Too much Caylus?

[dagibbs]

When I first got Caylus, I thought of it as a fairly heavy, maybe even thinky, Euro game. Now, I find it easy and light -- most of my plays are automatic. There will be a few points where I have to think a bit, check over the possibilities a bit, count cubes carefully, but mostly not. I still like the game, but I think I've got it mostly figured out. I still make the occasional mistake -- but generally ones of carelessness.

I've played it 35 times. That's a pretty decent number, for me, though I'm sure there are people with many more plays under their belt. I generally am too much of a subscriber of the cult of the new in board games to rack up huge numbers of plays of any one game. (Other than quick filler games. I've got lots of plays of Set and Bananagrams.)

But, if you look at classic games... I have no idea how many games of Go or hands of Bridge I've played. I expect both are in the 1000s.

Comments

[mikepictor.livejournal.com]

35? That's it? Someone I assumed it was more often than that.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's it. And yet, it is quite high. My top 10 played games, according to my BGG records:

Bananagrams - 244
Set - 126
Jungle Speed - 63
Dominion - 52
Ricochet Robots - 36
Caylus - 35
Saint Petersburg - 33
Fluxx - 25
Thurn and Taxis - 19
Lost Cities - 18

There is nothing else with Caylus length/weight that is anywhere near it in the stats. (Of course, those stats only cover games in recent times, since I started recording.)

[con-girl.livejournal.com]

Actually, I never understood why it was something you found to be very chewy. I never win because I suffer from, "oh shiny," but that is no different from other games. I think it may be one which artfully combined a few different game mechanics in interesting ways. More points of difference rather than true chewiness.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure -- but I'm not the only one. On the scale (light, medium light, medium, medium heavy, heavy) for game weight, the majority of raters on BGG plunked for medium heavy.

It might, partially, be because there are a lot of mechanisms going on, and you have to understand and balance all of them.