The Thief Robbed The King In The Citadel

Day 52 - Citadels
Designed by Bruno Faidutti

What does an assassin, thief, magician, king, bishop, merchant, architect, and warlord have in common? They can all be found in the charming game of Citadels. Citadels is a really fun card game for 2 to 7 players (8 players with The Dark City Expansion - the 3rd edition from Fantasy Flight games includes this expansion). If you have been following my blogs, you know that I am a huge fan of games that can play with a wide range of people - Citadels definitely fits that description. I play this game quite a bit with large friend gatherings and also 2 player games with The Wife (tonight, The Wife won 34 to 30).

The object of the game is to build the most majestic city you can earning you the most points at the end of the game. District cards are shuffled and each player starts with 4 cards and more can be drawn if one so chooses on their subsequent turns. These district cards will make up your city when you spend the required gold to build it into your city (build it and hope the warlords don't come). You can always build cheep districts, but this won't help your city necessarily gain the prestige you are looking for. You can only build one of each type of district card (unless you have a special card saying otherwise). Also, each district card has an associated color on them (gold, green, blue, red, and purple) and you gain bonus points at the end of the game if your city has at least one of each.

There are 8 different character cards (mentioned at the very beginning of this blog) and each has a special ability associated with them. These cards also determine the order of play. The current king keeps things in order and calls out the different cards in order (they are also numbered to make this easy - the list above has them in sequential order as well). At the beginning of each round, players take turns secretly picking roles (the king picks first and then clockwise). The game changes a bit during this part of the game according to how many players you are playing with (sometimes you are randomly placing role cards face down, some are face up out of play etc) and it is designed such to ensure that there is some guess work to what other players have chosen to be.

Players collect gold, build district cards, and use their character's special ability to gain victory. The game ends when a player builds his eighth district card (game continues to the end of the current round, and the player who triggered the game ending gets 4 bonus points). Most of your points at the end of the game come from the value of the district cards in your city. There are also some additional bonus points to be incorporated. The game is really a lot of fun and is really different each time you play (the expansion adds even more versatility to the game). I think just about everyone could enjoy this game and that is How Lou Sees It.