Customers say
Customers find this board game expansion adds more fun to the base game, with well-balanced strategic elements and multiple new rooms. They appreciate its quality, with one customer noting the high-quality pieces, and consider it a great addition to Castles. The design and ease of use receive mixed reactions, with some finding it very nice while others find it ugly, and opinions vary on whether the expansion is necessary.
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Your Sales Price $29.95 - $28.31
A quick rundown of this product’s key features:
Adds 30 new buildings to Castles of Mad King Ludwig
Moats surround your castle, limiting growth but providing a ton of points
Collect Swans for huge endgame points or to trade in during the game for cash
Secret Passages connect rooms, doubling bonuses and removing adjacency penalties
1-4 players, Ages 13 and up
Our Top Reviews
Reviewer: Adam B.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Interesting expansion to a solid game
Review: Nice enhancement to an excellent game. This expansion adds a surrounding castle wall, potentially limiting the space you build in, and extra rooms, each marked with swans, of each of the room sizes. The new rooms are mixed into the existing room tile sets, at ratios determined by the number of players involved. Colored swan tokens, one or two selected at random, are placed onto the rooms as they are put up for sale. Whoever purchases the room gains the associated swan tokens and these tokens may be traded in to gain coins or kept until the end to score more points.Given that the point provided by the swans are based on how many sets of different colored swans you posses (the more colors the progressively more points), the swan tokens can easily determine winners or losers if people don’t pay attention to the sets other players are gathering and simply use the tokens for extra coins.Overall, this varies the dynamics of the original game enough to provide a new approach towards how you play without drastically impacting the balance. Mostly, the best summary would be to say that it gives you more things to think about in an already interesting game.
Reviewer: Heather Garcia
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great addition to the game!
Review: First off, this is an expansion to the original game. My husband and I LOVE this game and play it regularly. After awhile game play can get a bit mundane so expansion options are nice to have. This one comes with quite a few options.We tried playing with all of them the first time and were a bit overwhelmed. So I would recommend using one or maybe at most two expansions when adding to the original game.When we first got it we had a bit of a hard time understanding the directions of how to play some of them. We just had a lot more questions and felt like the instructions didn’t give enough examples or specifics. But we looked it up online and found answers. Just be aware you may need to do that.Great purchase though. And definitely keeps the game fresh.
Reviewer: Romy Cat
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: This expansion adds a lot of fun to the base game
Review: This expansion adds a lot of fun to the base game. The addition to moats makes tile placement more challenging as it limits space within the walls, that is if you are the lucky player who completes the moat. With moat pieces being limited, it becomes a race to see which player can finish their moat first. The swans add a new twist for collecting bonus points at the end of the game or at anytime you can turn them in for money if you are broke. The secret passages and new rooms are fun.The one con is that you are suppose to swap out a certain number of the core rooms and mix in the new rooms with swans. To save time, my family just mixes the new and old rooms together without removing any. We all have enjoy this expansion, and I recommend it to everyone who owns the base game.
Reviewer: maddogdad
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Very nice add on
Review: Very nice add on. I thought the moats would be too limiting, but when the game is played to the correct length there is just enough room inside the moat to fill it and score the max points. The swans really increase the luck factor since the color of the swans is important, but completely random. We really like the original game, and the extra rooms are a nice addition (no pun intended LOL). I like this game because there’s alot to do when it’s not your turn, so you can spend your downtime planning your next move.
Reviewer: Elise D.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Favorite expansion to our favorite game
Review: My husband and I love this game and I was so excited when I found out there was an expansion. Thanks to Amazon.com suggested items!I got this for a great price before the holidays and it was a perfect birthday present for my husband.This game company is our favorite and we will be collecting all their games!Games are easy to set up and easy to learn.Playing time estimates are accurate.Easy to adjust the game for two player or multiple player.Board and pieces are very high quality.Color and design is beautiful – I wish I could really go into the rooms!
Reviewer: J. Summers
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: More Ugly, Boring Artwork From Bezier Games
Review: Fun expansion. Great new rooms and new matching collection component in the swans. I’m sure there’s no need to add that many details, as other reviewers have done so.But the big complaint is that this expansion, like the original Castles, is largely UGLY. I will never understand Bezier Games. They have such beautiful ideas, but the execution is ugly. We’re building Castles! These rooms should be shockingly, overwhelmingly beautiful…the kind of game you can’t stop playing because you want to stare at it all day AND think it’s fun. We played for a week or two, then put them away next to Suburbia…another ugly game by Bezier…in favor of more visually and strategically engaging games. So 3 Stars for ugly execution of a great idea…because after a while it’s just not that much fun to build an ugly castle.
Reviewer: Jessica B.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: If you like Castles you will LOVE it with this expansion.
Review: A must have addition to Castles! We don’t play the original castles anymore unless we are introducing someone new who doesn’t play board games. This expansion adds secret passageways, moats, and swans which improve the gameplay enormously in our opinion. Castles has always been a house favorite, now it’s an indispensible house classic. Adds so much depth and another level of sophistication that makes it endlessly repeatable. Definitely get this!
Reviewer: J. L.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: If you enjoy the base game, you will likely really like this expansion as well!
Review: I bought my husband the Castles of Mad King Ludwig base game as a birthday present, and it ended up being one of our favorite games, as it’s able to be played with just two players (and still be fun!) Almost immediately after realizing how fun the base game is, I purchased the expansion. I was not disappointed at all! It adds lots more fun rooms and a few cool new features that enhance the overall fun of the game. I’d highly recommend this one!
Reviewer: Christopher
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Great expansion for the base game, adds extra stuff to have to consider each turn and fits in nicely with the rest. No complaints all round. Just be prepared that you dont get a box or anything with this, you just get the sheets of cardboard with the punchout pieces and the new instruction sheet.I love the game, so will buy it…lol. But could be a bit cheaper considering you dont physically get a whole heck of a lot for your money.
Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Thank you. Quick shipping and such a fun addition to the game.
Reviewer: Bryce
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: The base game is awesome. This expansion is great in that it adds a bunch of cool extra rooms. The mechanic of most of the additional game-play elements is a bit weak. I like moats, I’m indifferent to swans, and I love the concept of secret passages, but I’ve found them less useful in application.
Reviewer: Hailey
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Super awesome fun game
Price effective as of Apr 07, 2025 00:08:38 UTC
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