Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Introduction
Players are castle builders, each hoping to build the castle that best meets the whims of Mad King Ludwig.
Players try to buy rooms for their castle at the best price, while also selling their services to others.
Adding rooms to your castle scores points, and the player with the most points wins!

Goal
The game ends at the end of that round where the Room Card deck is depleted. The player with the most
points at the end of the game wins!

Setup
1. Put the Contract Board (large triangle) in the middle of the table on the correct side for the
player count (4, or 3/2). Surround it with the two Room Boards and the Corridor/Stairs Board.
2. Shuffle the 50 Room Cards. Count out 11 Room Cards per player, and form a single face down
draw pile on the Room Board. Put the remaining Room Cards in the box.
3. Shuffle the 27 Bonus Cards and place face down to form a deck on the Room Board.
4. Put out the Stairs and Hallways according to player count (see table), removing any surplus tiles
to the box. The Hallways are double sided (upstairs/downstairs). Just form one stack of Hallways:
players will decide whether they are upstairs or downstairs on placement.
5. Sort the Room Tiles by type into piles. Shuffle each pile individually. Count out Room Tiles for
each stack face down (as per table), and place each pile on its spot on the Room Boards. Return
the remaining Room Tiles to the box without revealing them.
6. Place the Marks (Coins) in supply next to the board.
7. Shuffle the 24 Kings Favour tiles, and place one Favour per player on the Contract Board. Put the
rest of the Kings Favour tokens in the box. Remember: You can’t use both the complete room and
the incomplete room Favour in the same game!
8. Randomly choose a first player and give him the Master Builder Token, and have all players
decide what colour they will play (R, Y, B, G).
9. Reveal (#players +3) Room Cards. Draw and reveal Room Tiles according to the Room Cards
drawn, and place them below the Contract Board. Put the Room Cards just revealed into the
Room Card Discard Pile.
10. Put the Score-Tower in the middle of the table
a. Put the first player’s score token on the 0 space, and then moving in clockwise player
order round the table, add the rest of the player’s scoring tokens into spaces 1, (2, and 3).
11. Give each player:
a. a Foyer in their colour (return spare Foyers to the box)
b. 3 Bonus Cards (each player secretly reviews his Bonus Cards, keeps two and returns one
to the bottom of the deck).
c. 15,000 Marks
d. A Player Aid (return spare player aids to the box)

# of Contract # Room Halls Stairs Kings Room Tiles used

Players Board Side Cards Favours
2 3/2 22 5 4 2 5 ea of 100-300 stacks.
4 ea of 350-600 stacks.
3 3/2 33 7 5 3 7 ea of 100-300 stacks.
5 ea of 350-600 stacks.
4 4 44 9 6 4 9 ea of 100-200 stacks.
6 ea of 350-600 stacks. (All)
Course of Play
Players takes it in turns to play the role of Master Builder for a Round. Rounds are played until the end
game conditions are met.

Each Round
Each round, the following actions are completed, in order
1. The Master Builder draws and reveals Room Cards from the Room Card stack equal to the
number of empty spaces below the Contract Board (remembering the 2000 Mark space is not used
in a 2P game). He takes the corresponding Room Tiles from their stacks, and places them face up
below to the Contract Board. He then arranges all Room Tiles below the Contract Board to the
prices he prefers:
 If he draws a Room Card corresponding to a Room Tile stack that is exhausted, he draws
further cards until he finds a card of a stack not exhausted.
 He must place exactly one Room Tile per price space.
 He may move the Room Tiles already on the Contract Board as well as the new tiles
(even if no new Room Tiles are drawn).
2. Starting with the player to the left of the Master Builder, and proceeding clockwise, each player
(including the Master Builder) can choose one of the following options:
 Buy one room from the Contract Board for the price in Marks above the tile, paying the
money to the Master Builder. The room is immediately added to the purchasing player’s
castle, following the Room Placement rules (below) and scored (see scoring below).
i. If there are Coins on the Room Tile, they can be used to pay towards the price
(and are handed to the Master Builder), else they are received by the purchasing
player.
ii. If the active player is the Master Builder, he pays the cost to supply instead.
 Buy one Hallway or one Stairs for 3,000 Marks, paying the price to the Master Builder.
If the active player is the Master Builder, he pays the cost to supply. If a Hallway is
purchased it can be flipped to either its upstairs or downstairs side before placement.
The hallway or stairs is immediately added to the player’s castle according to the room
placement rules, and scored.
 Pass and receive 5,000 marks.
3. The Master Builder adds 1,000 marks to each Room Tile remaining on the Contract Board (the
ones that did not sell).
4. Master Builder pawn moves one player to the left (clockwise).

