The Castles of Tuscany

Review

Fractal toscana faction

placement for revenues

One is justified to call 2020 the „Year of Feld Festival“ - first, there was the revised new edition of „Burgen von Burgund“, and the beginning of the „City Collection“, which will offer playful city trips, for the time being to Amsterdam (previously Macao) and Hamburg (previously Brügge) – and, as the second novelty of the year, the somewhat more complex Bonfire.

With The Castles of Tuscany, the year goes full circle and, after all, some elements from the now called Castles of Burgundy are unmistakably present. Again, we are asked - beginning at the respective starting castle - to fill our colorful and at the start untouched landscape with hexagonal tiles of the same colors, you could also say seal them, as completely as possible. This, of course, with the goal of efficiently optimizing the yield of victory points, and we also want to be ahead of our fellow players for one or the other reward for completely filled or resolved color regions.

Furthermore, there is a distinct revenue of effect for the placement of each tile - which stimulates the reward center in your brain and very positively contributes to the basically constructive flair of the game. Especially interesting is the selection of Upgrade Tiles, up to three times and always from five options, which will improve your future revenues. Not so positive is the feeling when there is a tile display that does in now way correspond to your intentions or a rather unlucky drawing of cards - those are used to „pay” for tile placement.

New are gendered victory point/”esses”!? Oh yes, besides the well-known and proven green (or male) victory points track there is a red track (a female one). At the each of each of the three, relatively short stages of the game the accumulated green victory points are added to the red victory point(“esses”), with the effect that early victory points are more apt to result in victory, as they count threefold for the final result, those of the second stage still count double.

In case of a rather unlucky development this can mean a too strong beginning, but the duration of a game is short enough to live with that. Besides the wanting-to-be-faster in filling your own board, the multiple reaping of victory points give of a feeling of a dynamic race. Other interaction and rules used - with only three action options the game offers a remarkable range of tactical decisions - are rather scarce, albeit with some minor questions remaining unanswered by the instructions.

The Castles of Tuscany is an astonishingly quick, tactical tile placement game with a race feeling and puzzle elements for experts, provided they do not take exception at the absolutely relevant element of chance, or for players that relish the rather abstract components and flair of the game.

Harald Schatzl

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 60+

Designer: Stefan Feld

Artist: Antje Stephan, Claus Stephan

Price: ca. 47 Euro

Publisher: alea / Ravensburger 2020

Web: www.ravensburger.de

Genre: Tile placement, form areas

Users: For experts

Special: 1 player

Special: 2 players

Special: Many players

Version: multi

Rules: de en es fr it

In-game text: no

Comments:

Rather abstract flair & components

Few rules

Highly tactical, with a race atmosphere

Compares to:

Burgen von Burgund

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 5

Harald Schatzl:

A quick, tactical placement game with few rules and limited interaction, but with a notable element of chance, rather abstract despite the topic

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0