good idea!

It's really hard to imagine they were half-way through designing the game mechanics and then said: "Man these end results look rather weird, let's find a new theme to fit that." and then redesigned everything as castle rooms. But who knows. Maybe that's just what happened

If you visited Neuschwanstein then you were in Germany ;)

touche! It was right at the border wasnt it? :)

+eddieharr close, yeah. I don't recall how close (I was there maybe1987) but definitely far South Bavaria. Such a beautiful place!

and i would bet money he started with the theme of making castles (with no king attached), and once the design led to the creation of crazy nonsensical castles, they decided to add Ludwig as a theme to cover it. BUt only one man can solve the debate! :)

***** I'd love to take that bet. Is it coincidence that there is a mad king known for building crazy castles at exorbitant costs that just so happens to fit a game design where you build crazy castles? Or is it far more likely that it was the inspiration? Maybe Ted was building crazy dungeons at first, but I'm certain that the concept of castles was coupled with good old Ludwig from the get-go. It's the way that you hypothesize that he added "mad" to cover a potential thematic problem that just strikes me as logical run-around. As you say, *nearly* only one man knows, and it doesn't really matter anyway.

Kevin Ryan actually, iirc, you take 3 and keep 2, so they do something similar. and when you get new ones as bonuses, you get to draw 2 and keep one. but still, i've found you're often put into a situation where you don't know if either of the bonus cards you have to choose from will be achievable, so you just have to guess, in 2p

***** Ah, that makes sense! Thanks, Richard! By the way, thanks so much for your videos. You make the hobby more fun for me!

I was wondering if maybe playing with the bonuses revealed when playing 2 player might help balance it out. It doesn't add any detriment to the person getting screwed (them knowing you need circles and there are none doesn't hurt you), but it does make life harder on the lucky person because now you know what they are going for and can make the pricing difficult. Not a complete solve, but helps temper the swinginess. Just a thought.

+Gustav Alfredsson Well, not in all games. You know, there are games with a low, or even inexistant, luck factor involved ( e.g. Caylus). Regarding this Mad Ludwing's Castles board game, I played it once with 3 more players and it was a blast! Love + love it!

Tokikosworld yup, i'll likley be doing one sometime in october :)

+Christos Ekimogloy it's time to play the music, it's time to light the lights... :)

Oh wow. You totally can't unsee that.

yeah, i guess you could increase the length by increasing the number of cards... i can't imagine a downside... :)

***** What about something like this... You could start with a few more cards in the deck (the actual number more to be determined). On each turn, the master builder draws 1 more card than the number of rooms that need to actually be brought out, and discards one (his choice). That way you could go still go through the deck a little faster (to not bog down the game), and have a little more choice as to which size of rooms come out. This could help with the luck of some of the bonuses. Plus, I like the idea of adding 1 or 2 more room tiles to each stack as well.

Horace Watkins cool idea :)

TyphoidBryan I could have stated it better, but my supposition is that the designer started out simply designing a game where you build a castle for a king... a nameless king, because it was all about the gameplay mechanisms and the room types. And he found it to be fun, but also that the castles tended to turn out kind of crazy. So when naming the game, to explain the fact that he'd made a game where nonsensical castles were made, he decided to theme it on Mad King Ludwig, because that made sense.

Funny enough the German name for the game is Die Schlösser des König Ludwig. He actually has the byname "der Märchenkönig" (engl. the fairytale king) for his fairytale like castles. As a matter of fact I have been to all three of his actual castles and while it starts rather magical with Neuschwanstein (which inspired the Disney castle's), it get's weirder (like the grotto that is part of Linderhof which let to the first bavarian electricity plant and the invention of artificial indigo) and then you can visit Herrenchiemsee which heavily inspired by Versailles and the half-finished parts show what massive construction work had to be undertaken to create such a place. Also the bath tub that is basically a small pool and had to be filled with hot water over the course of hours... (or was that at Linderhof?) Another fun fact: Ludwig Koopa is officially named after Ludwig van Beethoven but his hairstyle implies that they actually had Ludwig II in mind.

***** i was worried about that, but it turned out to not be too bad for us. i can see it being much worse with more than 2 though