Episode 225: The Castles of Tuscany

In this 2 to 4 player game designed by Stefan Feld players strive to build the best region in all of Renaissance era Italy. However, in typical Feld fashion that theme doesn’t matter at all. The game consists of a circular scoring board with 2 tracks, an individual play area with a player board and 3 panels of multi-colored hex spaces representing your kingdom. On a players turn you can pick up a hex tile representing different types of locations like farms, monasteries and of course castles. You can also draw cards into your hand which corresponds to those hex tiles. Finally, you can place a hex on your board by playing matching cards, two of the hex tile color you’re placing or two matching pairs of any non-matching color. The tiles offer different bonuses and score differing amounts of VP depending on how large of a region you fill in. Regions (collections matching color hexes) range in size from 1 to 3 hexes. When a hex is taken from the general supply, players replace it with one from the three stacks on their player board. When a stack of chits runs out that triggers the end of the round. The green track which is round scoring, is added to the red track score which is end game scoring. Neither track is reset. So your round score compounds each round. After three rounds the highest score wins. Let’s head back to the studio and find out if this Feld is full of fun or a real Stefan Failed.