Review Details

Caylus

Product Rating:

Product Review (submitted on January 8, 2010):

Edition Reviewed: Caylus - 2nd Edition
Designer: William Attia
Artists: Cyril Demaegd, Arnaud Demaegd, and Mike Doyle
Publisher: Rio Grande Games / Ystari Games
Year: 2005 (1st Edition)
Players: 2 - 5
Length: 60-150 minutes
Ages: 12+ years
Game Category: City Building. Economic, and Medieval
Game Mechanic: Worker Placement


1.0 - Introduction

According to Wikipedia:
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caylus)

Wikipedia wrote:
Caylus initially gained public acclaim when it was rated the number one game of the October 2005 game fair in Essen, Germany by a public vote conducted by Fairplay Magazine. [2] It quickly rose to become one of the most discussed and top-rated games on BoardGameGeek, a popular online board gaming forum.


Despite Caylus being an early choice, I did do my research. I had played Carcassonne enough and even with four of the major expansions, there just wasn’t enough meat on it for me. I needed a game that couldn’t be taught to blind flees on a hot day (?). The day it arrived, I opened it alongside Tigris & Euphrates. The Eurogame similarities (having read about them several times), of using mainly thick cardboard and wood for most components were definitely true. Now looking back, I wonder if the same woodmaker created most of the components for Caylus, Settlers of Catan, and Agricola (among countless other Eurogames). They are essentially all the same.

Instead of explaining the rules and gameplay, in-depth, therefore giving myself the opportunity off messing up a handful of rules, I will just refer readers to the links for the two Official websites (that I know about) with links to rules, as well:

Rio Grande Games
http://www.riograndegames.com/games.html?id=65

Ystari Games
http://www.ystari.com/wpe/?cat=5

Rules
• English http://www.ystari.com/caylus/Caylus72E.pdf
• French http://www.ystari.com/caylus/Caylus72F.pdf
• German http://www.ystari.com/caylus/Caylus72G.pdf

For those wondering what the game is about, I will let the games description speak for itself (source: Rio Grande Games / back cover of the box) do the job:
The Back Cover wrote:

1289. To strengthen the borders of the Kingdom of France, King Philip the Fair decided to have a new castle built. For the time being, Caylus is but a humble village, but soon, workers and craftsmen will be flocking by the cartload, attracted by the great prospects. Around the building site, a city is slowly rising up. The players embody master builders. By building the King’s castle and developing the city around it, they earn prestige points and gain the King’s favor. When the castle is finished, the player who has earned the most prestige wins the game.

My non-historical simplified description of this game would be:

You are stuck in France near the end of the 13th century. Be the most efficient builder and/or the most effective screwage-bringer. Succeed in (this portion of your life) either by making the King happy while building his castle sections or by developing the village of Caylus into a productive town. The player with the most prestige (Victory Points) at the time when the final section of the King’s castle is completed wins.


2.0 - Component Overview

I will be honest; games that look awful are just not appealing to me. I also like a game that has quality components. As many, who have read some of my other posts might have noticed, I am a storage and protection nut (sleeves + Plano cases anyone?). Caylus has a lot of components, but they are easy to manage. The tiles are all laid alongside the board, the resource cubes and denier (money/coins) can be thrown in a pile on the image of the castle (what I do) or left in separate piles along the board. There are only five resources (food - pink, wood - brown, stone-gray, cloth - navy/purple, and gold - yellow), one (gold) of which is not used until around midway through the game (and even then, not as often as the other resources).


2.1 - Mapboard

The mapboard is fairly nice and the layout is well done. Looking closely, the canvas-styled painting of the mapboard can be appreciated. The mapboard is also fairly small, compared to other Eurogames. With no hidden aspects in this game, players can sit next to one another, if desired. This is useful if playing on huge tables that would leaning over and reaching. With a worker placement game like this, it is nice to be close to the board.


