Caylus is a strategy oriented, German-style board game

German-style board game

German-style board games, frequently referred to in gaming circles as Euro Games or Euro-style, are a broad class of tabletop games that generally have simple rules, short to medium playing times, indirect player interaction and abstract physical components...

 designed by William Attia and independently published in 2005 by Ystari in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, and Rio Grande Games

Rio Grande Games

Rio Grande Games is a board game publisher based in Rio Rancho, New Mexico. The company primarily imports and localizes foreign language German-style board games.-History:...

 in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. Caylus has a mix of building, producing, planning, and bargaining — without direct conflict or dice-rolling mechanics.

A card-game version, Caylus Magna Carta, was published in 2007, as well as a limited premium version of the game, with redesigned medieval-styled artwork and metallic coin

Coin

A coin is a piece of hard material that is standardized in weight, is produced in large quantities in order to facilitate trade, and primarily can be used as a legal tender token for commerce in the designated country, region, or territory....

s.

Game mechanics

The goal of Caylus is to amass the most prestige points by constructing buildings and by working on the castle of Caylus

Caylus, Tarn-et-Garonne

Caylus is a commune in the Tarn-et-Garonne department in the Midi-Pyrénées region in southern France.-References:*...

 in medieval France

France in the Middle Ages

France in the Middle Ages covers an area roughly corresponding to modern day France, from the death of Louis the Pious in 840 to the middle of the 15th century...

.

Caylus does not include the random elements found in many board games, such as cards and dice

Dice

A die is a small throwable object with multiple resting positions, used for generating random numbers...

. The only exceptions to this are the placement of the six neutral buildings and the starting turn order, both of which are determined randomly at the beginning of the game.

The basic mechanics of the game include:

Resources

• Resource cubes of five types: food
  Food
  Food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin, and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, or minerals...
  
   (pink), wood
  Wood
  Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...
  
   (brown), cloth (purple), stone
  Rock (geology)
  In geology, rock or stone is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.The Earth's outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic...
  
   (gray), and gold
  Gold
  Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
  
   (yellow). These are used to build buildings and the castle.
• Workers: Each player has six workers, which can be placed on buildings to harvest resources, construct more buildings, build the castle, and more.
• Bailiff: The bailiff moves either one or two spaces from his starting spot on every turn in the game. The pace of his movement can be influenced by the players through the Provost (see below). When the bailiff reaches a pre-determined space, he triggers the conclusion of a phase of construction of Caylus castle (see below). When the bailiff reaches the third such space, the game is over.
• Provost: The provost indicates by his position which of the workers placed by the players will be allowed to work on any given turn. The provost's position can be influenced by the players with money (see below) or with special spaces on the board. Furthermore, if at the end of a turn the provost ends up on or behind the bailiff, then the bailiff will only move one space forward that round. If the provost is in front of the bailiff, then the bailiff moves ahead two spaces, thus shortening the game.
• Money: Caylus currency is called the denier
  French denier
  The denier was a Frankish coin created by Charlemagne in the Early Middle Ages. It was introduced together with an accounting system in which twelve deniers equaled one sou and twenty sous equalled one livre...
  
  . Deniers are used to pay workers, influence the provost
  Provost (civil)
  A provost is the ceremonial head of many Scottish local authorities, and under the name prévôt was a governmental position of varying importance in Ancien Regime France.-History:...
  
   to allow workers to work or to block opponents' workers from working, use the jousting field to gain royal favors (see below), and build certain buildings.
• Neutral buildings: Six neutral buildings are randomly
  Randomness
  Randomness has somewhat differing meanings as used in various fields. It also has common meanings which are connected to the notion of predictability of events....
  
   placed at the start of the game; along with initial turn order, this is the only source of randomness in the game.
• Player buildings: By placing a worker on a construction building, a player can construct a new building; each new building has a fixed cost of 2 to 8 resource cubes. Once built, all players can use the new building, but the original builder gets a bonus every time an opponent uses it.
• Building the castle: By placing a worker in the castle, a player can send a "batch" of three different resource cubes (one of which must be food) to help construct the castle of Caylus and reap prestige points and royal favors.
• Royal favors: Players who contribute to the royal cause by building the castle, using the jousting field, or constructing certain buildings are granted royal favors. In the story of the game, prestige and royal favors are granted by King Philip the Fair
  Philip IV of France
  Philip the Fair was, as Philip IV, King of France from 1285 until his death. He was the husband of Joan I of Navarre, by virtue of which he was, as Philip I, King of Navarre and Count of Champagne from 1284 to 1305.-Youth:A member of the House of Capet, Philip was born at the Palace of...
  
