Bruno Faidutti's Citadels Classic Card Game - 2007 Edition (Out of Print) - English

The box is beautifully decorated and is suitably enticing.The same high presentation standards continue inside: cards are made of good quality cardboard and the drawings are good and colourful.My son and I tried to play this on serveral occasions but just couldn't get into it!Judging by the other reviews this may well be because we were (& still are) novices when it comes to card games!Possibly not best suited to a first card game experience.

The aim is to build citadels by collecting cards representing different buildings, each worth a varying amount of points. The first to buy eight buildings is the winner. To do this, you choose from a variety of characters each round, each with their own special abilities. For instance, you could choose an architect to quickly build up your citadel, a warlord to destroy other player's buildings, or an assassin to kill off another character and prevent another player having a go. Of course, assassinating or stealing is not that easy as you don't know exactly which player will have which character but you can guess based on the player's current situation and their tactical needs as a result. Each round, you can have different characters which can dramatically change your style of play that round.There's both strategy and luck involved. It may look complicated to start with, but the game can easily be learned in under 10 minutes. And with the luck element, and the fact that you can go about winning the game in various ways, it's by no way certain that an experienced player will win.Citadels is for up to 8 players (9 with the expansion) and the game takes a different form for less than four players as you can choose two characters each every round. This is quite significant since if one of your characters is assasinated, you're not sitting doing nothing that round.The average game lasts 30 to 60 mins and never feels it will get bogged down for hours on end.Citadels comes in a small box with attractive, well illustrated cards and plastic gold coins. So it's easy to take around and doesn't involved elaborate arrange of pieces.Highly recommended.

I'm sure there are plenty of raving reviews for this game but I wanted to add that it's especially well suited for taking on holiday. It's super portable - no bigger than a paperback book - but it has so much depth and flexibility that you can easily lose an hour to it with a few friends after dinner.It's a rare game in that it really does play just as well with two or seven players. It takes about a minute to explain the rules, and before you know it you have a whole group of people trying to second-guess and double-bluff each other. Like most great games, it has a small dose of luck to keep things unpredictable, but being smart is twice as important as being lucky, and being devious is twice as rewarding. The fun is in the reveal, as each player in turn reveals which character they picked that round, and everybody's plans fall into place or unravel accordingly.I wouldn't call it perfect, but there aren't many games that fill this niche so well. If you've rented a cottage or a ski lodge with some friends, to hell with a deck of cards and Travel Scrabble: this is the game you want to bring. This and "The Resistance: Avalon."

While the game comes in a neat little box and the cards are all very nicely illustrated, the overall game itself is a little disapointing. I got this game as an easy-going card game to play with my wife in a 2 player game or when friends come round. On the one hand, the game is very simple and easy to learn. Its also quick to play, being able to play a full game to completion in less than an hour.Unfortunately this is also the game's main flaw. When playing the game, you spend more time shuffling and re-dealing cards than you do actually playing them. Considering the limited options available to you on your go, more often than not you will know exactly what action you will take on your turn before it comes. This means that your average turn lasts about 20 seconds, while you wait several minutes for everyone else to take their turn, reshuffle the cards, and deal out. By this point, it feels like more faff than game time. What makes this discouraging, is that the more experienced a player is, the shorter his goes will be, therefore enlarging the play-to-reshuffle gap.Although the quality of the cards and coins is high, I didn't feel I got good value for money for the quality of the game as a whole.

A great game. If you think board games are still all about Monopoly and Cluedo, get this.The game is for up to eight players. It is compact to stick in a handbag and plays for between an hour and two hours.The cards and pieces are really lovely to look at and the gameplay is clever and easy to pick up.The object of the game is to build your city of eight buildings first. Each turn a player will be a different role with different powers to help build a building or destroy another players buildings. There is plenty of tactics involved for deciding which role to take and how to use it. When a player builds a city of eight buildings, all the players tot up how much their building are worth in points and whoever has the most wins. There are bonus points for being the first to reach eight buildings. There are bonus points for a spread of buildings across different types.Best game I've played in years and one that you will keep going back to just like Monopoly in your youth.