2.2 - Rules and Contents

Caylus (2nd Edition) comes with a short rule booklet that I found very good. I had read that the previous edition had an awful set of rules. If this is true, it appears that they have been upgraded considerably. There is a newer special edition (and possibly a newer printing/edition of the regular version) of this game out. I am unsure of the contents of the game and rules.
 
According to the rule booklet, the following are the contents of the game:
• 1 board
• 1 white ‘bailiff’ cylinder and 1 white ‘provost’ disc
• 30 one denier coins and 10 five deniers coins
• 30 ‘worker’ cylinders (6 for each color: blue, red, green, orange and black)
• about 100 houses (about 20 for each color: blue, red, green, orange and black)
• 35 marker discs (7 for each color: blue, red, green, orange and black)
• about 140 resource cubes (about 30 pink, purple, brown and gray cubes; about 20 yellow cubes)
• 40 building tiles (6 neutral tiles, 8 wooden tiles, 9 stone tiles, 8 residential tiles, 9 prestige tiles)
• this booklet


2.3 - Resources and Money

Like many other Eurogames, the resources in this game are little wooden cubes (or pseudo-cubes). For the most part, they have been well-cut and evenly painted. They are of colours that allow for fast and easy identification.

The money is this game is in the form of 1 and 5 denier coins.

 
2.4 - Player-Specific Components

People usually enjoy choosing to use their favourite coloured game components. Personally, for this game, mine is blue. The choice of component colours, while basic, is probably a good thing. There is green, black, orange, blue, and red. Among these components are houses, marker discs, and worker cylinders. They come player-specific components individually-packaged in their own plastic bag which should be adequate for easy organization.

The house components in this game have a couple uses. They are used both to mark having placed resources in the castle and to mark ownership of a tile after having placed (built) it. The house pieces are made of wood. Some of them have minor variations in their cut quality, but it does not impact their purpose. Overall, they are fairly solid components. They somewhat resemble the plastic green houses from some versions of Monopoly.

There are seven marker discs for each player. They are also well-cut. They are used for various accounting purposes on the board:

• keeping track of prestige points (x1)
• to show turn order (x1)
• for placement on the bridge (x1)
• along each of the four royal favour tracks (x4)

Another main game component is the six worker cylinders. They are the heart of the game and will be used by each player to determine which tiles or other board locales will be used by each worker. While being ordinary to look at, they are easy to pick up and place and tend to sit in place rather well. There is nothing worse than a component that tends to be hard to stand up (thinks about the tall player markers from Pandemic (non-expansion releases).


2.5 - Building Tiles

In Caylus, when a player is given the opportunity to build (via a builder tile or royal favour), they can lay down a tile corresponding to the building type allowed; brown (wood), gray (stone), green (residential), or blue (prestige). Also, in order to lay down these tiles, the proper resources and/or deniers are required (shown in the upper left-hand side of each tile). In some instances, royal favours can be used to reduced the required resource/denier amounts. The tiles are made from thick cardboard. They are approximately the same size and shape as a Carcassonne tile (if not identical... I never compared them directly). They feel of high quality and should not wear out easily.

Neutral tiles are the only non-fixed tiles that are played at the beginning of the game. Unlike all other tiles, they do not have build costs as they cannot be built. They also represent the only random aspect in Caylus (that I am aware of). During setup, the six neutral tiles are placed randomly along the first six spaces, after the bridge. Although their location does not have a large impact on the entire game, it does impact the start as the players may be more apt to place workers on earlier tiles for better protection from having their turn skipped. This is especially important when playing with a greater number of players as there is more possibility for movement of the Provost.

The first tile that is usually built is the wood tile. They are brown tiles and offer expanded worker placement possibilities beyond the castle, neutral tiles, and fixed-tiles (printed directly on the board). As can be seen on these tiles (along with the stone, residential, and prestige tiles), there are numbers written on their top right within a red shield. These are the prestige points (VP’s) that are scored for building these tiles.

