Caylus - 13 February 2008

Down to just two rivals this week - so Kieron and David took a look at Caylus. My initial misgivings about whether the it would play well with just two players were shown to be unfounded as a great game unfolded. The game does change as players alternate for player order, and with only two players there is a reasonable chance of being able to follow at least part of your plan. With more players there is more competition for resources and more scope for other players to mess up your turn.

Much of the game revolved around our choices on the King's Favour chart. Kieron plumped for prestige - figuring that he might as well get victory points directly. I initially went for money and then when that was maxed I switched to the building favours, allowing some free builds.


The result of these choices affected our game-play. Kieron was ahead on prestige for most of the game, but would sometimes stall due to lack of funds allowing me to close the gap. I was awash with cash and in the later game able to use the favours to switch some buildings to the valuable prestige buildings.

Then approaching endgame I made a significant error. So used to having plenty of money I spent all my cash building a prestige building in an effort to catch up with Kieron. It worked but left me with no money as we entered the penultimate turn. All I could do was get a quick favour to earn some cash for next turn, and was left to watch as Kieron shot ahead again. Knowing that Kieron had no ready source of income I spent a little of my remaining money to force Kieron to spend a couple of coins to keep his game plan alive.

On the final turn - it was Kieron's turn to be short of cash, and I was able to build a final prestige building. As we calculated the final prestige scores Kieron was on 141 and I was on 139 - neither of us had enough money to change this, but I was left with a single unused gold resource - putting me on 142. After a couple of hours and very different play styles there was a single point in it.

A great game - we must play it with more players.