Hey All,
Just bought and played Torres for the first time in a 2 player session. Firstly some background on my gaming tastes;

My game tastes
I'm a medium weight gamer, I might play 2-3 times a week, I own/enjoy games like Carcassone, Tikal, Tigirs & Euphrates, Samurai & San Juan of which several of these are comparable in game mechanics:

Comparable to
- If you like Tikal or Tigris, there is the element of claiming and building up consistant point scoring structures with your playing pieces. And moving your pieces around a play area to 'fight' for the best buildings.
- Like Tikal, there is several scoring phases comparable to the volcano, but not random and the theme is the King initiates a scoring round by inspecting your Castles and progress 3 times in a game.
- Also If you like Tigris & Euprates, there is the same element of infiltrating other peoples building efforts for your advancement.
- If you like Samurai (very weak similarity to the Ronin and one off Power tiles) theres an element of chaos/fun which are the one off action cards which essentially give your play pieces super powers (this to me is the best part) and gives you ability to do moves which would otherwise be illegal, for example imagine if a pawn in chess suddenly had the power to teleport to the other side of the board or jump over a piece, this adds a lot of fun factor to the game.

I saw it as a kind of 3d Tikal/Chess on steroids game.

Game play
The games basic mechanic is using 5 action points per turn to deploy (2 points per knight) & move knights (1 point per movement) on and around castles in order to claim points for them. Build castles taller and wider at 1 point per castle piece. The castles are scored 3 times in a game after each player has had 4 turns (turn count varies with player count) Scores are calculated by the height at which your knight is standing on a castle and by the base surface area; also a castle cannot be taller than its surface area. So if you had a knight atop a 5 height castle with a base of 5 blocks you would score 25 points. Poaching comes into it where your opponents can score for the same castle if they have a knight on it, but only once, even if they have more than one knight on it. Throw in the action cards and the king for some chaos factor and you've got a great game. See the official rules file http://www.riograndegames.com/uploads/Game/Game_198_gameRule... for more detailed rules.

Rules
The rules (official PDF) http://www.riograndegames.com/uploads/Game/Game_198_gameRule... took about 15 mins to learn & teach to my girlfriend, being a medium weight learning curve but quite easy to adjust to after a few turns. You definately need to read all the rules as there are some action card specific rules that should not be neglected such as only using one card per turn only the turn after you drew it.

Technicality:
The game play was a little bit of a brain bender in the way you have to prepare for many possibilities such as the action cards and protecting your castles from all angles since it is a 3d game. Some people may struggle with the point tallying, so paper/pen or calculator could help, but not necessary as it is only basic 10 times tables at most.

First play time:
Game play was quite fast at a minute or so to a turn.
The game took us 2 hours from setup to final scoring, and was relatively smooth flowing. The game did tend to slow down a little at the end with about 5 mins of down time at most when final turns before scoring were taken. Also a few minutes taken in the scoring at the end of each of the 3 game phases. I'm sure this will speed up after a few plays

Replay value
Can't really say much more than I'm really looking forward to playing again. The action cards and the movement of the knights is really quite fun.

Hope you all enjoy the game as much as I did and thanks for reading my review.

My initial rating:
8.5/10