Another game of 2-3 player favourite Caylus for James, Stu and David.
David and Stu competed in the town for control of the most useful and productive buildings, but James dominated castle building, earning extra favours and achieved the win. As usual, despite a variety of strategies the results were surprisingly close:
James 76, Stu 73, David 67
Showing posts with label Caylus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Caylus. Show all posts
Wednesday, 16 May 2018
Thursday, 7 June 2012
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...
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...
Friday, 19 March 2010
Caylus - March 17th 2010
With work, visitors and illness reducing our numbers to three this week, I decided to give Caylus another outing. Kieron and I had played a couple of cracking two-player games, but it hadn't been so impressive with 4 or 5 players as it causes the action selection to become slow and difficult to manage.
So how about three players? It was pretty good in my opinion. The action selection was more difficult, as with two players taking an action between each go, it was harder to plan out a turn. The key thing was although we were kept off balance by the other actions, we weren't completely blocked - there were always options.
This was Orhan's first game and Kieron and I warned him that money is often tight throughout the game. In a spirited attempt to prove us wrong Orhan played what can only be described as a merchant's game - pulling in a great income both from favours and trading. This inevitably left him lagging behind on the prestige scale, but able to continue taking actions even when David and Kieron passed causing the action cost to rise. I went for a favour heavy approach, doing a lot of castle building and jousting. Kieron built a number of major buildings and pulled in prestige from Orhan and me for the use of his property.
In terms of favours, we all went for money at the start. Since I was getting more favours I was able to switch to the building track later in the game while the others went for prestige.
Mid-way through the game Kieron was slightly ahead of me with Orhan lagging behind. As we approached endgame, the critical buildings allowing conversion of cash to prestige and gold were built and Orhan started to pull back towards the leaders.
In the last couple of turns, we each tried to convert our residential buildings to prestige buildings to get the major score boosts they offer. Through my use of the building favour track I had an extra residential building but only had enough resources to convert one of them to a relatively average 12-pointer. This was enough to put me into the lead and in the final turn Kieron and Orhan competed for the massive 25-pointer - Kieron eventually winning it and charging back into the lead. Unable to compete I concentrated on getting more resources and triggered a final favour during the final scoring. This let me use the building track one last time to build another prestige building. I only had one gold left so was pretty limited in choice, but it was just enough to secure a victory. As usual Caylus went right down to the wire.
Final scores: David 99, Kieron 95, Orhan 80
So how about three players? It was pretty good in my opinion. The action selection was more difficult, as with two players taking an action between each go, it was harder to plan out a turn. The key thing was although we were kept off balance by the other actions, we weren't completely blocked - there were always options.
This was Orhan's first game and Kieron and I warned him that money is often tight throughout the game. In a spirited attempt to prove us wrong Orhan played what can only be described as a merchant's game - pulling in a great income both from favours and trading. This inevitably left him lagging behind on the prestige scale, but able to continue taking actions even when David and Kieron passed causing the action cost to rise. I went for a favour heavy approach, doing a lot of castle building and jousting. Kieron built a number of major buildings and pulled in prestige from Orhan and me for the use of his property.
In terms of favours, we all went for money at the start. Since I was getting more favours I was able to switch to the building track later in the game while the others went for prestige.
Mid-way through the game Kieron was slightly ahead of me with Orhan lagging behind. As we approached endgame, the critical buildings allowing conversion of cash to prestige and gold were built and Orhan started to pull back towards the leaders.
In the last couple of turns, we each tried to convert our residential buildings to prestige buildings to get the major score boosts they offer. Through my use of the building favour track I had an extra residential building but only had enough resources to convert one of them to a relatively average 12-pointer. This was enough to put me into the lead and in the final turn Kieron and Orhan competed for the massive 25-pointer - Kieron eventually winning it and charging back into the lead. Unable to compete I concentrated on getting more resources and triggered a final favour during the final scoring. This let me use the building track one last time to build another prestige building. I only had one gold left so was pretty limited in choice, but it was just enough to secure a victory. As usual Caylus went right down to the wire.
Final scores: David 99, Kieron 95, Orhan 80
Monday, 18 February 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, 5 April 2007
Caylus - 4 April
A first outing for Caylus with just Adrian, James and David playing. This game sees the players building both a town and a castle in order to obtain enough victory points. There is an interesting balance as you need to build up the town in order to get enough industry going to enable the building of the castle. However players are allowed a great deal of freedom - you can ignore the castle altogether and earn points by providing services to other players, or build up a supply of gold instead.
This freedom made a first play quite difficult as we had no idea how different strategies would play out. The opening rounds were very interesting as it took a while for those investing in buildings to see the effects of their builds. It dragged a little in the middle before leaping to a sudden entertaining end-game.
There was a reasonable amount of interplay, as each player's actions limit those the next player can take, but it mainly involved adapting a strategy as the turn progressed instead of actively attempting crown moves. James may disagree on this point...
As the game concluded we all appeared to be in with a chance of winning. The end result then was a bit of a surprise as my gold hoarding took me well past the others for victory.
I think Adrian has the final scores?
This freedom made a first play quite difficult as we had no idea how different strategies would play out. The opening rounds were very interesting as it took a while for those investing in buildings to see the effects of their builds. It dragged a little in the middle before leaping to a sudden entertaining end-game.
There was a reasonable amount of interplay, as each player's actions limit those the next player can take, but it mainly involved adapting a strategy as the turn progressed instead of actively attempting crown moves. James may disagree on this point...
As the game concluded we all appeared to be in with a chance of winning. The end result then was a bit of a surprise as my gold hoarding took me well past the others for victory.
I think Adrian has the final scores?
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