?????'s Rules

Last Night, we played three different games:
Castles
Domaine ?R*
Domaine

*?????'s Rules

I was the only one who hadn't played castles, so I expected to get buried, but the game is pretty easy to pick up despite the large number of cards that you need to get to know (probably because it isn't THAT important to get to know all of them). Shemp got the first win, but we were all close. I was more successful on my second try, getting a squeaker of a win (thanks to a few helpful moves by my unsuspecting opponents). Overall, I thought it was a good game. Pretty light, but fun and seemingly quite replayable (and both games were really close, so the ending was exciting). I did find the concept strange, though: The game simulates a castle seige, complete with soldiers on the ramparts defending against seige engines. However, the actual gameplay doesn't have much to do with it. Players don't take sides, the outcome of the battle is irrelevant. It's just a story which unfolds as players play their cards. Not a problem, exactly... just strange.

Castles:7

Next up was Domaine. Klaus Teuber, fromt he two games I have played of his, seems to make fun games which also seem somehow arbitrary. I think that this quality came through last night as we accidentally played an entire game using incorrect rules...
err... I should say "????? Rules". We played that:
1: Every player had two moves per turn (should be 1)
2: The deserter simply took a knight from the board (the knight is supposed to be stolen)
3: Cards could continue to be drawn from the chancery after the deck ran out.

I'm pretty sure the were other "modifications", but the bottom line is that even though the game played differently, it wasn't broken. I don't imagine too many games could with