Carless Caylus

Despite my lack of a car at present I was still able to enjoy a Saturday meal and game with the Goldstone Gamers thanks to one of them kindly giving me a lift and returning me home in the early hours.

This week's game was Caylus, a game I have played three times before but not for a year or two. Some of it quickly came back to me but ideas for a coherent strategy did not. With the advent of Caylus Magna Carta this had been ignored for some time and I had forgotten that I do actually like it.

The reason for its re-appearance was probably two-fold: Recent games of Carson City had definite echoes of Caylus in the game play and Paultro had acquired one of the limited edition sets with its mini expansion, "landscape" board and nice bits. He had "pimped" it still further with some parts from elsewhere so that the wood, stone and gold tokens all looked more like the commodity they represented.

We all agreed that it would be too confusing to replace the blocks used to represent cloth and food particularly as the food for some reason is normally represented by pink cubes which is a bit of a step from a wooden fish, loaf or wheatsheaf. All this made it very pleasant to play with and I particularly liked the weighty metal money in this edition (pictured above).

The game started with some fast and aggressive play making use of the provost to thwart acquisition of materials. Inevitably as there became more things to do, play became slower and more prone to A.P. In the end the game took considerably longer than we had anticipated and the planned filler (Diamant) never reached the table.

I pulled out a small lead early on and was surprised to not only stretch it but stay far enough ahead to take the win, despite my opponents beginning to make much better scores at the end. Having been blocked out of green building for several rounds I was unable in the end to place any blue buildings and stone buildings had also become impossible by the last couple of turns.

My only chance to keep the narrowing gap until the end came through favours, and my strong presence in the VP lane was enough to stay ahead. It was a close game: Paultro and his partner were second and third with one point between them and my chauffeur brought up the rear despite a strong performance in the early game. I think we all enjoyed the game and will give it another run out before too long.