Room Placement Rules

 At least one entrance from the newly added room must align with an entrance already in your
Castle.
 Room Tiles can be rotated before placement, but only in 90o increments.
 Room Tiles may never overlap each other.
 A room is adjacent to another room if all or part of a side is touching the other room. If only a
corner is touching, it is not considered to be adjacent.
 Entrances can be aligned next to walls (provided rule 1 is satisfied), but room bonuses will not be
awarded unless all entrances to a room are connected to other entrances.
 The Castle must always have at least one external entrance.
 Rooms with a downstairs icon can only be built downstairs.
 Rooms without a downstairs icon cannot be built downstairs.
 Downstairs rooms and downstairs hallways can only be connected to the upstairs via stairs.
Downstairs rooms can be adjacent to upstairs room, but any aligned entrances are not
considered to be connected.
 No rooms can be adjacent to the fenced edge of an outdoor room. A room can be in front of the
outdoor room’s fenced side provided it is not adjacent.
 If you cannot place a room legally, you may not purchase it.
Room Placement Scoring
Scoring for room placement takes place in the following six steps:
1. Score the number of points in the castle icon in the top left of the Room Tile just placed.
2. Add or subtract adjacency points based on the icons in the centre of the newly placed room,
considering the adjacent rooms (or other rooms in the castle if you just added a downstairs
room).
3. Check the centre icons of the rooms connected to the newly placed room, and add points on if
your newly placed room generates more benefits.
4. Check adjacent room icons for penalties (e.g. activity rooms) and deduct the penalties. .
5. Check for downstairs rooms that benefit from the placement of your new room, and add points
on.
6. If you completed one or more rooms by the placement of the new room, receive the room
completion rewards in an order of your pleasing.

Scoring Iconography on Rooms Tiles

Icon Effect
Adjacency penalty (particularly for activity rooms). An adjacent room may be connected, or it may
just be touching, but is still adjacent!
Adjacency benefit for adding connected rooms.

Benefit for the number of rooms of a certain type you have anywhere in your castle.

Room Completion Rewards

Icon Room Completion Reward
Living Re-score points for this living room (both castle points and centre icons).
Room
Activity Instantly receive 5 points
Room
Sleeping Look through any stack of Room Tiles of one size (except stairs and hallways), and place 0, 1, or
Room 2 of those Room Tiles face-down on the room card stack. Reshuffle the remaining Room Tiles in
the stack you drew from, and return them face down to their spot.
The selected Room Tiles are drawn before the room cards from the beginning of the next round
onwards during the card drawing phase. If a sleeping room is completed in the last round of the
game, one room stack is still depleted, but the drawn tiles do not extend the game.
Outdoor Receive 10,000 Marks from supply.
Room
Utility Draw two Bonus Cards from the Bonus Card deck, keep one, and replace the other on the bottom
Room of the Bonus Card deck.
Food Room Take another turn (Step 2 of the actions only) immediately. Then complete your turn as normal.

