Remarkably, Burg Appenzel shares three interesting traits with perhaps the finest piece of English fiction ever written -- Hamlet.  Both take place in a brooding castle, both are full of intrigue, and both feature a tragic flaw.  I'll take each of these in order in my review of this fine game by Bernhard Weber and Jans-Peter Schliemann.



    The Brooding Castle
    When you first open Burg Appenzel (my copy was $39.50 at GameSurplus.com -- still salty in spite of the discount) you find a lovely stack of chits in their frames, one of which contains warnings in German telling you to beware of something.  If you're like me and learned all the German you know from Sargent Schultz, it is likely that you will not understand this admonition to save the chit frame, as it is a part of the game itself.  But fear not, for Burg Appenzel is built every bit as tough as a medieval castle.  The chits and frames are of thick cardboard that is well stamped, the images are beautiful and well-printed, and the overall fit and feel is simply excellent.  Almost everything that comes in the box is a part of the game, including the box itself, which is decorated to show the walls of a castle.  The insert that comes with the game serves as the base for the playing surface, and completely fills the box.  Sixteen mice, four in each of four colors are included as the playing pieces.  They are painted in big bright shades of red, blue, green, and yellow.  Although bold and well formed, they aren't the cutest mice you'll meet in your local castle, and that works out well as you're less likely to object when they plunge to their deaths in the dungeons of the castle. On that note . . .

    The Intrigue
    Burg Appenzel is a simple matching game with more than a few mechanics to muddy up the "simple" part.  The goal of each player is to get two of their mice to be sitting on the same kind of cheese at the same time.  Cheese pieces are arbitrarily distributed throughout the board, and each player has four mice to make the connections.  Once two cheese pieces are matched, the player takes a little chit to indicate they have scored that particular cheese flavor, and then they move on to the next.  You make four moves per turn, and four cheese matches is all it takes for victory.

    But finding and getting the cheese isn't as simple as it sounds.
    To start, the entire board is covered (that is, the castle is covered with sections of roof), and you can only discover spaces that you're close to.  You start at the towers in the corners, lift roofs next to you to see what's available nearby, and move into areas of interest.
    Then, you need to find what pieces of cheese are currently available. Burg Appenzel's board is a waffle of sorts, with some spaces exposing what's underneath and some not.  At any given moment, the cheeses you're looking for may be exposed underneath, or may be under the hidden parts, so you need to keep an open mind.  With luck something will be nearby, and it will stay there long enough to get it.
    Then of course, there's the plunging-to-your-death part. The cheese pieces that lie underneath the waffle board are all movable.  Similar to The aMAZEing Labyrinth, each player can move half of the columns and rows of the board to: a) expose the cheese THEY want; b) hide the cheese YOU want; or c) should the mood strike them, slide a trap door underneath your mouse which drops him into the dungeon below.  The writers dance around the point a bit, but let's face it -- dropping a few stories into the dungeon of a medieval castle constitutes a bad turn of events.  With luck he'll land hard and it will all be over quickly.  In spite of this gruesome outcome, my kids giggle every time it happens.


   This exceptional image from TabbySunLion shows roof sections hiding most of the
   board, and roof-removed areas where mice are roaming.  Note that some spaces in the
   roof-removed areas always show a plain floor (where red mouse sits) while others
   reveal the sliding cheese and pit tiles underneath (where green and yellow mice sit).

    Although Burg Appenzel is obviously themed for kids, there is an amazing amount of opportunity to really skewer your opponents.  Indeed in a four player game there are twelve moves made between the end of a players turn and the beginning of their next, three of which can change the configuration of the board.  Were four adult players to play this game in earnest, it is likely that anyone gaining even a slight lead would quickly be neutralized by trap doors, disappearing cheese or opponent mice camping on their intended goals.  I have only played with my kids, so I cannot vouch for how it would work out.  But stalemate or M.A.D both would seem to be very real possibilities.  Since half the board is safe spots (no trap doors, but no cheese) it may prove to be an interesting play, and I would very much like to hear from anyone who has tried this.

    What Parents Need to Know
    First a couple of small details:
    -- Burg Appenzel comes with a LOT of small parts.  They are quite chokable, and quite losable.  This game needs to stay on the top shelf.
    -- The game is sufficiently complex to require 100% parental supervision during setup and play. 
    -- Players of different ages will likely have very different levels of ability.  Be prepared to coach.


    The Tragic Flaw
    Hamlet's tragic flaw resulted in one great big pile of bodies at the end of the play.  Burg Appenzel's is far less grevious, but is certainly worth mentioning. 
    In short, there's no good way to clean up the game. 
    Since the insert that comes in the box serves as the base of the game, and since it completely fills the box, there really isn't anyplace to put the large quantity of chits and mice that come with Burg Appenzel.  Lifting the insert out does indeed reveal the inside of the box, but since the insert is a series of wide tubes that reach all the way to the bottom, you can't replace it back once the chits and mice have been placed inside.  The instructions recommend dropping all the pieces into the tubes, but the chits get wedged into the bottom, and getting them back out requires more than a bit of work, including dumping all of the tiles off the top and reassembling them afterwards. 
    In my opinion this is not a workable solution for a kids game -- parents have more than enough to do without spending 20 minutes setting up and then cleaning up a game that doesn't last much longer than that.


