Blueprints of Mad King Ludwig Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Blueprints of Mad King Ludwig, a new * and write game published by Bezier Games. Blueprints of Mad King Ludwig is the newest game in the Mad King Ludwig universe.

As most of my dear readers know, I’m the resident Movie Person here at Board Game Quest, so I view most things through that lens. Keeping that in mind: do you know how a lot of modern media is very concerned with “shared universes”? This superhero movie needs to be watched after that superhero TV show or the context is ruined? Well today’s board game review has similar trappings.

Blueprints of Mad King Ludwig is the fourth game in the Mad King Ludwig Shared Universe (to be referred to as the “MKLSU” for brevity going forward). It’s kinda like, but also kinda different than most of the others and plays 1-5 And takes roughly 60 minutes to play.

Some of the things in Blueprints of Mad King Ludwig will be very similar to other entries in the MKLSU, but this game does alter the formula a bunch. For starters, Blueprints is a draft-and-write game. Players will be drafting room types of different shapes and sizes and drawing them with various colored pencils into their private castle grids.

Each room has a certain number of doors that must be linked up with doors of other rooms already present in the castle. Once a room is completely closed off (i.e., all the doors connect to other rooms), players earn a unique Room Reward based on the room type. There are a bunch of these rewards in the game, range from extra turns all the way to increased bonus scoring opportunities. These Rewards can be triggered immediately or saved for later.

The draft is based on the value of the rooms drafted into the previous round (player who drafted the lowest-valued room picks first) and all the rooms are free of charge. Once drafted, players must be able to fit the room into their available grid (this is expandable as the game progresses) and can do so freehand or use the game’s pretty neat dual-paneled player sheet