Once you have access to the stone building royal favour or tile (wood), you will be able to build the grey stone-based tiles. These allow many more advanced building opportunities than with the wood tiles. For me, this is where the options and decisions really expand. Based on your current strategy, you may take many different paths to attempt victory. The slightly brighter-coloured (intentional or not…) grey tile, in the top-left of the above picture, is the expansion tile called The Jeweller. It was included in my 2nd Edition copy of the game. The Jeweller allowed for a player to use their accumulated gold to obtain a decent-amount of prestige points without having to use them on prestige buildings (blue tiles).

Residential tiles are built using either the wood (brown) lawyer tile or the lowest royal favour track. They are all identical to one another. Aside from giving the player one denier when collecting income, they are used to build pretige tiles off of.

Along with building sections of the castle, I find building prestige tiles one of the best strategies in the game. However, they require more planning and valuable resources (gold) than just building in the castle. Building prestige tiles early allows players the first choice for selection. Some tiles are valued considerably higher than others, but generally cost a considerable amount of resources more. However, with a game as tight-scoring as Caylus, every prestige point matters.

Some games have a set amount of turns and others play until a specific resource of component runs out. With Caylus, the game ends when one of two things occurs:

• The Bailiff reaches the file section scoring space on the board (between 9-18 turns)
• The final section of the castle is built

Both of these situations end the game upon the end of the turn, thus triggering final scoring. Based on the location of the Provost, the Bailiff will either move ahead one (Provost at or behind the Bailiff) or will move ahead two (Provost is ahead of the Bailiff).

The two components are cut from wood, along with the houses, marker discs, and worker cylinders. While the components are painted white, I found that they only had one thin layer of paint and that the wood could easily been seen through it. Because of this, the paint job on the components is not very appealing, yet functional.


3.0 - Gameplay Overview

The gameplay of Caylus is where the game really shines. If you are not a fan of the art in this game, or of the Burger King mascot on the cover, don’t let that detour you from playing the game. As I mentioned before, awful-looking games are not as appealing. While I find Caylus a nice-looking game, others may not. However, it is harder to argue against the gameplay (yet some and their arguments are valid from their point-of-view).


3.1 - How Random is the Game?

Some games are nearly completely random (Yahtzee) while others have next to no random aspects at all; Caylus. As stated in the component overview, the only random aspect of this game is the initial order of the six neutral (pink) tiles. Another random aspect would be the initial turn order. However, I try not to look at that as a random aspect of a game, but as a necessary variable found in nearly any game (except ones like Race for the Galaxy, that play out almost entirely simultaneously... that is until, of course, the VP chips begin running out and order may matters for various reasons). Beyond the order of the neutral tiles, every other decision is based upon the actions of every other player.


3.2 - (Ir)Relevant (long-term) Strategy

Just when you thought you had everything figured out, you find yourself short one measly, yet incredibly important denier. Now, all of a sudden, your entire strategy and plan is destroyed. Without that denier you cannot place a worker to obtain that needed piece of stone, which means you cannot build enough batches in the castle, which leads you to not having enough resources to out-do your opponent to get the royal favour, which means you won’t be able to get the prestige building opportunity from the building royal favour track. You begin to panic or lengthy AP (analysis paralysis). What will you do? You feel like you’ve been set back an entire turn. Maybe you have been. However, with multiple paths to victory and an incredible amount of choices, there is usually always an alternative (whether or not it is better or worse, is another thing). In Caylus, it seems that one of the most important skills is knowing when and how to modify a strategy. Choosing to just focus on one thing may work for a few turns. However, if the other players evolve their strategy in attempts to counter yours, you may find yourself in trouble. As frustrating as games can be, Caylus is challenging without being brutally unfair.


3.3 - Down-time?