Corridor Completion Bonus: You may take either a hallway (ground floor or downstairs), or stairs and add
Room it immediately for no cost. This reward can only be taken once per turn. The only exception is that
a yellow room completion bonus will allow a player to place a second corridor on their turn.
Hallways (regular and downstairs) and Foyers count as corridor rooms.
 Stairs: When placing stairs, connect the light end to a ground floor room, or the dark
end to a downstairs room. Two sets of stairs cannot be connected to each other.
 Hallways: Flip hallways to the correct side depending on whether they are sited on the
ground on downstairs floor. Hallways can be completed by placing two hallways along
the sides, and two rooms at the ends, but it is rarely worth it for the completion bonus.
Hallways, stairs and Foyers do not count for the unique sizes Bonus Card, nor do they count for
the small room bonuses card.
Downstairs Completion reward: For every two completed downstairs rooms, the player may take any of the
Rooms other completion rewards. For the living room reward, the player rescores the downstairs room
he just placed (if two downstairs rooms were completed during tile placement, he can pick which
one he re-scores).
Only downstairs rooms can be placed downstairs, and downstairs rooms cannot be placed on the
ground floor. Therefore, in order to build a downstairs room, you must first at least have stairs to
go down. You can connect a downstairs room to stairs, or to an entrance to another downstairs
room (including a downstairs corridor). Downstairs and ground floor hallways may never be
adjacent to each other (touch on edge). Downstairs rooms give bonuses based on the number of
rooms of a certain type anywhere in your castle, including rooms placed after the downstairs
room.
Game End
The game ends at the end of that round where the Room Card deck is depleted. If there are not enough
cards drawn from the Room Card deck to allow all the empty Contract Board spaces to be filled, the
Master Builder reshuffles the Room Card deck (including the cards he just drew) and draws the additional
cards. The final Round plays out as normal, and then final Scoring takes place.

Final Scoring
After the final Round, Final Scoring takes place. Points are awarded as follows:
1. Favour tiles: Each Favour tile is scored in turn. All players check to see if they meet the
requirements of the favour tile, and if they do, they are eligible to score from it. They rank
themselves by their ability to meet the tile’s need, and score points as below; if they tie for a rank,
they score sum the points of the places tied, divided by the number of players, rounded down.
a. First: 8 points
b. Second: 4 points
c. Third: 2 points
d. Fourth: 1 point
e. Didn’t qualify: 0 points
2. Points for depleted Room Tile stacks: Players score 2 points per room that they have in their
castle from any room stack that is completely depleted (rooms in the contract display do not
prevent a stack from being depleted). This includes the depleted hallway and stairs stacks.
3. Bonus Cards: Each player then reveals their Bonus Cards, and scores points for these Bonus
Cards for themselves only (also see Bonus Card section).
4. Money: Each player receives 1 point for every 10,000 marks they have.

The player with the most points wins. The tie breaker is the player with the largest castle (in terms of
square footage).

Kings Favour Tiles

Icon Type Effect
Rank based on the number of rooms of the specified type you have in your Castle.

Rank based on the total square footage of the rooms of the specified type you have in your
castle (square footage is shown top right on Room Tiles).

Rank based on how much money you have at the end of the game (including the money you
already scored in Step (4) of final scoring).

Rank based on the number of rooms you completed in your castle (all entrances connected).
Includes hallways, stairs and Foyers. If this tile is drawn after the incomplete Room Tile during
setup, discard and draw another favour tile.
Rank based on the number of incomplete rooms you have in your castle (rooms without all
entrances connected). Includes hallways, stairs and Foyers. If this tile is drawn after the
complete Room Tile during setup, discard and draw another favour tile.
Rank based on the number of circular rooms in your castle.

Rank based on the number of square rooms in your castle (not rectangular rooms).

Rank based on the number of external entrances you have in your castles (excludes Corridor
Rooms).

Rank based on the number of small rooms (100-300 sq ft) you have in your castle. Excludes
your Foyer.
Rank based on the number of large rooms (350-600 sq ft) you have in your castle.
Bonus Cards
You received two Bonus Cards at the start of the game, and you receive one more each time you complete
a Utility Room. A player scores for his Bonus Cards at the end of the game as follows:

Bonus Card Effect

For each room you have of the specified type, score the points shown on the castle
icon.

For each room that you have of the specified size, score the points shown on the
castle icon.

Score 8 points if you have at least one room of each of the 10 different room sizes
depicted, in your castle. No additional points for more than one set.

Score 7 points if you have if you have at least one room of each of the 8 different
room types depicted in your castle. No additional points for more than one set.

Score 1 point for each ground floor or downstairs hallway in your castle.

Score 2 points for each stairs tile in your castle.

Score 1 point for every two external entrances you have in your castle (excluding
rooms with corridor icons). To be external, an entrance must lead outside of the
castle, rather than to an area surrounded continuously with adjacent rooms.

Score 1 point for every two completed rooms (all entrances connected) in your
castle.

Score 1 point for each square room (not rectangular rooms).

Score 1 point for each circular room.

Score 1 point for each 5000 marks you have at the end of the game. This scoring is
in addition to the usual 1 point / 10,000 bonus.