The Mad King returns to exam his Castles

Castles of Mad King Ludwig proved itself no passing fad in 2017 – 121 people came out to play this year in 191 starts compared to 119 in 194 starts last year. As with previous years, the field was intensely tight: of the 16 players who advanced to the semifinals, 11 were double winners.

The semis proved to be a true qualifier – every table was filled with those whose names show up regularly in other Euro tournaments. The largest margin of victory in the semifinals was Nick Henning over Eric Wrobel by a mere eight points with Nick Page and Greg Ziemba also on the table. At Table 1, Robert Drozd had to beat two-thirds of the Magic Men team, Randy Buehler and Sceadeau D’Tela, along with Andrew Drummond to qualify; his score of 122 over Randy’s 118 gave Randy a 6th place. At Table 2, Sky Roy beat out a murderer’s row of Steve LeWinter, Keith Dent, and Jon Senn to take his place at the final table. At Table 3 David Borton and Anni Foasberg managed to tie 130-130 over Duncan MacGregor and Dylan Quintara. Anni took 5th place and David got the finals seat at the cost of having to deal with the worst tiebreaker in any game at WBC (comparing total castle size).

At the finals table, David Borton drew first seat, followed by Nick Henning, Robert Drozd, and Sky Roy. The four King’s Favor tiles were Downstairs size, number of Downstairs rooms, number of Food rooms, and number of Round rooms.

With two King’s Favors around downstairs rooms, stairs went quick – Nick and David grabbed one set on the first round, and a downstairs room each on the second round to complete their stairs and grab another stairs as a bonus. Sky grabbed a Round 2 stairs, and on Round 3 Nick finished his foyer to grab the sixth and last staircase, leaving Robert out of the downstairs market.

Robert focused instead on gardens, buying bargains early and then using the cash he built up from the gardens to buy high-priced food and utility rooms later. Sky focused on sleeping rooms to pull the tiles he needed for his card bonuses, but being behind bargain-hunter and double-mover Robert meant his cash flow became an issue, and he ended up mid-game having to take a turn to draw cash. This was followed by his master builder round where the others only paid him 7000, and he spent the rest of the game trying to get his money situation back to where he could make good moves.

Meanwhile, Nick tried to focus on living rooms and downstairs rooms, but ran headlong into David, who was collecting downstairs rooms and activity rooms. Unfortunately, with David to Nick’s right, Nick mostly had to be satisfied with what David left, and it often wasn’t what Nick wanted.

In the end, David Borton was able to play the table best, keeping his money flow strong and effectively blocking Nick’s potential plays. He pulled two normally weak bonus cards – bonuses for hallways and corridor-type rooms – but turned those to his advantage by buying hallways and completing stairs for free hallways when there weren’t good opportunities on the board. In the end, his solid and consistent play gave him the final win for a well-deserved Castles of Mad King Ludwig shield.

Special thanks to Greg Crowe for being the best Assistant GM I could ever hope for; to Greg Ziemba for helping out and offering to be an AGM for next year; to Duncan MacGregor for helping out at the finals and with getting records together for submission; and to Tom Bissa, who saw I was thirsty at the demo and got me a soda, because he’s a good guy.