The White Castle

 For my birthday recently my son gave a copy of The White Castle, a boardgame which came out last year from Devir (BBG  link).  It's a very pretty game set around Himeji castle where each player is trying to build influence over the course of 3 turns.

Visually it's great with a very pretty board and a range of meeples in the shape af courtiers, gardeners and warriors, as well as some Cranes (the birds, not the building site things) and a rather OTT turn marker in the shape of a Carp.

It's a very Euro style game where you spend the available dice (which sit on some lovely little bridges) to place meeples and, if you've worked out your strategy right, this triggers a number of subsequent actions.  Your meeples can tend the gardens, visit the castle well, courtiers can make their way though the 3 levels of the castle or  warriors can train in the yard.  All of which trigger different subsequent actions.  

If, like my son, you're good at stringing these together and have built your action engine cleverly, the points and resources quickly start to mount up.  If, like me, you've randomly placed things because it seemed like a good idea at the time it may not work so well!  Actually I was ahead for most of the game but he ran away with it in the end of game scoring phase.

It's a neat little game... visually it's great, the mechanics are actually pretty simple and everything is explained by icons on the board itself, and it has a relatively short playing time.  You can only do 1 action per round and there are 3 turns of 6 rounds each, so choices are limited and require some careful thinking. Recommended!