  . Royal favors can take the form of prestige points, money, resources, or discounted, unblockable access to construct buildings. These royal favors can often be the deciding factor in the game, when used cleverly.

Turns

A turn in Caylus consists of 8 phases:

1. Income. Each player receives a standard income of 2 deniers, plus any income for Residential buildings s/he owns (or prestige buildings that provide income).
2. Placement of workers. According to the turn order, players take turns placing their workers on unoccupied spaces (with some exceptions). Each worker placement costs 1 denier. The players may pass once they have placed all the workers they want (or can afford). Every time a player passes, the cost of placing additional workers on that turn increases by 1 for the other players.
3. Activation of special buildings. The special buildings (the first 5 buildings after the castle, but before the bridge) are activated, and their effects are applied.
4. The provost moves. Each player (in order of passing) has the opportunity to move the provost backward or forward by paying 1 denier per space, up to a maximum of 3. After this phase, any workers that are located after the provost are removed, as they are not allowed to work.
5. Activation of buildings. Starting with the first neutral (pink) building after the bridge, all remaining buildings activate in order.
6. Building of the castle. Players build the section of the castle (dungeon, walls, or tower) that is currently under construction. This is done in the order in which players placed their workers to build the castle.
7. The end of the turn. The bailiff moves along the road. He moves forward 2 spaces if the provost is ahead of him, and 1 space if the provost is on the same space as he or behind him. He never moves backwards. Once the bailiff has been moved, the provost is placed on the same square as the bailiff.
8. Scoring of sections. If the bailiff reaches a scoring point, or a section of the castle is completed, then that section is scored.

The player who is at the top of the turn order starts the next turn.

The game ends when the bailiff reaches the Tower scoring point, or when all the tower spaces have been built (automatically triggering the scoring of the Tower section). After the final prestige points are awarded for any leftover money and resources, the player with the most prestige points wins the game.

Awards

Caylus initially gained public acclaim when it was rated the number one game of the October 2005 game fair in Essen, Germany by a public vote conducted by Fairplay Magazine. It quickly rose to become one of the most discussed and top-rated games on BoardGameGeek

BoardGameGeek

BoardGameGeek is a website that was founded in January 2000 by Scott Alden and Derk Solko as a resource for the board gaming hobby. The database holds reviews, articles, and session reports for over 45,000 different games, expansions, and designers. BoardGameGeek includes German-style board games,...

, a popular online board gaming forum.

Caylus also received the Trictrac d'or 2005 award from the eponym

Eponym

An eponym is the name of a person or thing, whether real or fictitious, after which a particular place, tribe, era, discovery, or other item is named or thought to be named...

ous French boardgame website.

With the international attention gained via BoardGameGeek

BoardGameGeek

BoardGameGeek is a website that was founded in January 2000 by Scott Alden and Derk Solko as a resource for the board gaming hobby. The database holds reviews, articles, and session reports for over 45,000 different games, expansions, and designers. BoardGameGeek includes German-style board games,...

 and Essen 2005, the first printing of Caylus sold out in December 2005. A second printing was released in February 2006, including new cardboard coins to replace the gray plastic tiddlywinks

Tiddlywinks

Tiddlywinks is an indoor game played on a flat mat with sets of small discs called "winks", a pot and a collection of squidgers. Players use a "squidger", a disk usually made from plastic to move a wink into flight by pressing down on one side of the wink...

-style coins from the original release. The second edition also includes the jeweler as a standard stone building tile (it was previously a promotional tile) and numerous graphic design changes to clarify certain rules.

Although Caylus was not nominated for the 2006 Spiel des Jahres

Spiel des Jahres

The Spiel des Jahres is an award for board and card games, created in 1978 with the stated purpose of rewarding excellence in game design, and promoting top-quality games in the German market. It is thought that the existence and popularity of the award is one of the major drivers of the quality...

, the jury awarded it a special prize (Sonderpreis Komplexes Spiel) for the best complex game of 2006. Caylus won first prize in the 2006 Deutscher Spiele Preis

Deutscher Spiele Preis

The Deutscher Spiele Preis is an important award for boardgames. It was started in 1990 by the German magazine "Die Pöppel-Revue", which collects votes from the industry's stores, magazines, professionals and game clubs. The results are announced every October at the Spiel game fair in Essen,...

 and Nederlandse Spellenprijs, and won the 2006 Golden Geek Awards for Best Game and Best Gamer's Game.