Castles and Thieves by Ken

Just a word about this game.

I have 3 small boys and am regularly creating boardgames for them to play. This one (Castles and Thieves) is pretty popular with the 3 to 5 year old set...

Thanks hpox for posting it for me.

I've also posted Prysm Crystals here which my older boy likes to play, and my son and I created a board game version of Pokemon Ruby (based on the gameboy version) which is his favourite. I have all the files for the Pokemon one complete with images (160 colour cards). I've typed up the rules and taken a digi photo of the board. If there's interest out there (i.e. some of you also have small kids to entertain) I'll post it here. Since it's not for profit, I assume there's no issue with reproducing copyrighted Pokemon images? (There's a gazillion fan sites out there.)

Ken

Actually, there's a fair amount of decision making when building your castle. There are 5 spots to choose from. Say you have 4 filled, and you get a castle top. You could fill the 5th spot with a tower top but that would be a bad choice because you'll have a maximum height of 1 there. You're better off putting the tower top on top of your highest segment unless the thief is close to your castle, in which case it's a tough decision.

A simpler variant of the game is where you don't keep track of how many food one player gave to the other one. I just added that rule to allow the player in the stronger position to make a sacrifice which is a high risk high reward thing to do, and builds friendship.

Part of the game is to teach kids about decreasing the strength of their own position to help out a friend, who, if they survive, will make them even stronger in the long run.

Ken