HIGHLIGHTS AMONG GAMES

CAYLUS

For the King’s Favor

Dear Reader! “1289. In order to fortify and strengthen the borders of the Kingdom of France King Philipp The Fair decides to have a new castle built. resolves to buy a new castle. For the time being, Caylus is but a humble, unimportant dwelling, but soon workers and craftsmen will be flocking to it by the cartload, attracted by the prospects of great wealth and prestige the planned building may hold in stock for them. All around the building site a city is developing slowly… Players take on the roles of builders who are constructing the castle of the king and developing the infrastructure of the city nestling at the base of the castle. They strive for prestige and try to win the favor of the King. When the castle has been completed the game will end and the winner will be the player who owns most prestige.” Those are the words with which the rulebook starts the challenging adventure published by Ystari Games. And those words are program, too! They present a high-class game experience of many levels and challenges, which is as time-consuming as it is interactive. All that is happening on a colorful game board à la Arnaud Demaegd (memories of “Ys” come to mind), with components featuring hundreds of individual pieces. Voilá, prepare yourself to immerse yourself into a strategic and tactical adventure for two, three, four or even five master builders. Where? At the Austrian Games Museum at Leopoldsdorf, of course! www.spielen.at

The critically scrutinizing eye of the reviewer keeps continually searching and spotting in the light of experts group’s lamp. With “Caylus” one must mention from the start and emphasize the elegance and harmony of the game flow. The individual decision crossroads may be interwoven and ramified, but the overall process of building the castle remains clear and unfazed. Not for a moment are players distracted or excluded from the core purpose of the enterprise, the placement and scoring of workers, as each consideration of one player is deciding and of having a sustained and lasting effect on other players. Again and again a need remains unfulfilled, very similar to real life. Sometimes there might be a lack of plain money, sometimes a tiny unit of wood or an easily provided cloth might promise the master stroke!

When finally we succeed to construct a magnificent building it might just be outside the influence sphere of the reeve. Should you happen to be only in second place in the castle, you might not incur the much-desired favor of the King. If you happen to place your worker on one of the urgently needed buildings you might come away empty-handed from the next one. If you acquire the wrong resource you might lack food or wood in a deciding moment in the game. The opponents are not asleep on their feet, that much is clear. Like a puppet on o string the seneschal moves along step by step on his lonely road and with his advance the end of the game is coming. Maybe one word on the game board: idiosyncratic and interesting, very colorful in strong colors. Functional and sporting a Kramer track. On top of all that I must highlight the idea of placing six workers per round. This results in a permanent interaction which reminds all involved of actions and results in forced reactions. This creates liveliness around the board; supplies of resources, building, turn order, brick-laying at the castle, reeve movement and special actions and favor points from the king are negotiated. Caylus is an excellent development game, now called worker placement game, which comes alive with your ambitions as a builder. What more do you want?

Comments to: hugo.kastner@chello.at

Homepage: www.hugo-kastner.at

RECOMMENDATION # 87

Players: 2-5

Age: 12+

Designer: William Attia

Art: Arnaud Demaegd

Time: 120+

Price: ca. 35 Euro

Year: 2005

Publisher: Ystari / Huch! & friends

www.ystari.com

Tactic: 8 von 9

Info±: 0 von 9

Chance: 1 von 9

Two hours or more, brimming with tactical and strategic decisions guaranteeing a consistent level of tension and challenge, must be set aside for Caylus. Elements of chance are absent, bluff equals Zero and nobody suffers from a lack of information because all is handled openly and face-up. Caylus can be put down as a nearly pure logic adventure in the „Tension Triangle“ of competence - level of information and luck. Nearly pure due to a certain element of chance that is introduced into the game with the order of play for three or more players, connected to an order of decisions on actions.

Hugos EXPERT TIP

The rules of the game take some time to get acquainted with. Without a certain amount of playing experience the individual strategies do not reveal themselves, which means that the first castle construction should be taking as a test game. But I must emphasize that all rules are stated precisely and logically. But as the building tiles are not carrying text information but only pictograms, it takes some time until players can orientate themselves without having to consult the rules again and again. It is also important to intimately know the individual phases of the game and the suggestions of the author included in the game should be read and adhered to if you want to have a realistic chance to win this comparative competition of master builders.

Hugos FLASHLIGHT

My first encounter with the Kingdom of France in the 12th Century was something of a déjà-vu experience, as some of the game mechanisms, resources, building tiles as the targeted together created a momentary vivid impression and a vague illusion of having seen this already, of being familiar with it. That has been around, I can recognize it - this is what flashed through my mind. Or was it only an illusory familiarity which went as quickly as it came? Irrelevant, in the end I must confess, because Caylus leaves a very strong, lasting impression, with a challenge for mind end energy of players that feels immense.

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