Stefan-Feld

The Castles of Burgundy is ranked #17 on BoardGameGeek. It has received over 100,000 ratings and sits alongside Gloomhaven, Brass: Birmingham, and Twilight Imperium in the hobby’s upper echelon. Stefan Feld’s 2011 tile-placement game has earned this reputation - just not on the first play. If you’ve tried it once, the ranking probably baffled you. The original box has the visual appeal of a government form. The tiles are covered in cryptic little symbols you’ll spend half the game decoding. Your first four-player session almost certainly ran two and a half hours and ended with someone quietly wondering what all the fuss is about. ...

There’s a joke in hobbyist board gaming circles: if you can win a game through approximately seventeen different scoring categories and you’re never quite sure which one actually mattered, you’re probably playing a Stefan Feld game. The joke has teeth - but it undersells what Feld actually does. The German designer has been publishing complex Euro games since the mid-2000s, and in that time he’s built one of the most recognisable design signatures in the hobby. Intricate mechanisms, historical European backdrops, dice that actually make decisions interesting, and - yes - multiple overlapping scoring paths that reward players who can hold several plans in their heads at once. ...