      The insert, removed from the bottom of the box (and shown upside-down).
          Notice that the tubes that capture doomed mice reach all the way
                  to the bottom of the insert, virtually filling the entire box.

    This is where the hacksaw comes in. It is my intention to, in spite of the high price of this game, pimp my box.  I'm considering a hole in one side of the box bottom, near the corner, that does not cut into the corner itself.  A matching hole in the side of the insert.  Then, I plan to cut the bottoms off of the tubes so that mice and any other pieces fall through into the open space that has now been created inside the box.  I'm a bit concerned about structural integrity, but as with all the other components in the game, the insert is very well constructed and appears to be up to the challenge.  Likely I will leave one or two of the center tubes intact until I see how things work out.


    What I Think of the Game
    This is a fine game.  Although it requires me to be engaged 100% of the time my kids are playing, this is soft tasking, especially since the game has a bit of complexity and intrigue to it.  I've played all my games with one of my four-year-olds in my lap, coaching the little ones so they can go toe-to-toe with the older two.  I've enjoyed each game and continue to learn.


    What My Kids Think of the Game
    My kids have been fully immersed in each of the games we have played.  The game is just plain beautiful, and they very much enjoy the variety of things they can do.  The turn mechanic is complex, but the goal is remarkably simple.  So although they require coaching in order to manage their turns, they don't seem to mind, and the simple goal is keeping their interest.  We're only a few games in, but they're asking to play "the mouse game" instead of several other good games that are available and still new.  One of my four-year-olds simply can't get enough of the mouse-plunge mechanic, often sacrificing his own pieces just so he can get a laugh.  ( I may need to keep a close eye on him as he grows.)


    In Conclusion
    I recommend Burg Appenzel.  It's higher price means that it needs to compete against two or even three cheaper games, but there are limited choices in the upper tier for kid titles, and this one fills that niche.  It provides an opportunity to coach your kids in more complicated game play without restricting their options, and that's valuable for when they're ready to step up from the traditional set of Chutes, Candyland, and Cherry-O.  If you have a few bucks to spare and are looking for an opportunity to really immerse in a game with your kids, Burg is a quality choice.


             Sag.

If you have any small zip-lock bags, put a couple of mice in each of these. Put the bags in the bottom of a tube with chits on top. This is what we do - the chits are then easy to get out as they cannot slip further down and the bag is easy to grasp. Admittedly, there's no one in my household under the age of 35 but in theory a child should find doing this easier as they have smaller hands!

I drop all of the pieces in the holes in the board. I've never had a problem with chits getting wedged in the holes.

    This is our current solution:



    It works quite well, although I feel like it's cheating.

             Sag.

We put the mice in the tubes, and then put chits only on top of the mice. They've never been stuck.

Nice review.

I played the game at Essen - and bought it - and there they simply had a suitably sized teaspoon to dig out the pieces. We have followed the guidelines and put the mice back in the holes with the small cheese pieces, and left the battlements and instructions on top - no problem.

Just reverse upside down the black part (with the corridors and everything else still "ready to play") and insert mice and bits in the spaces.

Another option that I've seen an owner do, is leave the game ready to go (including the castle corners up and assembled) and just put the box top on. As long as you dont stack anything on top, it doesn't matter than the box sticks up further than normal and is resting on the castle corners.

That way if you shuffle up things before you put the box away, its ready to go the next time you pull it out without setup time, and you will have likely fogotten the position of holes by then.

I've taken Joe's approach since day one. It works perfectly.

    This approach just worked for me today as well. You need to lift the tiles to remove them, but that's not much of a price to pay to not have a big bag of parts sitting next to the board.

             Sag.

    Nope -- back to the ziplock. With the ziplock I don't need to disassemble and reset the board to get the pieces out at game startup. With twin five-year-olds I simply cannot spend the time just to get all the pieces out of the holes and reset the board while they impatiently wait. The ziplock is the ideal solution, and allows the game to be ready to play on a moment's notice.

             Sag.

This is an excellent review.

I don't own this game, but from playing a friend's copy I can see where the concerns about storage are coming from.

I would prefer to think that the mice, which are really cute, IMO, do not plunge to their deaths but instead fall so far down to a lower level that they just don't have the time to make it up to where the cheese is. No mice are harmed in the playing of this game...

    That's a fine consideration. The mice land gently on the basement floor and need merely to walk across to the sally door and sneak back out . . . were it not for the hundreds of 14-24 pound cats roaming the place looking for easy meals! Ha!

             Sag.

Fantastic review. Thanks.