[This review originally written in 2000 -- Brian]


I first played a proto-type for this game in Spring of 1999. It was called Citadelles (in French), and that's the only name I can think of for it now. But the French company that was due to publish it stalled and now Hans im Gluck has beaten them to the punch. In short, Citadels is a fine little game with a novel concept.

You are trying to build up eight buildings, and you are changing occupations from turn to turn. I'm not sure exactly what the theme is, I just play the game. The game has two phases, during the first the players pick their occupation, and in the second each character takes it's turn.

[Note -- We often play to seven buildings for a slightly shorter game.]

There are 8 occupations. In a six player game, all of them get shuffled and then one gets randomly set aside (out of the game that turn). Then the player who was King last turn gets to pick one and passes the rest of the deck to his right. Each player chooses which card they want, the last player getting a choice of two. In a seven player game, the last player gets his choice of the leftover card or the card that was thrown out. With less players, more cards are set aside (some of them face up).

After each player has selected, the King calls out the characters in order. When he calls a character, that player takes their turn. During a players turn the player can:

1. Draw two gold or two buildings (keeping one and discarding the other),
2. Build a building,
3. Use his characters special power (at any time).

The heart of the game is in the special powers. Here they are (in order).

* The Assassin names one character (not player), that character is dead and doesn't get a turn!
* The Thief names a character (not player), except the character the assassin killed, or the assassin (professional courtesy, or just healthy respect, I guess). At the beginning of that characters turn, the thief gets all of their money!
* The Wizard can switch hands (of building cards) with any other player or can discard some building and redraw an equal number.
* The King gets first pick next turn, and gets bonus gold for each "Royal" Building he has.
* The Architect gets two extra building cards, and can build up the 3 buildings a turn ... if he can pay for it.
* The Bishop gets extra gold from "Religious" buildings and is immune to the Soldier.
* The Merchant gets an extra gold for each "Trade" Building he has, and an extra gold just for being the merchant.
* The soldier gets an extra gold for each "Military" Building he has, and can destroy one building a turn (except one of the Bishop's buildings or the buildings of a player who has completed enough to end the game).

Buildings cost from 1-5 gold. It costs the Soldier one gold less to destroy a building than it cost to build.

After a turn goes, you just reshuffle the occupation cards and start again. At the end of the game, each building is worth as many points is it's gold cost. Then there are some bonuses:

* A bonus for the first player to finish his/her last building,
* A lesser bonus for other players who build the full complement
* A bonus for a player who has all five types of buildings.

The five types are Religious, Trade, Military, Royal and Special. Special buildings have some text and grant their owner a power. Some of them are just worth bonus VP, some of them give their owner an ability. Sadly, one problem with the game is that the cards all have german text. This is also a problem for the occupations, but the pictures are helpful and you can have translated cheat sheets for them with almost no fuss.

Ah, the pictures. Citadels has some of the best art I've ever seen in a card game. And that includes the art in Collectable Card Games! It is simply beautiful. The art in the french game I saw (the prototype had finished art) was also very good, but seemed to be different. If the different versions do have different art, I'll probably wind up getting both. It's that good.

As for Citadels, it's a good game. I tend to have a problem in that I pick the occupation that the assassin keeps killing, which tells me that at least one other player thought I picked well. Actually, the assassin does lead to a bit of disgruntledness, since the victim doesn't get a turn, and that can happen for several turns in a row (I speak from long and painful experience on this one). But the game is still very good. Citadelles is part of a growing line of fine psychological games coming across from Europe.

[Update 2005 -- I picked up Fantasy Flight's English version, which has alternate characters. This adds quite a bit of variety at a reasonable price. It's good enough that I picked this up as a spare copy. I do wish they had kept the nice gold coins from the original, though.]