Of course, the only reason we were able to play Caylus is because Ethan was going to watch a movie with Jacob and Thomas. This left us with 4 fairly capable adults, and an evening to burn (cue maniacal laughter).

I busted out with Caylus. John and Melissa had a vague recollection of the game, it being one of the first heavy Euros we tried back in the day. John remembered suffering from BOS (Bits Overload Syndrome) and being somewhat intimidated by the game. He said that if it was his first time learning the game now, he thinks he'd grasp it better just because of all of the game learning experience he has thus far.

This was Paul's first heavy euro. He's a fan of Heroscape, and really enjoyed playing Starcraft, and Nexus Ops. See a theme here? Let's move from the realm of colorful minis into cubes and circles and the colorful "let's build a castle for the king! yay!" theme.

But the complexities of the game were a little much. Though we repeatedly answered all of his questions, he still didn't understand exactly how the Stables worked, for example, until the very end of the game (and he kept a guy in there!).

I was randomly chosen as the start player, and early on I chose to build in the castle, and so did everyone else! I got the royal favor, and started on the "building" track, netting me nothing, but priming me for being able to build stuff.

The next turn filled the dungeon, and John and I got favor. I got some coins, whereas he went for prestige.

Nobody was building buildings, but rather building in the castle. I forwent a round of castle building, and created a 2 food or 1 cloth building (food being a requirement for castle building).

The next turn, Paul was taking a look at the buildings and had claimed the one that lets you build stone buildings. Duh! I was planning on building that one. Of course, I had claimed a space in the "buy a royal favor for a coin and cloth" special square. After we'd placed all our workers, he took the stonemason and put it in front of him. When the tourney grounds came around, I paid my cloth an denier to their respective banks, and took it from him and laid it on the board. He was like "What?!", and then I moved myself on the royal favor track to be able to immediately build, and paid the cost of the building (cue evil laughter).

People started using buildings, and building buildings, and scoring vp for them as well.

There was one turn that was pretty choice. I'd told them about the gold mine when we were starting to build buildings, and the provost was turning the bend. The provost was a square behind the gold mine, and John had a worker on a building I'd built behind the provost. I needed to be safe here, and got last in the passing order and the merchants guild (the one that lets you move the provost 3). John thought I was going to move the provost back to screw him (on my own building, where I'd get a cloth or flesh when he activated it!). It was when I placed in the merchants guild he should have gotten suspicious. He didn't, and with my last turn I placed a worker on the gold mine. Bwahahaha! When the merchants guild came around, I moved the provost 3 forward, placing it 2 ahead of the gold mine, and I was in last place on the passing order so nobody bothered to mess with me, because I was also comparatively flush with cash from my other royal favors.

I went with more of a building strategy, whereas they continued to be stronger in the castle. I just built enough in the castle to not take the VP hit when scoring came.

The end game was tense for me. I'd been getting stone and gold, and had enough gold and stone. There were 3 more spaces left on the final section of the castle, and I had one of them. I lamented grievously when Melissa put the last one on there, because I knew that I wouldn't have enough royal favor to build both my residence and the uber 25 point prestige building I had my eye on. In fact, since there was no prestige building guy on the board, I pretty much nobody could build it!

I purchased a royal favor on a previous round, but seriously screwed up in that I only had 1 cloth, which I used to obtain the royal favor, and the benefit of the build track is less coin, not less cloth! So I had the favor, but couldn't build my residence! I took coins instead I think (I was trading them in for gold).

So the next round, I knew I had to get that residence out there. I got the residence builder, first place on the turn order, and the royal favor buyer. I had enough material to build my huge building. But I didn't have the tempo, I didn't have enough juice to get that last royal favor to put me over the top, and the next round that stupid castle was going to (and did!) fill up.

All was not lost, however. When it was my turn to build in the castle, I gracefully chose to decline and took my VP hit for that. One more round, baby! Show me the money! I had first place in the turn order still, because nobody took it away from me. Mu. Ha. Ha.

It was all locked up, at that point. I claimed a royal favor by building the last package in the castle. I was flush with cubes, and had enough for uber-building. From that point on, it was all gravy.

When the final provost moving came around, John and I had both declined to move it. I could have moved it one and screwed him, but I chose not to. Then Melissa moved it 3 back and screwed us both (him once and me twice!). No matter; it was all gravy (though a fair amount of points for me!).

When I built the 25er, it pushed me in the lead (I was trailing a little). Plus I had a fair amount of extra gold (3 pieces, 2 of which I was planning on exchanging for 9vp when Melissa thoughtfully prevented me from doing that). All told, I scored 99 points that round. John had something like 80ish, with Paul and Melissa behind him in the 70s I think. I only remember my score because it was right next to the wrap position.

I haven't played a lot of Caylus, but I've enjoyed it. I am warming even more to the game. I'd like to see it hit the table some more.

We tend to play fairly slow, however. This will likely improve in time, but we didn't finish up the game until like 10:30 or some such, making it 3-3.5hrs (iirc). But it was fun!