Josh Horsley's design for CastleScape combines two very familiar mechanics in an original way. Players represent guilds competing for the favour of an unspecified Medieval king by participating in the building of a castle. Players' actions are driven by cards played from a deck that you'll be modifying using a deck building mechanic but scoring is mostly based on area control. The theme is reinforced by Praetorian Board Games' plastic wall pieces and Traci Van Wagoner's artwork.
The 2-4 players each start with identical starter decks of 10 cards from which they draw and play five each turn. You'll have cards that let you take and place out castle wall pieces and cards that let you place out cubes representing recruits with which you'll be competing for area control majorities. The only restriction on how you play your cards is that you can only add recruits to the board after you've positioned any walls you are placing out. The reason for this is that recruit cubes cannot be placed on top of walls but they are automatically repositioned on top when a wall is placed in a space already occupied by a cube. Recruit cubes that are atop a wall have twice the area control value of those that are not so the rule dictating the order in which you play cards prevents players from placing cubes and immediately adding walls at the same location.
Players will each have hidden contract cards with end-game scoring objectives but you're mainly competing for enclosed spaces in the castle. These are scored for the number of enclosed squares as soon as an area is completely closed off. Area control is determined by adding up the number of cubes each player has within the enclosure and on the enclosing walls.
But tho' area control is primarily how you score, much of the meat of the game is in the deck building, In addition to cards that let you build walls and place out cubes, there are cards that give you gold to spend in the market to buy cards to add to your deck. In addition, there are cards in both the starter deck and market that give you a benefit but only through what might be considered criminal or corrupt practice. Cards with these negative icons on them push you up on corruption and infamy tracks. Wall pieces are stored on a quarry board, and whenever the quarry is emptied, the King conducts an inspection and punishes infamy, in the first instance by removing recruit cubes from the board. There's a dilemma then over whether to go for or eschew cards that give you corruption and infamy...
CastleScape is highly interactive; not so much because of direct 'take that' actions but because there is much manoeuvring for position over wall placement. Players will obviously want to avoid finishing enclosures where they don't have area control but they may also deduce from another player's actions what sort of contract cards they hold and so they may position walls to close off areas just to frustrate a perceived contract objective.
Because your deck gets steadily more powerful throughout the game, CastleScape has a strong game arc. Canny players will keep a mental note of what cards their opponents have bought because other players' decks can have a significant impact on tactics; if you know another player has cards that let them place out wall pieces three at a time rather than just the normal two, you need to adjust your play accordingly.
Now is the time to check out CastleScape because there's a new Gates & Guilds expansion on the horizon. It's due to add new cards and asymmetric powers. We've not yet had a chance to play it but we're looking forward to reporting further on it when a copy comes our way...