Caylus - 6th June 2012

With only one Rival confirmed (although with 2 nil responses and an enigmatic "ok") I was preparing for anything from 2-5 players this week. As luck would have it Kieron, the only person I was expecting for sure was running late so when he turned up at 8.30 we settled for a 2 player game. At this point Stu phoned up - he'd already been over, seen no cars, assumed he'd got the location wrong and left.

Stu made it back over and we decided to play Caylus.

The initial set up presented some interesting problems - the woodcutter was placed ahead of any of the resource production buildings making it a little more difficult than usual to develop the town. For the first phase I managed to get a single build in rounds 1 and 3 while Kieron and Stu fought over a double build in round 2. Stu and I also managed to get a couple of buildings down. Kieron then started making use of the joust to gain extra favours and moved ahead of us in developing residential buildings at the expense of sacrificing some castle builds.

The endgame came very suddenly as Stu decided to make the most of his lead and rush the bailiff to the finish line. Kieron suddenly developed a prestige building and shot some 20 points into the lead. On the following turn he was able to both block my attempt to build a prestige building and influence the provost causing the bailiff to move to the finish line and win the game.

Except - I paid out to move the provost back and switched player order to put me first should there be another turn. It was then up to Stu - he could move the provost to cause the game to finish early, but probably give himself second place, or he could allow another turn and mix it up. He chose the latter.

At this point it looked like Kieron disintegrated. He hadn't planned for another turn and he'd effectively finished early. I on the other hand had a fist full of resources that Kieron had blocked me from using last turn and with first move was able to make sure I wasn't blocked. As Kieron and Stu fought over the victory point and gold earning buildings at the end of the road I was able to build a prestige building and earn enough favours to take the lead.

Final scores: David 100, Kieron 80, Stu 74.

Sorry Kieron...