Review – Citadels Duel

When I was in graduate school, a friend introduced us to Catan and changed my life forever. I quickly found BoardGameGeek, and before long, put in my first “free shipping” board game order: Catan, Ticket to Ride, Dominion, and… Citadels. Despite the fact I once died to the assassin three times in a single game, I still have fond memories of playing Citadels whenever we had too many people to play those other games, and the group didn’t want to split. While it had 2- and 3-player modes, they were fairly weak. But now Citadels has gone from a six-player game to a dedicated two-player game with Citadels Duel. Can Citadels work as a dedicated duel for two?

I have to say that the components are a great example of good ideas and poor execution. They made great effort to make the game look nice: envelopes for components, one with a “royal seal,” a plastic miniature in a tiny, ridiculous tuckbox, and ornate wooden stands that don’t fit back in the box and have to be disassembled each game. On the other hand, the art is quite good, the District tiles are nice and thick, and the plastic gold coins gave me a huge wave of nostalgia, being identical to those in the original editions of Citadels. Overall, it does look really nice, and the MSRP of $29.99 is reasonable in this day and age, but so many component decisions have me going “….but why?”. 

Citadels was a great game in its heyday, though I would argue it has some major flaws that make it too chaotic, and it has probably been eclipsed by modern social deduction games. However, I was impressed by how much Citadels Duel rectifies these issues. One example is the Assassin: in a heads-up game, you are sacrificing a potential good action of your own to take it, and the “feelsbad” are less: if you lose a character, you still have two more. The draft is extremely simple, and I think it does a good job of offering the right level of context: I know maybe 80% of what my opponent has/should have, and have to figure out how to play around that. 

While there are many changes, the most important is the council track. Having a majority on this track makes your basic action significantly better than your opponent’s, so there is real incentive to get it swinging your way, and three of the nine characters interact with it. The game still has wild swings like the original, and yet somehow it felt fairer, like I could have prevented some of those moves with clever play or forward thinking about my opponent’s potential characters. There are many other improvements: District color matches much more than the past, the unique buildings are pretty interesting (though I find the Ivory Tower a little pointless), and the “sudden death” of the endgame brings a tension that finishing a round would not. 

Citadels Duel is honestly a great two-player game, and something I find far superior to the original Citadels. The problem is its modern context. Duel games are a dime or dozen, not to mention excellent two-player-only games that aren’t Duel-ified versions of other games, or games that just play really well at two. On my list of “lunchtime games for two,” Citadels Duel is probably around 25th, simply due to the chaos and its lack of that “extra layer” of gameplay present in my favorites. Games with more engine-building or resource management or more something are just going to be higher. A few would be Res Arcana (Duo), Zenith, Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth, Splendor Duel, Targi, and Star Realms. How often are you reaching for option #25? I think I can heartily recommend Citadels Duel for gamers who truly love Citadels (in fact, that’s who I gifted the game to), but for someone simply looking for a fast, two-player game… I wouldn’t tell them not to get it, but if asked for a broad list of recommendations, a lot of other names would come first.