This Ain’t About Burgers – The White Castle Review

Is that movie too old to reference anymore?

I don’t care, but it is the only time I will make a burger joke in this review.

Yes, even though it’s in my Top 50 boardgames of all time, I haven’t actually reviewed The White Castle yet!

This review is to rectify that, though obviously you know it’s going to be a positive review.

The White Castle was published in 2023 by Devir Games. It was designed by Isra C. and Shei S. with artwork by Joan Guardiet (who notably does not have just an initial, and more power to her!). It plays 1-4 players, though I haven’t done the solo mode yet.

Instead of the burger joint, this is about gaining the favour of the Japanese court in some amorphous medieval (or maybe later or earlier?) Japan.

Each player represents a clan who is trying to gain as much influence with the court as possible.

Essentially, you are sending your clan members to tend the Gardens, or to the training ground to become Samurai and defend the castle, or perhaps just as courtiers to enter the castle and gain social status in the court of the Daimyo.

All of this is done with drafting dice, so probably a bit easier than it really was back then.

But not much!

That’s because this game is tight.

Really tight.

Yeah, that.

The whole mechanism of The White Castle is dice drafting, and you only get nine turns in the game (twelve if you’re playing with the expansion, but that adds a bunch more possibilities as well).

Each round, the dice are rolled and placed on their respective bridges in order.

Each player will draft three dice, one each in turn order, for the round.

Thus, nine actions because there are only three rounds!

The trick to this game, and one that I didn’t figure out the first couple of times I played it, is that you have to chain your actions.

There are multiple ways to do that.

You can either place a die in a space that has two actions for that colour (though one of those actions is only going to be getting resources), or you can use the action you do to cause you to get another action…and maybe even that action causes another action!

Those are the turns that feel good.

This is where the tightness of the game comes in, because if you’re not chaining actions on your turn, it almost feels like a disappointment.

But sometimes you have to just spend a die to get resources to build up that next turn sweep where you might get a chance to do all three actions if you time it right.

The dice drafting mechanism is really appealing in this game too.

You can only draft from the right or left ends of a bridge. You can’t take a die in the middle.

If you draft the left-most die (which is going to be lower, and could be very low), then you also get a “Lantern” action, which means gaining the resources attached to your Lantern on your player board (more later)

You then place it on a die space on the board, either gaining money for each pip that is higher than the die (or imprinted die if nobody’s placed there yet) on that space, or paying money for each pip you’re below it.

That means it can be a great way to get money too, which is always pretty hard to get otherwise.

You then take the action(s) on the card in that space corresponding with the colour of die you placed.

So you can’t place a white die in a space where there is no white action.

The available actions depend on the cards showing in the castle, but there is a section in the bottom right where you can do any of the three actions.

As long as the spaces aren’t filled with dice.

What are these three possible actions?

Let’s look at the player board first, as that has all of your people that you will be sending out onto the main board.

The Lantern action I mentioned is at the bottom. In the above picture, I’d get a point (the fan), a food and a Heron movement.

You can place a die on here and do the related action as well as gaining the resources from vacated people, though you can only do each colour once and the value is a six.

So you can never gain money and very likely will be paying to do it.

Those figures, however, are the ones that you will be taking off your board to do the various actions.

In yet another way that chaining works in The White Castle, emptying your board makes your board actions more powerful, getting you more resources in addition to the action related to it.

The Garden action lets you place a gardener in the garden, as long as you can pay the amount of food for the space.

Yet another chain! When you place a gardener, you get to do the action of that Garden space.

In this case, if red has just placed, they can immediately do one of the white actions in the castle (which is a gain resources action).

However, making the ultimate chain, if you had the food to go to the garden next to that space, you can pay 3 yen to then take the Courtier action, which lets you put a courtier in the castle and move them up in status.

Another full action!

Who said there are only nine actions in this game?

I certainly didn’t.

The Courtier action allows you to pay 2 yen to place a courtier on the castle’s doorstep.

Then, you can pay the proper amount of pearl to move one courtier up one (2 pearl) or two (5 pearl) levels.

This is also how you replace the card that’s on your player board, moving it down into your lantern while gaining a new card for actions on your board.

You also get to immediately do one of the white actions (resources) when you take the card.

Chains within chains!!!!

The third action you can do is the Samurai action, which will let you spend steel to put one of your Samurai out into the Training Grounds.

Depending on how much steel you spend, you have three options, two of which will let you chain.

Chain!

In the picture above, spending only one steel will get you 5 yen. But spending 3 steel gets you another Samurai action (maybe you have 7 steel to spend? Then you could get three Samurai out!).

Spending 5 steel will get you 2 points and you can do the Courtier action.

Chains within chains within chains!

Not to mention the fact that, at the end of each round, all of your Gardeners will take their action again (assuming you can afford it, so save some yen!).

The turn order mechanism is also pretty good, but it does lead to one of the weakest parts of the game.

The Heron icon will let you move your Heron token forward one space on the Heron track.

Turn order is determined each round by your position on the Heron track, so moving your Heron forward is actually kind of important (depending on how much you want to avoid being last).

However, there are certain dividers on the track. If you get past the first one, you will get three points at the end of the game, the second gets you six. After the third divider, there are multiple single spaces that will get you even more points, all the way up to 15.

The thing about that is that the point payoff for doing that is light years behind how much time, effort, and actions that could have been used doing something else it takes to reach that space.

It seems rather lackluster overall.

After three rounds, you total up all of your endgame points and add them to the (probably minimal) points you earned during the game, and whoever has the most is the winner!

The White Castle is such an intricate game that it just struck me the first time I played it, even though we played it wrong!

Subsequent plays (both in person and on Boardgame Arena) have just cemented how much I love this game.

I love how resources are tracked, and how your player board actions can get you a ton of resources, but never the resources related to what your figures do.

For example, sending a Samurai out onto the board will not free up a space to get steel.

It frees up a space to get pearl!

And so on.

The game somewhat rewards hate drafting to keep a die out of the hands of somebody who could really use it, but considering you only are drafting nine dice, you’d better have at least somewhat of a use for the die or you’re just hurting yourself as well.

The bridges are very cool, though a bitch to put together.

The other components and the artwork are just phenomenal.

The dice drafting mechanism is so great, with you either getting a high die or a low die but with Lantern compensation.

Or you might get lucky and all of the dice are sixes so you can do the Lantern action and use a six!

The White Castle is all about the chains, and I’m here for that.

The other minor knock against the game is that, since the placement of the dice colour tokens in the Castle spaces is totally random, you can get a very tight board where resources or actions can be scarce and you know scores are going to be lower.

If you’re teaching the game, you might want to reseed the Castle, or if you want a competitive game, you just play to see who can navigate the extra tightness the best.

You are also at the mercy of the dice a little bit, as they are rolled each round and placed in order on the bridges.

You could get a bunch of ones and be paying the price for your dice placements! Though subsequent players can take advantage of your already-placed die and use a one without having to pay.

Thus there is that dreaded randomness if that bothers you.

All in all, The White Castle is a great game that I will always play.

And then we can all go out for Sliders afterwards.

(Dang it! Almost made it to the end of the review)

This review was written after 4 plays and a bunch of asynchronous plays on Boardgame Arena