Review Details

Citadels Card Game

Product Rating:

Product Review (submitted on December 9, 2008):

Citadels was one of the first games I purchased when I got into board games and I still love playing it. The objective of the game is to build 8 districts in your city. Once a player has built 8 district, play continues until the end of that round and then ends. Each district card is worth a different amount, which is how much a player must pay to build it and also how much it is worth at the end of the game. The player with the highest score at the end of the game is the winner, with their score being the total worth of their buildings plus any bonuses, such as being the first to build 8 districts, just having 8 district, and having a district of each colour.

There are role cards that spice things up significantly. Aside from granting players special abilities for that round, the role cards also determine the turn order of that round. At the start of each round a certain number of cards are "burned." That is, they are randomly discarded from the role deck. The number of cards discarded face up and face down are determined by the number of players in the game. The player with the crown token, acquired by obtaining the King card in a previous round or by being the oldest player at the start of the game, gets to select his/her role card first before passing the remaining cards to the next player.

Also included with Citadels is the Dark City expansion, which includes 9 new role cards that can be combined in various ways with the existing role cards, and many new district cards with special abilities. The expansion is only meant to be partially used with the base game. That is, up to 2 new role cards and 4 new district cards are recommended to be added to the base game. This allows for a lot of interesting combinations and variability.

The cards for Citadel are of extremely high quality and can withstand wear and tear over many replays, which the game will surely get. The coin tokens included with the game are small plastic pieces, but are easily replaced with anything, such as dice or poker chips. There is also a wooden crown token that is often cut poorly, but usually it is not difficult to keep track of who is the king.

Overall, the game is amazing. The best part is that it can accommodate up to 8 players with the expansion. The game is fairly easy to learn, though it may take a few games for people to fully understand it. There is plenty of strategy and bluffing involved, keeping the game interesting, especially with new people. I highly recommend this game.