CAYLUS 1303 (2019)

PLAYERS	TIME	DESIGNER	PUBLISHER
2-5	60-90 mins	William Attia	Space Cowboys

In this 2-5 Worker Placement game, you’ll be gathering resources, constructing buildings, and making each other’s lives a little bit harder.

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Despite being a revamp of the 2005 classic, the Worker Placement element of the game has a couple of twists to them to make this one stand out.

First of all is the road. The board starts with a decent amount of placement spaces, and more are added by players as the game goes on.

But unlike other games in the genre, you don’t place and then take action. You place, and then wait. Only when everyone has passed to the spaces get activated, and when they do, it’s along the road in a specific order.

This is clever because it means you’re not only fighting over spaces, but you need to make sure that if a spot requires a resource, you’ve gone to a space before it to grab said resource.

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I mentioned passing there, and that’s the other key point. Because you don’t need to spend all your workers on a turn, and you won’t necessarily be getting the same amount back each round.

And when the first person passes, each action then costs you two workers.

Couple this with asymmetric player powers that can be stolen, extra rewards for being first each round to assist with the castle, and the Provost meeple that can be moved up and down the road to cut off the action spaces, and CAYLUS ready to be cutthroat.

Which of course, some people won’t like. At 2-players it doesn’t often show its vicious head, but at 4 and 5, the board will get busy, and targeting someone might be the difference between winning and losing.

Me? I love it. This game is one of my favourite games in my favourite genres. And it was a gift from my player-2, so it has a special place in our collection too.

CAYLUS 1303 is one of the greats of the genre. It has varialbilty, it has thinky turns, and it has a nasty underbelly if you want it. Still a classic.