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The White Castle: Matcha

Summary

A game for 1 – 4 players
Play time is around 90 – 110 minutes
Publisher is Devir

Introduction

Expand your journey in The White Castle with its first official expansion, Matcha. This richly detailed addition introduces exciting new elements that bring more depth and variability to your games. With a new board extension featuring the green bridge and its own dice, you’ll find fresh opportunities to gain influence and resources. The tea house, central to Japanese culture, becomes a key area to explore, offering unique strategies to outmaneuver your rivals.

A new type of clan member, the geishas, joins the game. With additional turns increasing your available actions from 9 to 12, the expanded gameplay allows for even more dynamic decision-making.

Are you ready to return to Himeji Castle and uncover the secrets of the tea ceremony?

Setting up the game

Place the expansion board up against the lower edge of the main board. Place the following game items on the board;
– The Green Bridge on top of the river, at the new board
– 3 Random Water Lily tiles in the pond
– Shuffle the Flower Arrangement and the Calligraphy decks separately and place them face up on their spaces on the board.
– Shuffle the ceremony tiles and place 3 of them in the Tea House with the yellow side and place 1 tile in the pond overlook showing its blue side.

Shuffle the new expansion cards cards into their decks, mix the training Yard tiles from the base game.

Follow the further setup for the game like you did before, including your own player board.

Every player also receive a Ceremony tile and place 1 random below the starting card showing the blue side. Place your Geishas on your board and now where ready to play The White Castle with this new expansion Matcha!

Let’s play

This expansion has a number of new locations and new green dice.

The green dice may not be used in all locations but can be used at the Well, new game board but also Outside the Walls and on your own player board.

Below we will explain the different locations on the new game board.

The Tea Fields
Here all colors of dice may be placed and like in the rules of the base game only 1 die may be placed per square in a 2 player game and in a multi-player game 2 on top of each other.

After this you may perform the Geisha action. For this you have 2 choices;

  • Pay 2 coins to place the leftmost Geisha from your game board to the entrance of the Tea Garden. You may have an unlimited number of Geishas at the entrance.
  • Pay 2 or 5 coins to move 1 Geisha into the Tea Garden. With 2 coins you may move 1 step and for 5 coins you may move 2 steps.

You can move to the Pond or towards the Tea House

Tea House
When you follow the path on to the tea house, you can activate on the first stap you activate the benefit on 1 of the 2 yellow curtains and take that card and place it at the bottom of your player board (your lantern). When you move to the next one, you just take the action on 1 of the 2 green/ dark curtains.

Once your Geisha completes the journey to the Tea House, you may visit 1 of the 3 rooms and place the Geisha there. After this, perform the action on the Ceremony tile. There cannot be more than 2 Geishas from the same player in 1 room. Each room also earns additional points at the end of the game, different for each room.

Pond Overlook
When you’ve chosen to move 1 Geisha to the left, her journey end when she arrived at the Pond. You can carry out the Pond action and get the 3 rewards on the Water Lily tiles or Pay 3 coins to perform the action on the Ceremony tile.

The Outskirts of Himeji
Here all colors of dice may be placed and as with the rules of the base game, only 1 die may be placed per square in a 2 player game and in a multi-player game, 2 may be placed on top of each other. When you place a dice, just take the actions on the cards in the row where you placed your dice. You can take activate the actions how you want.

The Game ends

At the end of the third round, after establishing the new order of turns, the final points are counted.

1 Score points for every 5 coins and/ or Daimyo Seals and 1 Clan Point is granted.
2 Score for every resource that you have between 3 and 6 units remaining, you get 1 Clan Point, when you’ve reached 7 you receive 2 Clan Points.
3 Score clan members

Castle:
1 Clan point for every Clan at the gate
3 Clan points for every clan at the first floor
6 Clan points for every clan at the second floor
10 Clan points for every clan at the third floor

Training Yard
You receive points for every Clan in the yard by multiplying the value of your warriors by the location and number that you have inside of the Castle. Each warrior has a value indicating by the yard they are based.

Gardens
Each Gardener grants their Clan as many points that are show on the card they are on.

Tea Garden
2 Clan Points if a Geisha is in the Pond
1 Clan Point if a Geisha is in the entrance of the Tea Garden
2 Clan Points for each Geisha that ends at the first step of the Path of Tea
3 Clan Points for each Geisha that ends at the second step of the Path of Tea
2 Clan Points for each Gardener, Warrior, or Courtier you have on the board for each of your Geishas in the corresponding room at the Tea House.

The player with the most Clan Points is the winner of The White Castle.

Conclusion & final score

Difficulty: 3.19/ 5
Re-playability: 9
Our score: 9 out of 10 dice

This expansion makes the game even more fun, you now get 1 extra action per round. Isole doesn’t get any easier because the new game board just gives you a few more choices.

The choices you can make are nicely worked out in the tea theme.

In terms of game rules nothing changes, only because of the new game board some extra rules have been added. These new rules are clear and without spending too much time on them you can quickly start playing with this expansion.

In terms of replayability you get more playing material which enhances the game even more. For us, this expansion just adds an extra layer and makes it even more fun to keep playing this game.

Only downside is that everything no longer fits in the basic box and you have to use the box of the expansion for now. As far as we are concerned come on with a big box 😉 (nothing is known about it by the way)

Thanks to Devir Games for this review copy and the opportunity to write about it.

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