Caylus is a strategy oriented, German-style board game designed by William Attia and independently published in 2005 by Ystari in France and England, and Rio Grande Games in North America. 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 coins. An iOS version of the game was launched in 2012.

Game mechanics

The goal of Caylus is to amass the most prestige points by constructing buildings and by working on the castle of Caylus in medieval France. Caylus does not include the random elements found in many board games, such as cards and dice. The only exceptions to this are the placement of the six neutral buildings (leading to 720 possible starting configurations) and the initial turn order, both of which are determined randomly at the beginning of the game. However, the effect of random initial turn order is minimal because players whose turn is later start off with a higher amount of money. The basic mechanics of the game include:

Resources

Turns

A turn in Caylus consists of 8 phases: 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, a popular online board gaming forum. Caylus also received the Trictrac d'or 2005 award from the eponymous French boardgame website. With the international attention gained via BoardGameGeek 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-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, 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 and Nederlandse Spellenprijs, and won the 2006 Golden Geek Awards for Best Game and Best Gamer's Game.