CoD Vanguard: Map Guide for Castle

Castle is the stunning remake of a World at War map. It's one of the best maps in Call of Duty: Vanguard's multiplayer, so here is our map guide, including a few tips and tricks to get you started...

Vanguard Maps Castle
Are you ready to fight on Vanguard's remake of Castle? | © Activision

Castle is a multiplayer map that released with Call of Duty: Vanguard's launch on November 5, and is the remake of a classic World at War Map. It was originally designed for 6v6 matches in standard Multiplayer Modes, though it is also available at multiple combat pacing's. Set in a war-torn Japanese Castle, the map features a fair amount of destructibility, some truly beautiful scenery, and a decent amount of verticality. It's certainly one of the best maps in the game's Multiplayer.

Check out our gameplay first impressions of Call of Duty: Vanguard's Castle Map:

This particular map has been bombarded with shells, prior to an infantry advance upon the devastated buildings. Set on the southern-most island of Japan during autumn, Castle is a brightly coloured and insanely pretty map, and certainly worth checking out in Call of Duty: Vanguard. It's medium-sized and an absolute blast to play through. Here is our Castle Map Guide!

Castle: The Map

Castle is one of the most tranquil maps in Call of Duty: Vanguard, and features a reasonable portion of both indoor and outdoor spaces to fight amongst. It certainly shows off the strength of Vanguard's graphics, featuring a large variety of bright and cheerful autumn colours, big and pretty castle buildings, and a fair amount of destructibility. The light in particularly is really strong here, with oranges and reds bouncing off the walls in unique and exquisite ways. The map is extremely similar to the World at War original from 2008, with only a few minor differences that we will outline below.

Vanguard Castle Minimap
Check out Castle's Mini-Map from Call of Duty: Vanguard! | © Activision

Castle: Gameplay Overview & Tactics

Similarly to the World at War original, Castle features a ton of little nooks and crannies that you can find, allowing you the perfect vantage points for engagement, and for such a small and flat map, a decent amount of verticality within the buildings themselves. Whilst Castle does favor camping, it's not such a problem here as, once you get to know it well, there is always a way to smoke out a camper relatively easily. There are a lot of places to hide, but also a lot of ways to break into those hidey-holes and wreak devastation upon those within.

There is a particularly fantastic little spot above the building's main central room which allows you to head up a short stairwell and then look down upon the room. This is a wonderful way to use the maps destruction to your advantage as you are hidden until you choose to shoot through the upper wall and fire down upon those in the room below. It's a really great little tactical spot, but can also be easily flushed out by another player choosing to run up the stairwell behind you!

Castle is generally better for more objective-based game modes that will push people out of those corners and force them to move a little bit more, and we would recommend a loadout more designed for close-quarters engagements. An SMG and perhaps a Shotgun would be a good combination here, as it would allow the player a little bit of range with a well customized SMG, but some real indoor power with something like the Double Barrel Shotgun.

All Hardpoint Locations in Castle

Vanguard castle hardpoint locations
Here are the Hardpoint Locations for Castle in Call of Duty: Vanguard. | © Activision / EarlyGame

Castle is one of the best maps in Call of Duty: Vanguard and, as usual, features five distinct Hardpoint Locations. As usual, they rotate amongst themselves in a pre-determined order. You can see that order by simply referring to that sexy-as-anything map above this paragraph, or the list below. Seriously, read guys, read!

  1. Castle (Lower Floor)
  2. Tea Room
  3. High Ground
  4. Garden
  5. Bridge

Unlike on a map like Berlin, where the Hardpoints are gathered round a particular section of the map, Castle has a very even distribution. Each of these different locations showcase both a strength to exploit and a weakness. To make that a little less cryptic, each Hardpoint has a few strategic elements to keep an eye out for. For example, High Ground (3) is (as the name suggests) at a point on the map which provides you with a good vantage point over the map.

This is compounded, however, by the fact that you are very exposed here and easily sniped or snuck up on from behind. As with any Call of Duty: Vanguard map, there's a lot to discover tactically in Castle, and it's certainly one to be explored thoroughly so as to make sure that players take advantage of the map to its fullest potential. All of this being said, Castle is certainly one of the best maps in Call of Duty: Vanguard, just as it was one of the best maps in World at War...

Evan Williams

Australian gamer, musician, and journalist at EarlyGame. Currently living in Germany so no, I don't ride a Kangaroo to work. I am currently hard at work making our CoD and Rocket League pages the best on the internet. Lofty ambitions,...