2010-11: Caylus (-4)
Caylus! Long a fixture of my top 10, it has recently suffered from a lack of opponents and a lot of competition from newer games. Ali’s point-blank refusal to play it also doesn’t help its position much, nor has my most dedicated opponent moving to New York.
Narrative Theme: 3. Calylus looks like it has theme and smells like it has theme, but once you read the rulebook and compare the rules to what you’re actually supposed to be doing (i.e. building a castle in Caylus, France), you’ll soon find that there’s really not much relation to that story in the game. The art is somewhat evocative, and the fact that you start building things near the castle’s location and slowly wind down the hill (just as with the real-life terrain) is vaguely realistic, but that’s where things end.
Mechanical Theme: 3. There is just enough theme here to help you remember the rules. Do the little men walking down the road have any relation to real life? No. But their names help a bit in remembering what they do. Do the names of the buildings matter at all? No, but the art on them helps a little bit. About the only mechanical element that is truly thematic and useful is the way you walk down the road every turn, but even this is a bit counter-intuitive since, after walking to the bottom of the board, you then jump to the top to build the castle.
Price v Component Quality: 7. Caylus clocks in (online) at $33 for the “normal” edition, and $60 for the “premium limited edition.” The box is reasonably full of stuff, and all of it is typical Rio Grande quality: wooden cubes and spheres, relatively thick cardboard tokens, a full-color rulebook, and a nice mounted gameboard. At $33, given the amount of play-time this baby has gotten, that’s a great deal. I haven’t seen the “premium” edition, so I’ll reserve judgment on it. That said, I doubt the component quality has really improved enough to justify the roughly doubled price.
Rule Complexity: 6. The rules to Caylus are on the complicated end for a Euro (I just rated Space Hulk’s rules a 5, because while Space Hulk is probably more complex to initially teach, it has less emergent complexity in play than Caylus). The basic game mechanic, going around the board and placing your workers, is very simple. The problem is that each space where you can place them does something different, and several new spaces are added to the board every round. Do you explain what every space, including the ones not on the board yet, does, before the game starts? Or do you blindside new players later on, despite the fact that much of the strategy comes from knowing what new buildings may potentially get built
Depth/Replayability: 8. There’s a lot going on here. Much more than meets the eye. The way in which the buildings interact, as well as the bribery mechanic, means that there is a surprising amount of interaction in the game (most of it of the “screw your neighbor” variety). There are several paths to victory, and none of them seem wildly better than any other. And due to the variable set-up and ever-changing placement of buildings, no two games will ever be identical.
Mechanical Elegance: 6. Caylus has been described as a “Frankenstein’s Monster” of a game, which is probably a bit unfair. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that there are an awful lot of different systems here, and they just might be a bit more complex than they need to be. There’s the (original, at the time) worker placement mechanic, the bribery mechanic, the king’s favor mechanic, the variable turn order mechanic, and a host of smaller systems. It gives the whole game a lumbering feel, and you get the whiff of “Die Macher” in the air - a game that has enough systems working together to scare off some players.
Length vs. Enjoyment: 6. Caylus clocks in at around 2 hours, which is just about right for me. However, others complain that this is about 30 minutes too long. The culprit here is the variable game length, which is related to the bribery mechanic. Basically, there’s a guy walking down the road, and when he reaches the end, the game is over. Players can bribe him to speed up or slow down. So part of the strategy of the game is to speed things along if you’re winning, and slow it down if you’re losing. The problem? There are always going to be more people losing than winning.
Other indefinables: For me, the nice thing about Caylus is the everyone is involved all the time, that rounds go really quickly, and that despite this speed there’s a lot of depth to explore. However, there are a lot of people who posit that Caylus is a “solved” game, for similar reasons to Chess or Puerto Rico being a solved game: no hidden information, and calculable end conditions. These are usually the same people who, as with Puerto Rico, have just played thousands of games online, are totally burned out, and get pissy if you make a supposedly “sub-optimal” move. Avoid these people.
