Caylus at Critical Hit, Wednesday the 12th of July

Finally, back to Coralville for Wednesday boardgaming, and Caylus to boot! I was pretty excited about this, as I have only been able to get in on a game of Caylus once, and I liked it a fair amount. I wanted to play it again to see if I really wanted to buy it or not. Also, I was eager to visit the store as one of the games I had on order, Funny Friends, came in - hopefully there'll be a session report for that up here soon!

It turned out that Chris couldn't make it for some reason, but had left his copy of Caylus with Jerod. Gare and Erin, two experienced players, were there, so they went over the rules with Jerod and I, and we started building.

Caylus is a good thinker, with there always being more to do than you can manage. Money is tight, especially at the beginning, and you have to be careful to use your workers the right way. I passed too quickly on the first turn, and Gare and Erin jumped out to an early lead. Gare consistently took building favors throughout the game, a path which I followed, while Erin took victory point favors, eschewing building.

We moved forward in this way, with Jerod building buildings and making money and resources, but not really getting vps. Notably, he failed to build in the castle in the first turn, costing him points/favors. We moved through the next couple turns pretty quickly, with Gare and Erin pulling ahead in first and second, and me following fairly close in 3rd. Jerod started to fall far behind in vps, but he was collectin lots of money and resources. He made particularly good use of having a worker in the Inn, as he had a couple turns using all his workers.

Gare and I kept pushing the building with favors, and we started getting vps from people using them. I jumped intothe lead with about three turns to go. In the second to last turn, I picked up four vps that way. Jerod got to build the castle for 25 vps, pretty much catching him up with everyone. I took first play position, and jumped on stone building for the last turn. I figured I might have it here, as I had blocked Erin out of the stone buildings. Gare built a big vp building with a favor, to make it interesting. Jerod built twice in the castle, robbing Erin of a favor and keeping it tense. I got my big building off, giving me some breathing room. However, Erin had bought two gold in the last turn, and, with the one she was sitting on, had nine vps to the four I was sitting on. After end game scoring, she had the game, with me in second, Gare in third, and Jerod in a close fourth in his first game.

This was really a fun game, with people exploring different strategies to work toward vicotry. The tense finish was great, too, with all of us feeling we had a chance, and that everyone else did, also, going into the last turn. One thing that's a little odd about Caylus for me is that I don't seem to really ever think about the theme while I'm playing. I'm just trying to make the best use of my pieces/money/actions, but now in the context of building the city/castle. I wonder a bit, with no real hidden information or random game mechanics, if you couldn't get down and script out a lot of the possible moves. That said, I think this one stays on the buy list, just waiting for another Rio Grande reprint...

GG, GL