The Sandcastles of Burgundy Board Game Review
I’m a huge fan of designers taking games that adults love and creating a kids version of the game. Sometimes the game is more in name than theme, but I still love the idea of introducing my kids to the Jr. version of a game they might play later. The Sandcastles of Burgundy is a fantastic kids game with variety and ways to make the game more difficult, and overall I think it’s a fabulous kids experience that adults will enjoy as well.
The Sandcastles of Burgundy can be a pretty basic experience. You are venturing onto the beach to look for various resources – blue, red, and yellow – under sandcastles. Dice rolls will indicate what sandcastles you can look under, and what resources you can transport. If you find one, you can place it in your beach warehouse to be transported to your town later. On future turns you can either move the resource using your cart, or you can look under another sandcastle in search of more resources.
Each player is trying to get two resources of each color, although the game is likely over before anyone ever gets all six. Each resource transported back to your town is worth a point, and when you’ve brought back two of the same color, you turn over the corresponding market stall and earn an additional point.
Turning over stalls is important because scattered under the sandcastles on the beach are various creatures, one for each color. If you have your market stall / shop upgraded and you find a matching colored creature under a sandcastle, you can move that creature to your village and earn yet another point!
That is how the base game works, but you can play a few varieties of this game. If you flip over all the player boards and the beach board, you can play a powers-based version of this game. The Queen Crab will sit on top of sandcastles and move around the board. If you look under the queen, you get a crown token, and if you bring that back to your village, you can place it in a power-up spot and earn some type of benefit! They are varied, and when you add in the expansion tiles, you can vary those benefits even more!
The Sandcastles of Burgundy is just a very rewarding, very fun games for kids. Fortunately, it’s palatable for adults as well. Am I going to pick to play this? Absolutely not, but we have run our course on some of the other kids games we own, so having this as an option now is fantastic. And ultimately, it is a good game, and teaches some great mechanics to kids that will be beneficial when they start to play more complex games.
This is still pretty basic, and kids hovering around that 8 to 9 age range might be ready to migrate to something else. But for my six year old son, this is a great experience that provides enough challenge and strategic thinking that it’s still fun, and not frustrating.
If you are looking for a kids game, we cannot recommend The Sandcastles of Burgundy enough!
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Article By Adam Roffel
