CastleScape Board Game Review

About CastleScape, from BoardGameGeek:

The King has commissioned a magnificent Castle that will span the ages. The ones who build it will be blessed with riches, power, and Renown for all time. This is where you come in. To build a Castle require workers, and your Guild is ready to answer the call. You are one of the few, the clever, and the devious, who aims to scheme and expand power by any means necessary. Use care though; the King will visit the Castle and Inspect it to make sure that everything is to his liking. If he finds you have been participating in shady deals, he will strip your Guild of its Influence and resources. Claim credit for building his Castle and prove to him that you are the greatest Guild in the land.” CastleScape is a deck-building area-control game set in medieval times. It is a time of Kings and Guilds, money and power, deception and influence. In CastleScape, each player represents one of four Guilds who are building a large castle, containing many Baileys, for the King. Players build Walls into Baileys, gather recruits to spread their Guild's influence, spend gold, perform questionable deeds in the Back Alley, and complete Goals and Quests. However, they must balance their actions with how much Infamy and Corruption they will accrue from performing them. Whenever the King visits the Castle to inspect it, he will strip Influence from the Guilds based on their Infamy. Each player begins the game with a basic deck of cards (gold, recruits, walls, and a few clumsy thieves) and a couple hidden goals. The game board starts with one wall in the center, and players must build outward, always adding walls adjacent to other walls. Whenever a Bailey is completed, Renown(points) will be awarded based on how large that Bailey is, and the player with the most Influence in that Bailey will claim the Renown. Starting in the same area and building outwards forces all players to have a high level of player interactivity and decision making so that no two games will ever feel the same. Inspections will remove significant amounts of Influence from the game board, giving players additional ways to influence how things play out. CastleScape is highly strategic and incentivizes players to play differently each game. Besides each player's hidden objective cards and a Castle that is procedurally built each game, players will plan multiple turns ahead to build the castle how they see fit. The Market also has both static and rotating card options to keep gameplay fresh and interesting. Points can be earned by building and claiming credit for Baileys, purchasing cards, and completing hidden or public goals; but points will be lost based on Corruption. CastleScape has been created to give a fresh take on the Deck-builder genre, adding heavy player interaction on a central game board, with far more to think about than just what cards you want to purchase. It offers deep strategy, nearly unlimited replayability, and interesting/fun interactions and combos. -description from the designer