Customer Reviews

Caylus

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This heavy eurogame game was the huge hit of 2006, winning multiple awards and shooting up to top ratings on boardgamegeek.com. It richly deserves all the praise it has been given. It is also one of the most complex designer games, with a long and seemingly impenetrable rule book. Think of it as about 3 times as complex as Settlers of Catan. On the other hand, it is no more complex than the typical historical wargame or 18xx railroad game. And it is much quicker to play than a wargame or rail game.

Caylus is worth the trouble to learn. Once the rules are understood the play has a very smooth and natural flow to it. There are no dice, or any random factor to gameplay whatsover. If you win or lose it is due to the choices you have made, an the choices of other players. All the interlocking elements of gameplay connect beautifully. The players are competing to build the King's castle and win royal favors. Each turn brings interesting developments, which affect all players in differnt ways. There is a bailiff, a provost, a jeweler, a bridge, a trading post, an inn, a lumber camp, a quarry, an architect, etc. And MANY more elements, in fact. Each element has its own appropriate role in the game. This is a thematically consistent game that creates a miniature medieval society. It is a LOT of fun to play.

It is largely complexity that makes Caylus so good. There are so many winning strategies, so very different, with none being clearly better. Strategies can be mixed and matched. An agile player will shift focus mid game if the tide turns against him. This game has an ebb and flow to it that feels very lifelike. A leading player in the middle game will often be overtaken later by a player who undertook a longer term strategy. But then the overtaken player will often be able to come back, with clever maneuvering, for a close finish.

Caylus is not a particularly long playing game. It starts slowly and gets more exciting as more buildings get built and players execute their strategies. It comes to a climax about 2 hours later, usually with a tense, hard fought finish. Two to five can play this game. It plays very well with only two and just as well, although more chaotic, with five. Or three or four, of course. So buy this mind blowing game.

As my family will attest, I really like strategy games. I also abhor most games of chance. If a game comes with dice, I'm immediately leery.

Caylus does not have dice, which made a good first impression for me. It did, however, take us about 2 hours to learn. After the first game, I was skeptical about how strategic it was, but I played it a couple of more times against experienced players--and I got clobbered! While this appears to be an ironic endorsement of the game, it revealed to me that there was much more strategy involved than I initially thought.

Based upon how many players and how the initial pieces are played, there are many different strategies available. Additionally, the game offers you the ability to try and determine your opponents strategy and either overcome it or thwart it.

Caylus is now one of my favorite games because it offers many options, stimulates the brain, and is rarely the same game twice.

Downsides of the game for some will be the long time to learn the rules. The game also takes a long time to play, typically 90-120 minutes for us. As a result, those with shorter attention spans will NOT enjoy it. It's not a game for younger children or for those who don't have enough of a thirst for competition to figure out the strategies.

This is a board game. It is, as I am writing this, amongst the top 10 board games on boardgamegeek.com, the most popular board game site on the planet. This isn't idle opinion either, as Caylus has nearly 12,000 user reviews. That's 12,000 people who have, collectively, decided that it is one of the best board games of all time. Now I admit that some amongst those 12,000 obviously have dissenting opinions. But, nonetheless, the majority really, REALLY like it.

This would appear, at first glance, to potentially conflict with other reviews here on Amazon that state that the game is "ridiculously complex." After all, if an individual with a PhD in bioengineering, and several other "highly educated" people were unable to figure it out, then it would seem that the game is obviously too complex for pretty much anyone on the planet.

That leaves two possible explanations:

1. The thousands upon thousands of individuals on BGG who positively reviewed the game are ALL brilliant scientists who scoff at the idle simplicity of bioengineering, but nonetheless spend their free time playing board games instead of collectively taking over the world.

2. The people saying Caylus is unbearably complex are wrong.

Seriously. It's a board game. It is not rocket science or brain surgery. You put down your tokens, collect resources, and ultimately try to get more points than the other players. Is there strategy? Of course. Is the strategy deep and rewarding? Hell yea - that's why it is ranked so highly.

Now if you have never played anything more sophisticated than Candyland you will probably be in for a surprise. But if you take the instructions one step at a time you will figure it out no problem. If learning that way doesn't work for you then watch a youtube video. It really isn't that bad. I'm resisting the urge to scream out that it is a GAME for goodness's sake. But, seriously:

THIS IS A GREAT BOARD GAME.

Caylus is an excellent worker placement game. It does take quite a while to play (2-4 hours) but the time is worth it. You won't even notice the time go by while playing.

Caylus has a theme of you trying to help build the castle and getting kings favors for working on it. You place your workers on different buildings allowing you to obtain different goods like wood, stone, food, etc. You use this food to build other buildings or to help build the castle.

The parts of Caylus are very well built. As with most Euro games it includes wooden bits instead of plastic bits. The buildings are all printed on thick cardboard and are well built.

Other than the time investment, there aren't a lot of negatives about this game. I really enjoy playing a good game of Caylus when you have a couple hours to invest in it. It's ranked in the top 10 games of all time on BoardGameGeek as well.

This is a great example of a new (last 5-10 years) wave of boardgames from europe that are both challanging and fun and have barely emerged in US markets. I strongly urge you to give this a try, it may seem complicated compared to US boardgames such as candyland/risk/and monopoly but then those are mostly kids games. This game and games like it are made to mentally challange adults while offering lots of fun and interaction.

For many more games and more info on this game try www.boardgamegeek.com

This is a sophisticated and interesting game. It was VERY difficult to figure out the majority of the rules (we're still not sure about a couple....). If you know somebody who already plays it-- grab them and get a tutorial!

Caylus is a designer game for fans of medium-heavy strategy. There is no randomness once the game begins, and every choice matters. Players construct buildings which provide money and other resources, convert money into resources (or the other way around), convert buildings into other buildings, or convert these things into Victory Points. Which buildings you construct, which buildings you use, when you decide to use them, and when to deny others, are the key aspects of the game. Since there is so much you can do, but decisions lead to other decisions, there is depth without overwhelming complexity, and replayability without randomness. If you played Settlers of Catan, and enjoyed sticking the robber in your friend's way, try Caylus. If you played Carcassonne, and enjoyed helping to construct the board during the game, try Caylus. If you played Agricola, and enjoyed building something out of nothing, definitely try Caylus.

This game is ridiculous. I got for my brother in law who loves board games for Christmas. We opened it up and tried to learn how to play. 2 hours later we boxed it up as none of us could figure it out or even come close to understanding how to play. We are all highly educated individuals yet we still couldn't figure out how to play this.

This game gave my family a real crack up just because of how ridiculous it is to learn how to play. We actually thought the whole thing was a big hoax because after several hours of reading directions, we just kept getting more and more confused. I am getting my PhD in biomechanical engineering, and this game was seriously way too much. We literally could not stop laughing about the complexity of the players (the provost is corruptible? I mean..come on!), and all of the stupid little boxes and tiles are just way too much. There are also these equations that come on the "simple" directions, which would still be too complex for all the rocket scientists that I know. The equations really set us over the edge. The next piece of paper we expected to find in the box was something that said: "HAHAHA you idiots, this whole game is just one big prank! You just wasted 3 hours of your life on something with no possible solution! HAHAHHAHAHHA HAHAHAHAH muAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!" This was really entertaining, but not for any thing that had to do with how awesome the game was.