Caylus was one of those games that burrowed into my head and held on for years, although it doesn’t seem like it when you search my archives. That’s because Caylus shares a problem with full information, zero luck games — the best player wins.
And I played perhaps 100 games on BrettSpeilWelt1,2. So in my FTF games I would often take a handicap of 25% (or more, with fewer players) and win. PLUS the no-luck aspect meant that games became somewhat samey.
So I switched to Caylus Magna Carta, which constrains players by their card draws. This comes close to violating my rule stating that “For any original game X,’X: the card/dice game’ is always worse.”
Caylus Magna Carta is certainly much more approachable than Caylus3. I recently acquired Caylus 1303, a re-implementation of the original. It does a number of things well:
Instead of having 4-6 workers and paying $$ for each placement, you have up to 15 workers but pay one worker if nobody has passed and two workers otherwise.
The provost resets to almost the end of the track each round, and there are only nine rounds.
In addition to setup buildings, a random wood and stone building start built.
Each player starts with a special power (drafted in reverse order on the first turn)
One of each building type4 is not available; but can be accessed via the favor system.
You do not need a building to build a monument, they are built in a special phase each turn.
A favor lets you a) steal a special power or b) use a building and take an unclaimed special power if one is available (three start unclaimed each game).
So Caylus 1303 is still a full information, zero luck game … but with a variable setup. I have high hopes that this will help bring it to the table. So far my first game was well received (although I forgot the initial draft of special powers).
The one issue (for some people) is that the favor system has been simplified and one of the favors is “Steal a special power.” This is a direct take-that; it’s not like Caylus had a care bear style, but the attack was more about moving the provost, which is something you can plan for. There are some powers that are much more likely to get stolen, but it would undoubtedly chafe a bit if you lost a power when they “should have” taken a different power. Still, in my first game there was no whining.
Looking for something comic related for that fan in your life for the holidays? Then consider the board game, Corps. of Discovery from Off the Page Games.
Vantage has been cooking in my mental oven for half the year. I first wrote about this open world sci-fi adventure game in July, with my review appearing at entertainment site IGN. If you haven’t read that or don’t know much about this peculiar design, my apologies, but the rest of this piece may befuddle…
What rhymes with ‘wish’? Have you thought of the same word as the other players? Or maybe you got really lucky and thought of the same word as only one other player.
Bōken Games has revealed Song of the Wildkin, an upcoming co-op dungeon-crawling adventure board game set in a rich fantasy world of anthropomorphic animals and nature-based channeling
With Play tagging you can create groups of plays based on any criteria you want.
Use these play tags to filter the list of plays, the Game page, Insights and use them in Challenges!
The combined Play Stats will give an overview of stats of filtered plays, a perfect recap for a gaming weekend or series of plays.
If you have imported plays from BoardGameArena or Yucata previously, using the already created “Digital” play tag helps to view your stats just the way you want.
Use Play Tagging to:
Add any number of tags to your plays
Filter on Play tags throughout the app
View combined Play Stats
Use a “Digital” tag to filter online plays
Use Play tags in Challenges
Optionally post Play tags to BGG as comment
Example Play Stats
You can read all about Play tagging on our Tagging page. Tagging is part of the Power expansion.
Tip: “Digital” tag
You can add the “Digital” tag to any play you want, but you can also add the tag to previous plays with Multiple Select. As an example, if you logged some plays on the location “Watergate app“:
Go to the “Watergate app” Location
Tap ‘Select‘ at the top of the screen (this is the word ‘Select’ on iOS and lines with a checkmark on Android)
Tap ‘All‘ at the bottom of the screen (or only select the plays you want to tag)
You supply the ink. The soldiers supply the blood.
Peter reviews the Alliance Faction Battlegroup for Armoured Clash by Warcradle Studios.
Warcradle keep releasing the cool models for Armoured Clash, and this time it’s the turn of the Latin Alliance. There’s also more great news in this video, because they’ve announced the return of Firestorm Armada, the classic spaceship combat game originally by Sparta Games.
Making high quality tabletop gaming content at the EOG takes time and money. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter or making a donation so I can continue this work! Thankyou!
