Easter Bunny and his friend the Doge visit old France
The Easter Bunny dropped by yesterday and left about 20lbs of goodies. Mmmm.. fun shaped cholocate! Also the Game Posse got together and played some San Marco and Caylus.
San Marco is moderately interesting and pretty fast — it’s what you would call a Solomon choice game. One player divides things into piles, and they the other players get first choice. Piles have good things in bad things, so the game takes some familiarity to make good decisions.
Caylus is as Caylus does. Having played it several times now, and having watched it a bunch, I am starting to think the game doesn’t live up to the hype. The more players you add, the more instability there is the game, reducing the minimal strategy to begin with (but still keeping the huge tactical component). I am going to say the big problem with the game is the setup and bookkeeping — there is way too much going on, and it’s easy to goof something up.
Right now, I think the best way to play Caylus is 2-player, and on BSW online. BSW has a huge negative in that you don’t get to do a takeback, but it has the huge positive of being 100% accurate on the bookkeeping, which lets you concentrate more on the game.