Got it yesterday and started playing last night for the first time (the GF & I usually set out a game and play it over the course of a few days as we find time to sit & play a round or two). So far we've both fallen in love with it! Were surprised at the amount of strategy involved. Obviously, setting room price is a big factor but it also became apparent that managing your money was pretty important as well; if you ended your turn with little/no money then your opponent will set their most desirable room at the lowest price because you can't buy anything. You have to think a couple of moves ahead at all times. Strangely enough we did get into the design of the castles. If you have half a brain you'll imagine the castle your building and what it might be like to walk through it. It's an amazing game.

Another superb review. Thanks for all your efforts, Tom. You've been my go-to reviewer for some time and I should provide thanks to you far more often. Nice to support another Florida gamer.

Amazing review, you explain your biases perfectly and knew that we wanted a comparison. The gameplay looks super fun too.

I agree that the castle building aspect of this game is the best part. The rooms are interesting and inventive and it's fun to figure out how to piece them together. I also like the unique game mechanic of the rotating "Master Builder" role to get paid. However, I felt the game lacked "madness". For a game with "Mad King" in the title, I expected that there would be more random twists and turns. I expected I would have to fulfill strange requests and that those requests would constantly be changing based on the royal whim. I think adding this would take this game from good to great and improve replayability.

Thank you Tom - I have watched many of your reviews and you are one of my favourite reviewers. Much appreciated :-)

If you were to recommend getting either this or suburbia, which would you recommend?

As a beta tester of this game, I have to say this game is A) Great Looking, and B) Fun as hell to play. There isn't direct player interaction but you certainly can effect other players choices. If I had to choose between this and suberbia I would choose this one, thankfully we don't have to choose, you can have BOTH! :D A great game and I'd highly recommend it! #MadKingLudwig #beziergames

I think for me theme appeal: 1) Castles of MKL 2) Robots on the Line 3) Suburbia, but gameplay: 1) Tie albeit very different games- Suburbia, Robots on the Line 2)Castles of MKL. I'd like to build a castle, but I want a building game to be mostly focused on the building, not arbitrary or complicated scoring. I'm a SimCity 2000 guy, for reference. hah

This is a great game. Just play it today and the four go for very diferent strategys, what make it more fun and competitive.

Thanx for the review ! Very helpful. Definitely picking this one up very very soon.

We just played this one over the weekend at Dragon Con. It confused us at first but once we understood the scoring we all really loved it.

If you like city building style games you should check out In Between Two Cities. Very fun and quick game.

Thanks for the review! No Mad King t-shirt for this review? I'm a huge fan of Suburbia, very excited to try this out. The Master Building mechanic of pricing the rooms at the beginning is great.

Thank you for this review! I was really looking forward to this one!!

This game lists itself as a possible single player game. I wished you would of addressed how it plays best (number of players) and how you can play it by yourself. Otherwise a good review.

Just bought this game. Looking forward to playing it.

I know it's not a new review, I've played the game once but have just bought it, it was quite distracting though through the video there was a tapping /clicking noise through the review.

Hooray! You lost the horrible Facebook robot devil music at the end!

bracing for the season of 'Out of Stock'

This sounds like a really fun game. It might have to be my next purchase.

Ok, so we don't get why you remove rooms for fewer players. Well, we GET it but...mechanically, it's just not necessary. In fact, it can be a downright game killer. Example, We randomly drew Food from the king's requirements and...call it bad luck...ended up removing just about every food room in the beginning (we only found one the entire game). We also ended up removing most of the corridor rooms (again, bad luck). Play with all the rooms and corridors/stairs! But do only use the suggested number of room cards (11 per player). In this way you'll still only play the same game, length wise, but not get screwed by having eliminated needed rooms.

How is this game for 2 players?

Looks great! The system reminds me of Vegas Showdown.

The game ends at the end of the round that the draw pile empties? That pile doesn't look too big. You are drawing 7, or maybe just 4 to fill empty spaces, cards each round. It looks like game would only last three or four rounds.

Does every player build their own castle or do all build at one castle?

This video makes me want to play Master Builder

got this game for a comrade who loves this kind of thing. It was pretty fun.

Would you say this or suburbia is an easier game to teach and play?

I am so conflicted about this game. On one hand, it looks fantastic, but Suburbia is already a very solid game (as Tom said) and I'm not sure I need another game that shares so many characteristics with it. However, this game seems to have fixed (maybe) the only problem I had with Suburbia, which was if you don't focus on money first, you will probably spend half the game in crippling debt as other players fly ahead of you (this is especially the case for new players). The whole Master Builder mechanism is a fantastic design choice that lets all players make money based on their own gauge of each other's desires. Awesome. Definitely a try before you buy for me.

What is that plastic thing on top of Eldritch Horror on the game shelf??

I'll buy this because I'll never care about winning, just about building the castle I can't build in real life. Does that mean that SUBURBIA = SIMCITY ; MAD CASTLES = THE SIMS ?

Okay so this game looks REALLY cool, but... is it just me, or does it seem that - beyond how you place tiles to price them accordingly as the master builder - there's virtually NO actual player interaction throughout the game? I'm a bit afraid that the game might end up just being four-five people sitting around a table building their own castles, and then you count it up at the end and one is the winner, without the other players really having all that much they can do about it. ... Or is that just me?

you pay to the Master Bator?

I'm pretty sure I read him being mad was something his jerkbag relatives and ministers came up with to get him off the throne. Dude just loved swanky castles and, let's be fair, who doesn't?

Jokes about classical musicians on shrooms in a board game review. Every day is an adventure.

PANAMAX!!!

you dropping all the stuff on the ground with a complete lack of organization kills me every time, and not in a good way

Saddest game I've ever seen.