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Introduction
I and my group have gotten assigned to analyse a Board Game for the course Advanced Game Design.
We had been divided in to play and help each other out with this task.
We got to choose what games to play by either choosing from the schools catalogue of games that were available or we could choose to play a game we had or borrowed from a friend.
We choose the game Citadels and it’s expansion The Dark City.
Citadel
Citadels with the expansion is a turn based card game from 2 to 8 player.
The game with the expansion contains 18 Character Cards numbered 1 to 9. The expansion adds 10 of these cards one new for each number except that it adds two cards numbered 9 that do not exist in the base game.
Before turn one of the game the oldest player becomes the King and receives the Crown, a small yellow marker that serves to show which player is the King at that moment of the game. The king is the person that gets to shuffle the deck and eliminates a few cards randomly depending on how many players there are the eliminated cards can’t be played that turn he also gets to pick from the remaining cards first.
All players choose what Character Cards they want to put in the deck during this game, there can only be one card tagged with each number. Each player gets two gold at the start of the game.
The main game cards are the district cards that are the main objective of the game, and each player receives a number of district cards depending on how many players there are.
These cards exist in five categories Military, Religious, Noble, Trade and Special.
All the categories except Special Districts for have a interaction with the character cards abilities such as if you choose the merchant character card while having some trade districts in play you will receive extra gold for each trade district you have.
But the special districts have their own special ability that don’t have to interact with the character card such as the district card ”Factory” that will make other special district cards cost one less gold.
There are three extra special district cards from the Expansion that can be added to the District Deck.
Stage 1
After the player that is the king have discarded the cards he is free to pick on the remaining cards then he passes the remaining cards over to the next player clockwise.
Then the player will just do this until it is the last player’s time to choose a card.
The last player is allowed to pick up the card that was discarded and placed face down in the beginning.
If there are only two players playing the game then the rules will change, the first player discards a card and proceeds to picks one for themselves, and then the second player does the same thing, and then the first player goes again and picks one and discards one and this repeats for the second player, So if there are only to players you choose 2 character cards.
Stage 2
In this stage the King announces whose turn it is by announcing the numbers from 1 to 9. As an example, some cards are balanced and their ability needs to go in the beginning of the turn such as the Assassin or the Witch whose number is one is played first.
“1 – Assassin – Announce a character you wish to murder. The Murdered character misses his entire turn.”
1* – Witch – After you take an action, announce which character you wish to bewitch, the immediately end your turn.
If your Character card does not state otherwise every player will have turns that begin with taking and action your action can either be to take two gold or look at two district cards then choosing one of them to keep.
After that you choose if you want to build a district card to build one you have to have the correct amount of gold and pay that to be able to play that district card. The cost of each district is displayed on the left side of the card and you are only able to build one district each turn.
Each Character Card has an ability that they are allowed to use at any time during there round.
Then the turn is over the current King will shuffle all the Character cards again and they start over from the Character Card selection phase.
The game ends when one player has built eight districts or seven in the card “Bell tower” has been placed.
After the turn where a player has placed the amount districts needed to end the game you continue the game until it’s time to shuffle the cards again.
You calculate your score by checking how much all your districts cost, if any district gives you extra score, if you were the first to get eight districts or you built eight districts on the last turn you can also get four extra points if you have 4 all categories of districts.
The Good sides of the game
Playing the game with less than four players is a much different experience then playing with four or more players.
The most interesting parts of the game is the mind games that develop also the planning which are present when choosing your character card are one of the best parts of the game because you have to choose cards that no one else will now you choose as well as what is good for you during that turn of the game.
The Bad Parts
The Character card the queen was very hard to play and very redundant when playing more than four players this card gave you three gold if you are seated next to the person who chooses the king card during their turn. This card wasn’t especially good and if you switched out the king card for the emperor card it was very hard to tell who were to choose it and it was almost always correct to choose any other card.
The cards numbered 1 were an easy picking for most players since it was either the witch or the assassin the witch. The assassin just removed a player from that turn of the game and it was not that interesting to play with.
While the witch card only stole the building and the character ability from the character card they choose you could still do some actions during that turn then.
There were also the problem when someone new joined the game and you could tell after just 10 minutes or so they were behind the other players so much that it would be impossible to get back in the race with the other players.
The most interesting mechanic
The game had very simple rules and the most interesting mechanic of this game was the character card choosing stage where the players is choosing characters each round, which is driven by looking at what the other players would be choosing and looking what is left to choose from so that way deciding on what characters the other players would choose, which often results in very interesting mind games.
When choosing what card to pick you had to think of what the others would think you had picked since the witch and the assassin would punish you if you they could figure out what character card you picked.
So you most of the time had to choose a card that isn’t very obvious that you would have picked.
All the character cards have distinctive abilities to choose from and you would have to decide what you were going to do during your turn before picking your character card such as if you needed to build a district you would maybe choose the alchemist card that would mean as long as you could afford to build a district card you did not have to pay to build the district or if you needed cards or gold you could choose the navigator card that would give you four gold or four district cards instead of building.
But by knowing that there is a Witch or an Assassin in play the other players could maybe figure out what character you were going to pick that round so you would have to either chance and still pick the card you would need and hope that the current Witch or Assassin would expect you to not pick the that card because they would rather kill/bewitch another player or that it would be too obvious and they would expect you to play the next best choice instead of taking the risk of being stopped.
Demographic
This game is a game I feel that you could play with any age group since there is no violence or adult themes but it’s still a game that could be interesting for older players so I would say that this game could be played at any age.
I’d say that this game is specifically directed to people who like games where the meta game and the mind games are half of the play, and always try to stay one step before the rest of the players.
Summary
I enjoyed playing this game a lot and I could absolutely see myself playing this game on a weekend with some friends. Since the rules are easy to learn but the intrigue during this game are extremely interesting and fun.
Summory
There are a few things that would need to be fixed about this game thou such as the rules with the expansion was quite fuzzy and hard to decide how to play with the new cards that had no specific rules that correlated perfectly with the main game such as the district card “Hospital” that made it so if the assassin killed you could still do your action but when playing with the witch where you were already allowed to do that the card didn’t do anything without making up your own rule about it.
There were many matches that ended up with people helping each other out even just so they would help to stop the person that was currently in the lead.
 
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