THE CASTLES OF BURGUNDY
Designer: Stefan Feld | Publisher: Ravensburger
REPLAYED
Ravensburger's recent makeover of Stefan Feld's game of dice rolling and duchy-building provides the perfect excuse to either discover or revisit a Euro classic. Lush forests replace beige-bland backdrops on the player boards, and it has a tidier central board which better conveys the bustle and hustle of its 15th-century medieval trading elements. It also folds in all the various expansions created for the game since its 2011 debut, including new duchies, new buildings and trade routes, plus the solo and team-game variations.
But even without all these welcome bells and whistles, The Castles of Burgundy would still stand tall as an exemplar of what makes an engrossing Eurogame experience. Each turn is swift and simple in essence, but gives you a wide breadth of options that makes it a pleasantly thinky decision-making exercise. Feld gives you plenty of easyto-discern short-term goals that keep analysis paralysis to a blissful minimum, while letting the long-term aims seep through gently as you play, enabling you to strategise organically, without having to tax your brain-power too intensely.