0-15 Clan Points based on final position on the Passage of Time track
• Courtiers score 0/1/3/6/10 points based on how far they have progressed up the Castle
• Warriors in yards have a base value which is multiplied by the number of Courtiers in the Castle
• Gardeners score points as shown on the bottom of each card they are on

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of going earlier in turn order as set by the final round.

My thoughts on the game

The White Castle is a very tight game where every action has a large impact on your overall performance.  You essentially only get 9 turns each game, so you want to try to do something useful with each and every one – and let me tell you, that’s not an easy task!   In this game, all of the major mechanisms intertwine in a way that as you progress in one area, you gain some benefits towards the other actions – but of course, those actions require different resources than what you were collecting in the first place!

The player board and the wooden figures exemplify this intertwining.  As you place more gardeners, you will open production spaces for iron – the resource used to place warriors.  And as you place warriors, you will make more mother-of-pearl, which is what you need to place Courtiers.  

The board is pretty, but quite busy. There are a lot of things on the board, many of which change (cards, chits, etc).  All the information is there, but man, it can be hard to find.  The icons are at least consistent, and they are helpfully summarized on the back page of the rules – so it’s easy to look up anything that isn’t immediately evident.  I feel like this sort of board is a DEVIR want – it reminds me a lot of the Bitoku board which also had lots and lots of spaces, icons and beautiful background art.  (3 Ring Circus is another recent release which has a busy board, but not quite as visually confusing as this one.)

Ergonomically, everything works, but the busy background art does sometimes make it hard to pick out the actual game details that you need to play the game correctly.  Also, while beautiful, we have had some gamers confused on the garden cards – there really should be a line on the medial edges of the cards to make it clear that there are two separate action spots under each bridge, not just one large one – if that is in fact the case (and it is, confirmed by one of the designers); the player aid shows an icon which makes me think that maybe you’re supposed to get both halves of the garden area?  I also wish the Courtier action reminded you that you got to do two actions as we missed that in our first game.  Yes, I must have misread the rules, but the way in which we interpreted the player aid didn’t help us figure it out.  Other OG writers have said they weren’t bothered by this, but I make mention here if nothing else to dispel possible confusion from anyone who reads this.

The rules are dense, and like a few other Devir games, in an organization that confuses me.  The problem may not be the rules, as I’ve discussed the game with other friends, and only some had the same level of confusion as I did.   In our first game, we missed out on an important rule – you get a lantern bonus each time you take the lowest numbered die of a color.  Again, when you only have 9 turns, getting a lantern bonus is almost like getting a free action once you get two or three cards there.  

So obviously our first game didn’t feel like it had enough actions.  We also missed the fact that you get to do two actions for each Courtier icon.  I would say that sometimes if everyone misses a rule (especially if a small one), it’s not a big deal as everyone might be equally disadvantaged – but here, with the paucity of actions, you really need/want to get every last drop of activity from your turn.  Playing the game again with the right rules really opened things up – as you would expect it to do.  But, I mention it here because we missed two pretty important rules in that first game.  Don’t make the same mistakes as I did!

For me, in White Castle, the big challenge here is trying to set up an engine; though I wouldn’t go as far as calling this an engine building game…  You want to get a steady set of resource production / passage of time movement in your Lantern area.  Hopefully you’ll get to take advantage of this a few times over the course of a game.   Otherwise, you’ll need to scan the board to see where you can chain actions together.  The obvious place is Level 1 of the castle; if there is a room that has two actions with the same color die; then when you place that color die there – you can take both actions in either order.  The actual action selections will likely change as players move courtiers up the castle and collect cards for their Lantern bonus areas; but finding those places where you can do both is key.

Later in the game, when you are planning to place a warrior, at least two of the yards will grant an extra action – so plan carefully to make sure you have enough resources to successfully perform whatever action you’ll get as a result of placement.

When you’re done playing The White Castle, your brain will likely be a bit tired as there is a bunch of thinking going on here as you have so many different things to think about and such a set of actions to try to chain together in order to maximize your actions.  The game is a pretty intense 60-90 minutes, and with the right rules, a very tense puzzle that makes you think every step of the way.

Provisional rating: I like it.  (I am waffling here because I maybe haven’t played it enough with the right rules to know what I really think about it, but I have been thinking a lot about the game and how to play it – and that’s a sure sign of a game I like).  

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Dan B. (2 plays): I think the game is decent, and trying to maximize the impact of your limited number of actions is an interesting puzzle. However, it is a bit overwrought for the effect – I am not convinced the extra complexity in this vs. something like The Red Cathedral really adds enough interest to be worth it. However, it’s still not that complex in an absolute sense and is certainly worth trying. (And for the record, no one I played with had any issue with the courtier action.)

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale (provisional), John P, Dan B.
• Neutral.
• Not for me…