The White Castle is played across three rounds. Each player gets three die-placement turns per round, just nine in the whole game. You draft dice from bridges, place them on the castle or your own domain, and use the resulting actions to send courtiers, gardeners and warriors into scoring positions. This walkthrough covers the original Devir game; Matcha changes the turn count.
Prepare the castle and your domain
Set the castle cards, dice action tiles, gardens and training yards according to the rulebook’s player-count setup. Each player has a domain board with five of each clan member, tracks for food, iron and mother-of-pearl, a lantern area and starting cards. In each round, roll the three colors of dice, sort each color on its own bridge from low on the left to high on the right, and play in the current heron turn order.
One turn: draft and place one die
- Take a die from either exposed end of any bridge. A die in the middle is unavailable until one end opens. Taking the left end also grants your visible lantern rewards.
- Place the die in a legal die space on the main board or your domain. Compare its value with the printed value beneath it, or the die it covers. Gain the difference in coins if higher; pay the difference if lower. At equality, no coins change hands.
- Resolve that space’s action or actions in the permitted order. Match die colors to castle room tiles or domain rows where required. Outside-the-Walls spaces accept any color. The Well accepts any color and is always treated as value one.
In a game with three or four players, the main board permits a die to cover one existing die in an eligible space; in one or two players, dice cannot be stacked on dice. The newly placed die is still compared with the value immediately below it.
Send clan members
Warriors: spend the iron indicated by a Training Yard, place the next Warrior from the left of your domain and take its yard action. At game end, that yard’s Warrior values are multiplied by your number of courtiers inside the castle.
Gardeners: spend the food shown for a Garden card and place the next Gardener from your domain on a card where you have none. Perform its printed action immediately. A Gardener may activate again at the end of rounds one and two if at least one die remains on the bridge above that garden.
Courtiers: a Courtier action can request an audience for two coins, moving your next Courtier to the Gate, and/or move one Courtier up one or two levels for two or five mother-of-pearl. Reaching a room on the first or second floor replaces your domain Action card with that room’s card and resolves its light-background effect, subject to the deck’s availability. Reaching the Daimyo’s room instead grants a lantern reward and may give a favor-card benefit.
Track influence and chain benefits
Some effects move your marker along the Passage of Time track. Crossing a season checkpoint costs the indicated Daimyo Seals; your position affects later turn order and final points. Lantern rewards include the visible icons in your lantern area, so a Courtier’s room-card exchange can strengthen future left-bridge picks. Food, iron and mother-of-pearl each have a maximum of seven on your domain tracks.
Round end and game end
Once everyone has placed three dice, three remain across the bridges. Reorder players by their Passage of Time positions. After rounds one and two only, activate eligible gardeners and reroll/re-sort dice for the next round. After round three, go straight to final scoring: unused resources, Passage of Time, courtiers, warriors and gardeners add to Clan Points earned during play. Highest total wins; a tie is decided by higher turn order.
First-game check: before placing a die, count its coin difference, check whether left-bridge lanterns fire, and name the clan action it enables. That catches most expensive placements before they happen.
Continue: The White Castle guide · How to play · Strategy · Scoring · Matcha expansion
Rules source: Devir’s official English rulebook and publisher game page. This article describes the original base game.