Caylus at Game Night

Game night at my place last night. 6 others showed up. Jill also played giving us 8 for the evening. Kieron gave us an overview of The Great Space Race and he taught Leroy, Denise and Troy how to play. They played a 1 lap race and sounded like they were enjoying themselves. Leroy won with a commanding lead.

The rest of chose to play Caylus. Jill hadn’t played for a long time. Jeff hadn’t played before so we went through the rules for him and a refresher for everyone else. This was a slow moving play of the game with noone pushing the Provost ahead to speed up the Bailiff’s movement. Jeff and I jumped out to early leads but Dan’s good use of the resource tiles and efficient castle builds soon put him in the lead. As we went into the last couple of turns, he and I were tied on points. In the end, he was able to hold me off with a 2 point victory. His castle builds and use of the purchase favor tile allowed him to pick up a lot of points on the victory point favor track (25+ I think). Well played by Dan. Jill mined the most gold and built the large blue building worth 25 points but didn’t have enough to catch me or Dan. We like Caylus a lot but it seems to last a little longer than it should.

Troy and Leroy took off after The Great Space Race. Kieron taught Denise to play Memoir ‘44. She was interested in learning this so she could decide whether to purchase M44 or wait for the fantasy-themed version of the system that Days of Wonder is planning to release later this year called BattleLore. The initial marketing on BattleLore looks very exciting. Will have to wait and see as more information is released. However, all of Mr. Borg’s other releases of this system (Memoir ‘44, Battle Cry, Commands and Colors: Ancients) are well done so I would expect similar play quality from BattleLore.