There are several games, that I have read reviews for, where people stated the downtime killed the game. I have never played the game with more than 3 players (including myself). Whether playing the game with 3-players or only 2-players, I found the games to pass quickly. Alternating worker placement (for as long as a player can afford to place a worker), there are really only a handful of seconds between each placement (barring players with AP). Any game prone to AP can have a lot of downtime between games, no matter whether they are heavy or light. If a player keeps the game flowing, plays very smoothly. I am sure, however, that the game could become fairly chaotic and possibly unfriendly with five players. Resources-taking would become fairly competitive and screwage moves with the Provost could become overwhelming.


3.4 - Major Paths to Victory

To give you an idea of the different paths to victory, I will list the ways to get prestige points (VP’s) in this game (this list is, of course, based on my own limited experience and understanding of the game):

Building sections of the castle
• Each batch of cubes earns 5/4/3 VP’s based on which section of the castle is currently being built
• During the scoring of the 3 sections of castle, having more batches contributed will allow for bonus (possibly multiple) royal favours to be received

Laying tiles will achieve prestige points (VP’s)
• Wood (brown) tiles: 2, 4 VP’s
• Stone (gray) tiles: 3, 6 VP’s (and possibly 1 royal favour)
• Residential (green) tiles: 2 VP’s
• Prestige (blues) tiles: 7-25 VP’s (and possibly 1 or 2 royal favours)

Using royal favours to directly get VP’s
• 1/2/3/4/5 based on favour track position
• Royal favours can be obtained from castle 1st place in castle building, castle sectional scoring bonuses, the jousting match fixed-tile, some stone tiles, and some prestige tiles

Obtaining gold pieces to trade/cash-in for VP’s
• Using The Jeweller, 1 gold piece = 5 VP’s, 2 gold pieces = 9 VP’s
• At the end of the game, each gold piece = 3 VP’s

Obtaining VP’s through other users “renting” your owned tiles
• Every time another player puts their worker on a tile you placed (and therefore own), you receive 1 VP

Although not an efficient way to get VP’s, at the end of the game:
• 3 resource cubes = 1 VP
• 4 deniers = 1 VP


4.0 - Conclusion

4.1 - Replayability

As can be seen, there are several ways to achieve prestige points, in this game. Because of this, there is not one sure way to win. What may work one game may not be effective in a subsequent match. One of the greatest aspects of Caylus is having the game that is enjoyable to explore the different paths to victory and experimenting with ever-evolving strategies. For me, the replayability of this game is excellent. Every time I play, I find myself continually attempting new combinations and optimal strategies. However, the other player(s) always seem to throw a wrench into the mix. Mistakes can be costly. However, one on its own are not usually game-threatening. Unless you’re playing against extremely experienced players (something I have no experience of), you should be okay making some mistakes.


4.2 - Is this Game Right for You?

Pros:
• No hidden information
• Fast game setup
• Plays excellent with 2-players
• Very deep gameplay
• Multiple paths to victory (high replayability)
• Evolving strategy
• Short time between actions
• Nearly no randomness (only neutral tiles setup)

Cons:
• Can induce analysis paralysis in some gamers
• Some players may find the game has too much screwage
• May become too chaotic and lengthy with 5-players
• Experienced players will leave inexperienced players well-behind


4.3 - Final Words

Cayuls is one of my favourite games. Being a fan of low randomness (I don’t mind it in card driven strategy/wargames), I like the challenge that Caylus brings and the strategy required to succeed. Despite having a low random factor, there is high replayability due to there being many choices per action. As long as players do not over-AP, the game should play smoothly. For a worker-placement game, Caylus has a very quick setup. On the other hand, people who do not like screwage and chaos may want to think carefully about this game before choosing to purchase it, especially if they intend to play it with 4 or 5 players. The game can be unforgiving to new players, especially if played online against experienced players. I highly recommend Caylus to anyone who wants a deep, enjoyable, thinking game.

Overall: Highly Recommended
Grade: A+


(originally posted at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/4403731)