Citadels Duel, out on Friday 23rd October is a two player reimagining of the classic Citadels game, but given an entire overhaul to work for two players! In this full review we take a look at the new game, see how it works and share if we think this is worth adding to your list for Santa this Christmas!

Massive thanks to Asmodee and Z-Man Games for sending us a copy to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not pick up your copy of Citadels Duel through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

So without further ado let’s check out the game and see how it plays!

Citadels Duel Review

I’m a big fan of two player games, as fun as sprawling multi player games are sometimes you want something that that doesn’t take too much space and you can play on a lunch break. Especially as we get older it gets harder and harder to coordinate a games night, so something that can just be played by two players is always something that is going to see time on my table!

Back at the UK Games Expo this summer we were lucky enough to be able to take an early look at Citadels Duel, and it’s safe to say we fell in love with it from the first game – with us leaving the show with this as one of our most anticipated titles. When Asmodee asked if we’d like to check out a copy to review we jumped at the chance!

RRP of this one is £24.99 and comes in a compact box filled with really nice componants. There’s a lot of love to the contents and making sure they look their best over repeated plays. 2 soft bags are included in the box to help randomise and store the game tiles, while high quality envelopes and wallets are included to store the cards, and even the King’s Guard miniature comes in his own little box for storage.

There’s two screens that are used to hide the special tokens you draw at the start of the game, and these are slotted together from decent thick cardstock – however I did find that in order to store the game without overloading the box I had to dissemble these so that they lie down flat – they look absolutely fine, but I do worry they may get a little tatty with repeated build and break down, though that’s a small nitpick as everything else in the box from the quality of the tokens to the card components is gorgeous. If you don’t mind the box not shutting fully you can get it all back in with them assembled, but it’s a bit of a squeeze

So how does the game play? Well it’s a bit of a hybrid between Love Letters and a city builder with each turn broken down into a couple of phases. Players start by randomising which player is white and which is black and then placing two randomly determined starter tiles in the centre of the board, one with a black border and one with a white border. Each of these tiles is double sided so can be flipped over during a game so you can see which player currently has control of it. This is really elegant and makes it easy to eyeball the table and see what the lay of the land is.

Each player then gets delt 3 unique tiles, with them getting to keep 2 hidden on their screen, while the discarded one goes back into the bag. These are essentially special buildings that can be built during the game that have bonuses and rules that can trigger during the game – usually more expensive to build but can swing the game if used well.

Finally, the influence track is set up – this is a nice board with inlayed sections to drop the double sided influence tokens into with a slot in the centre for the King’s Guard. Each player starts with 4 influence and the final 9th token is randomised at the start of the game to determine if white or black have the higher influence count. This will determine how much gold each player has at the start of the game, but this influence track will change over the course of the game and be something you will be jostling over to keep control over the board.

Each turn opens with each player being dealt 4 cards – Each of these cards have a number that shows the order they are triggered, so 1 will be first followed by 2 all the way up to 9. As only 8 cards are dealt then there will always be one of the 9 that isn’t in play. Where Citadels Duel gets really interesting though is the fact that out of the 4 cards you pick two to keep and then pass the other two to your opponent. This means that each player knows what half the hand of the other player is, which makes for some really interesting play. There’s some great interactions between these that makes picking which ones to keep a tough call in most games, and makes the playout of all the cards really tense – especially when you play your thief and forget what cards you have handed over to your opponent! All of the cards have different roles, some will steal cash or allow you to steal and flip buildings for a cost, others will interact with the influence track or allow you to move the king’s guard, a piece that can protect your buildings from being flipped. This part of the turn very much has a Love Letters vibe to it, and as you know the order the cards are going to resolve in then you can set up some cool things that shift how things are looking within the game.

Once all 8 cards have been played in order we then move to the city building part of the turn

This is driven in part with the influence track, with the person with the most influence getting gold and being able to build, with the other player only being able to get gold or build. This is a big deal, however sometimes you don’t necessarily need to build things yourself, as there’s lots of ways of wrenching control of them during the game but as the game ends once the full 4×4 grid of buildings is finished then there is a lot of power to a player with the ability to build that final building and end the game.

Building is pretty straight forward – 4 stacks of buildings are randomised at the start of the game giving you a revealed stack of different coloured buildings to place on the grid, these all have different costs and play a factor in your final score at the end of the game. There’s an element of strategy here too, as for every adjacent tile of the same colour when you place it you get to increase the value of the tile by 1 by placing a gold token on it. Again though, you have to be careful as it’s always possible for your opponent to steal buildings off you through the card deck. All of the tiles have different coloured banners on them, and a lot of the cards interact with different colours too – so you’ve got a balancing act between placing adjacent colours in order to increase their value and making sure you’ve got good coverage of all colours to take advantage of any bonuses!

Once the grid of buildings is complete the game ends and you add up the total values of buildings under your control, your remaining gold and your influence on the track to determine the winner!

Every game we have played has been close, and we get get through a game in around 20-30 mins which makes it perfect for a game to pull off the shelf for a quick gaming session between other games or on a break! Honestly though, it’s one of those games where you’ll play a round and want a best of three, which again is great as it plays so quickly!

The game is easy to learn too, the box states ages 10+ and I’d agree with that, this is a nice one to play with a child who is into games and wants to start dipping their toe into other genres! it’s very tactile too, with things such as flipping the influence tokens, turning over the tiles and moving the King’s Guard around the board having a nice feel to them.

Citadels Duel has been one of my most anticipated games this year, and it’s every bit as fun now as it was in the preview game we had back in the summer. Now it’s out in the wild I’d highly recommend adding this one to your collection, especially if you are looking for 2 player games. The parts are gorgeous and the game is really tight and quick to play with a lot of variety in switching between the card phase and the city building phase! For £24.99 I expect this one to be a popular one in Christmas stockings this year, and already have it in mind to gift to a few people already.

Citadels Duel is out tomorrow 23rd October and you can pick it up here from Element Games.

Asmodee provided Sprues & Brews with a free copy for review purposes.