Deserved deluxification for a masterpiece

🏰 Castles of Burgundy is one of my favorite games, and definitely the best game by Stefan Feld, so I am happy it finally got a version it deserved. 🥰 I am talking about the Special Edition by Awaken Realms here, though the price is definitely a bit too high and the size of the box and how you can still barely fit the game into it is worth a rant on its own… 😶 But I’m here to hype, because the presentation is really top tier - and so are the additions to the gameplay which we should take a closer look at! 🔍

There are some smaller things like new hex tiles for your Duchy: e.g. the White Castle 🏯 building that gives you an action with the value of the white die; the Crane 🏗️ that copies any beige tile’s ability; or the Geese 🦢 pasture that acts as a wild for scoring points from animals. 

There are bigger additions too like the Trade Routes: 📦 goods you sell get placed on these tiles and if the value of the good matches the value of the spot, you get bonuses. There are also new player boards where you compete for connecting edges for extra points. Then new modes like solo or team mode or the automa called Chateauma 🤖 that can be added into games. 

The best one has to be the Vineyards 🍇 expansion. You get a little board extension showing a hillside for planting grapes. During the game there are new actions: you can either buy a double-hex vineyard tile (which takes up space in your storage just like two normal hexes), or place down the vineyard tile onto your hillside, activating the two covered up bonuses. As you cover up the hillsides you also get scoring tokens - you want to score big contiguous areas in the tokens’ color.

I was afraid that new actions and new things to do would take some of the focus of the game away, but the bonuses you get make up for the lost actions. In fact it feels like you can do even more combos than normally thanks to them, so it is an awesome addition! 😁🍷

Last but not least, I love the bags for randomly pulling out tiles. Of course bags were already a beloved upgrade before, but the official bags of this edition are just awesome! 🤩