Castle is a type of Kingdom card from Empires. It is a Split pile with 8 differently-named unique Castles; when Castles are selected as a Kingdom card for a game, they are ordered in ascending order of cost in a single Supply pile, of which only the top card can be gained at any given time, though you may look through the pile to see which Castles are next. The Castles are all Alt-VP cards, though some also fit into other card categories as well.
Castles cost from to in ascending order.
Every Castle is a Victory–Castle card, though 3 have an additional type as well. They are all worth some amount of , and most have different abilities as well.
List of Castles
In games with more than 2 players, an extra copy of 4 of the Castles (Humble, Small, Opulent, King’s) are added to the pile, still in ascending order of cost.
FAQ
See individual Castle pages.
Strategy
Trivia
In other languages
Preview
Looking at the other previews this week, you may have gathered that Empires’ theme is “different paths to victory”. You’ve got
Landmarks that reward different strategies, and more uses for
tokens than ever. But you may have wondered, where are the actual Victory cards? Today I’m previewing eight, though they’re all in the same pile.
Like a split pile, the Castles are sorted by cost, with the cheaper ones on top. In a 2-player game, you use one of each unique Castle card. In a game with more players, there are duplicates of four of them (Humble, Small, Opulent, King’s). I’ll say a quick word about each one.
Secret History
There was an old idea in the file, a pile of Victory cards with different sizes. One day we needed a promo (which became ) and Matt Engel decided to try this out. He made 8 cards for it, including Small Castle and King's Castle, and converting Opulent Castle from an old outtake from
Hinterlands (there a straight action). He also had a vanilla treasure-victory card (
and 1
). I thought it was important to have a cheap one that rewarded you for loading up on them, and made Humble Castle for the first one. Small Castle trashes itself or another Castle, so Crumbling Castle is something nice to trash, and Haunted Castle isn't so bad there either. Sprawling Castle and Grand Castle interact with some of the other cards and are also nice for people not going for Castles.
Mostly the cards didn't change after the second version; they just worked out. There were a couple cards in the Haunted Castle slot. I tried a Castle that shuffled cards from discard into deck, after an old outtake; I tried a one-time
Cursing one (like ). Haunted Castle couldn't work at weird times (such as when gaining it with ) and so ended up saying "on your turn," to be as friendly as possible (still works with Small Castle) while shutting out weirdness.