Citadels

It's Heather,

           I wanted to give a quick review of one of my favorite games.

Citadels is one of my top 5 favorite games! It can play 2-8 players, but is more exciting with at least 4. Its 10" x 4" box makes it seem less superior than other games, but the constant change of characters each round gives it excitement. Each player is the leader of a city and seeks to increase its prosperity by building new districts.  

Citadels is broken up into rounds. Each round consists of 4 steps.

     The 1st step: Take the 8 basic character cards and remove a certain number depending on how many people are playing. This makes it challenging to get the character you need each round.

     

      The 2nd step: The player who holds the crown always picks their character 1st. So if you want to pick 1st, you need to pick the King. Then play continues clockwise. There are 8 basic characters and 10 bonus characters. The basic characters are assassin, thief, magician, King, bishop, merchant, architect, and warlord. Each character allows you to do something different.

            Examples: the assassin can kill someone for that round, the thief can steal $ from one character each round, and the architect lets you build up to 3 districts. 

     The 3rd step: each player takes their turn. Each character takes their turn in order of the character's number. Example: Assassin is #1. They call out a character or its number to kill them that round. On your turn, you can take an action and build a district. For your action you either take 2 gold or draw 2 district cards and pick one to keep. To build a district you need money. If you don't have money, you don't build. The cost of each district equals its point value for the end of the game.

     The 4th step: end of round. Everyone returns their characters to the pile, they are shuffled and a new round begins.

Once someone has built their 8th district, the game ends. Players count their points and the one with the most points wins!

This is one of my favorite games because it is easy to learn and teach, but it still has a ton of variety and keeps my interest. I like how you can be a different character each round but it is not guarenteed that the character you want will always be available.

Everyone that we have played with seems to like this game. Gamers and non-gamers alike.

For more board game information, visit Michael's Boardgamegeek profile: http://boardgamegeek.com/user/spikemike01