In Castle Poker players use one standard deck of cards with 6 special cards added. Players also have a castle card each with 3 vacant spots on the bottom, where cubes are placed, to represent their progress building their castle.
5 cards are dealt to each player. Then in order,from the left of the dealer, players may discard to The Moat, as many as three from their hand. When all the players have discarded, hands are refilled to 5 cards.
Then in order from the left of the dealer players may make one bid of stones (cubes) from their supply. When each player has made ONE bid, all hands are revealed.
The player with the lowest poker hand looses their bid back to The Quarry. All other player get an extra stone from the Quarry to their supply. They also keep the stones they bid.
The player with the highest poker hand may place half the stones (rounded down) they bid onto their castle if they also bid the most stones.
The special cards include a messenger, a trebuchet and barrels of supplies. The partymeeple version also has a Bishop.
- Super intense
- Super fun game
- Good solitaire war game
- Minimal difficulty to pick up and play
- Really invest in it
- World War II (very end of the war)
- Castle Itter, Austria
- Unusual coalition defense against SS
- Pavlov's House
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Cooperative Defense — You have this weird coalition of nationalities fighting to to to to to hold out um as they're being attacked here by these um SS.
- Line of sight system — The game has, again, the same great line of sight color system that you see in Pavlov's House.
- Reinforcement/Relief — You're just trying to hold out and keep fighting until your reinforcements arrive and kind of relieve you.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Manila: The Savage Streets 1945. This is kind of a sister game to Stalingrad.
- I thought the Manila game was just a little smoother, a little sweeter. Um and it just worked a lot better.
- Pavlov's House is such a great solitaire war game.
- It was part of a well orchestrated plan to keep them there. And they were well supported by AA guns and communications and supplies.
- Castle Itter is kind of one of the weirdest battles of the war.
- And the game is super intense.
- When I think of a good solitaire war game that I could just pick up and and play with with with minimal difficulty and really invest in it, this is it.
- Vae Victis Emperor by Blue Panther. This is, of course, the Battle of Waterloo.
- he just did such a great great job of abstracting the the basics of the battle, but making them come alive in such a fun way.
- This one is so much fun. It is a great great solitaire war game.
References (from this video)
- unique last-stand scenario
- cooperative tension across allied players and opponents
- multi-national defense against SS units
- Castle Itter, last weeks of WWII in Austria
- solitaire-friendly, multi-entity defense scenario
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- solitaire_mode — noted as a great solitaire game
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- it's a real fun quick light game about resistance to the Nazis and trying to assassinate Hitler.
- I absolutely love Sniper Elite.
- Secret Hitler is such a fantastic game.
- Great solitaire game.
- This, like I say, one of the best storytelling games.