Origin stories are the worst. This is coming from a cretin who ingests superhero content via cinema as opposed to paper. I don’t want to see Thomas and Martha Wayne murdered by a low life, again. We’ve had 10 Spider-Mans in the past couple decades; I’ve already rode that ride. I would much rather watch…
The character was first introduced by no other than Stan Lee and artist Gene Colins in Captain America 117 back in Sept 1969. Otherwise known as Samuael Thomas Wilson. Facon has mechanical wings which he uses to swoop in and help save the day. He is also an expert bird trainer with basic empathic and technopathic abilities over birds in the comics and is the Uncle of Jim Wilson friend of the Hulk’s and who was the first notable HIV positive character, who’s father would go on to join the Gama Corp. The Falcon was always a strong character who was always ready to help those who need it. With his tech, ability to fly with Tech and his excellent fighting abilities he is quite a strong character despite his having no super powers.
In the game his unique ability is being able to manipulate the top card of the encounter deck allowing players to plan ahead and make strategic choices. His “Eagle-Eyed” ability, combined with his “aerial” cards, gives him strong defensive and offensive capabilities, especially in a multiplayer setting, whihc means he is an adaptable and excellent control-focused hero. This is a strong Leadership deck with synergies built around aerial cards, as you would expect, as well as other valuable cards that can be used with other heroes.
Falcon is an all round character who doesn’t specialise in one area so is good to fill holes in your roster especially with a smaller team roster, but lacks a specialism to excel in a bigger team of heroes.
Now this may sound a bit basic. Of course you want advantages! Yet when you’re planning what to do with your investment tile, you might often be tempted by other things – shiny prestige spaces, or simply spaces with a lower cost which help you gain the majority in the region. Advantages, however, are often the better choice: A well-chosen advantage can gain you another space (or deny it to your opponent) not only once, but several times over the course of a game. If your opponent is smart, they will often try to counteract your gaining of an advantage by unflagging the space which gave you the advantage, or at least gaining a similar advantage, which means you are acting and they are reacting.
France and Britain are fighting hard for the two spaces adjacent to the Baltic Trade advantage. You can see on the French player mat in the background that France has gained the Algonquin Raids and Mediterranean Intrigue advantages.
Some of my favorite advantages: The Indian alliances with Mysore, Nizam, or the Marathas which allow you to drown your opponent in a sea of conflict markers, the Asiento advantage whose discount on fleets gains you a cheap military edge – and spaces – which can be flexibly moved around, and, best of all, Baltic Trade whose debt reduction amounts to two free wild points every turn. Get it or at least deny it to your opponent!
Board Position First, VPs Second
Advantages are long-term benefits. In the same spirit, I advise you to prioritize the long-term benefits of a sound board position over the short-term gains of winning this regional or that global demand scoring. If your board position is good – if you have the right alliances, military outposts, and advantages – you will put pressure on your opponent, win wars, gain spoils, and the VPs will come rolling in anyway.
Both players have done their homework and placed a flag on a fort (hexagonal spaces) in North America – Britain in Halifax, France in Louisbourg.
A key investment in that sense is a turn 1 fort in North America. That’s the only theater which is active in all four wars, so the fort will give you a military benefit four times (a strength point and the conquest line) in addition to controlling its surroundings (which makes unflagging harder and removing enemy conflict markers easier), and, of course, it’s a space which counts for regional scoring.
Use Initiative Wisely
If your opponent scores a few more VPs than you early on, that is not only bearable, but might even be to your advantage, as the player behind in VPs has the initiative and decides who goes first in a turn. That’s a weighty decision, as going first gives you a better choice of the investment tiles, but going last allows you to mess with your opponent’s plans and they have no chance to repair the damage before scoring.
If this were the first turn – would you choose to go first or second as the player with initiative?
My rule of thumb is: I go last, unless there’s an odd number of investment tiles with a major action in the dimension that will be crucial (early on, that’s often diplomatic), or an odd-and-low number of investment tiles that allow you to play an event.
Which strategies and tricks do you use to win at Imperial Struggle? Let me know in the comments!
We want to thank our wonderful volunteers who worked very hard on translating the app into Catalan!
This is the 16th language in BG Stats after: Chinese (simplified), Czech, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Ukrainian!
Activating a different language in the app Go to Settings –> App Settings –> Language
We are very grateful for all our translators for not only translating the app, but also for their continued support with translating new features!
On any given Sunday you’re gonna win or you’re gonna lose.
Season Three of Blood Bowl is kicking off!
I made a lot of videos for Games Workshop last year, but unfortunately this year they’ve seen fit to not send me a single thing up to this point this year. So it was nice to see Blood Bowl: Season Three land on the doorstep. This is a very nice new edition with two great new teams, some slight tweaks to the rules, and some very useful new status counters. Watch the video for a full rundown – and check out the painted miniatures!
Making high quality tabletop gaming content at the EOG takes time and money. Please consider becoming a Patreon supporter or making a donation so I can continue this work! Thankyou!
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