Best for: Those looking for a heavier euro-game, with a lot of interaction.
Avoid if: You find games with a screw-your-neighbor element distasteful, or you dislike complexity.
Narrative Theme: 3. Calylus looks like it has theme and smells like it has theme, but once you read the rulebook and compare the rules to what you’re actually supposed to be doing (i.e. building a castle in Caylus, France), you’ll soon find that there’s really not much relation to that story in the game. The art is somewhat evocative, and the fact that you start building things near the castle’s location and slowly wind down the hill (just as with the real-life terrain) is vaguely realistic, but that’s where things end.
Mechanical Theme: 3. There is just enough theme here to help you remember the rules. Do the little men walking down the road have any relation to real life? No. But their names help a bit in remembering what they do. Do the names of the buildings matter at all? No, but the art on them helps a little bit. About the only mechanical element that is truly thematic and useful is the way you walk down the road every turn, but even this is a bit counter-intuitive since, after walking to the bottom of the board, you then jump to the top to build the castle.
Price v Component Quality: 7. Caylus clocks in (online) at $33 for the “normal” edition, and $60 for the “premium limited edition.” The box is reasonably full of stuff, and all of it is typical Rio Grande quality: wooden cubes and spheres, relatively thick cardboard tokens, a full-color rulebook, and a nice mounted gameboard. At $33, given the amount of play-time this baby has gotten, that’s a great deal. I haven’t seen the “premium” edition, so I’ll reserve judgment on it. That said, I doubt the component quality has really improved enough to justify the roughly doubled price.
Rule Complexity: 6. The rules to Caylus are on the complicated end for a Euro (I just rated Space Hulk’s rules a 5, because while Space Hulk is probably more complex to initially teach, it has less emergent complexity in play than Caylus). The basic game mechanic, going around the board and placing your workers, is very simple. The problem is that each space where you can place them does something different, and several new spaces are added to the board every round. Do you explain what every space, including the ones not on the board yet, does, before the game starts? Or do you blindside new players later on, despite the fact that much of the strategy comes from knowing what new buildings may potentially get built
Depth/Replayability: 8. There’s a lot going on here. Much more than meets the eye. The way in which the buildings interact, as well as the bribery mechanic, means that there is a surprising amount of interaction in the game (most of it of the “screw your neighbor” variety). There are several paths to victory, and none of them seem wildly better than any other. And due to the variable set-up and ever-changing placement of buildings, no two games will ever be identical.
Mechanical Elegance: 6. Caylus has been described as a “Frankenstein’s Monster” of a game, which is probably a bit unfair. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that there are an awful lot of different systems here, and they just might be a bit more complex than they need to be. There’s the (original, at the time) worker placement mechanic, the bribery mechanic, the king’s favor mechanic, the variable turn order mechanic, and a host of smaller systems. It gives the whole game a lumbering feel, and you get the whiff of “Die Macher” in the air - a game that has enough systems working together to scare off some players.
Length vs. Enjoyment: 6. Caylus clocks in at around 2 hours, which is just about right for me. However, others complain that this is about 30 minutes too long. The culprit here is the variable game length, which is related to the bribery mechanic. Basically, there’s a guy walking down the road, and when he reaches the end, the game is over. Players can bribe him to speed up or slow down. So part of the strategy of the game is to speed things along if you’re winning, and slow it down if you’re losing. The problem? There are always going to be more people losing than winning.
Other indefinables: For me, the nice thing about Caylus is the everyone is involved all the time, that rounds go really quickly, and that despite this speed there’s a lot of depth to explore. However, there are a lot of people who posit that Caylus is a “solved” game, for similar reasons to Chess or Puerto Rico being a solved game: no hidden information, and calculable end conditions. These are usually the same people who, as with Puerto Rico, have just played thousands of games online, are totally burned out, and get pissy if you make a supposedly “sub-optimal” move. Avoid these people.
Best for: Those looking for a heavier euro-game, with a lot of interaction.
Avoid if: You find games with a screw-your-neighbor element distasteful, or you dislike complexity.