It feels intense and I’ve been mentally drained at the end of every game so far, but I always want more. No play has felt the same as another so far, and the interplay is so strong that you really have to watch what your opponents are doing. The game is fun, satisfying, and very diverse. It makes perfect sense once you understand it, but isn’t the most intuitive. The one minor point against the rules would be the way settlement scoring works, which is how you determine the points you receive for piece placement on the board at the end of the game.

For a game as rich as this, that is quite an impressive feat. The only times I ever had to check the rulebook after the initial play were when I was playing with new clans. I am mightily impressed with the fact that once you understand the basic flow of the game, it is largely self-documenting. The overall layout and design of the iconography on the various components is very well done. The rulebook is well-written, following a clear structure that can be read from start to finish. It plays well from solo to 4p, and has a couple brilliant mechanisms for tightening up the board at lower player counts. And all the while, you have to consider board placement for bonuses and potential end-game scoring boosts. Contracts are hard to complete early on while being much cheaper to acquire, and they get easier to complete in the late game while also getting much more expensive. Trying to build up an economic engine that matches your clan strengths and the contract tiles as closely as possible, while balancing all of that with ensuring you can generate money for future rounds (running out of money stings). I absolutely love the core gameplay loop. For example, Stewart starts with more merchants and excels at exploiting the market, while MacDonald is the only clan that can place fishermen on water. Each one has a unique special ability and/or starting advantage to differentiate from the others. There are also variable player powers in the form of nine different clans.Īs far as I could tell, they are all relatively true to their real-life inspirations. Most of the wins I’ve seen have been from the players who were best able to spin up an exporting engine, churning through contracts and racking up big points. The main use of the resources is to fulfill export contracts, which are one of the primary point sources in the game. This reveals an icon on your player board, which indicates a type of resource or amount of money that you’ll gain in the production phase, which occurs after everyone has passed (usually after running out of money). I won’t go into detail on every action, but perhaps the most important is Expand, where you select one of your pieces on your player board, and move it to a space on the main board, paying the cost of the piece and the cost on the board. GameplayĮvery turn, players can take one of eight different actions: Being able to differentiate between different terrain types is important and the design of the board makes it easy at a glance. The main board itself is gorgeous and extremely clear. All the cardboard is solidly thick as well. The one thing which would have been cool is if the merchant tokens were tiny bowler hats, but I digress – everything works well and the shape of the tokens evokes the theme nicely. I don’t have the metal coins (sadly), but the cardboard ones are perfectly serviceable. The components themselves, while small, are of a very high quality. You’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger size-to-weight discrepancy among games like this. I actually appreciate this, as the footprint is minimal.

One thing that I find very interesting is how the game looks as light as a feather on the table, which belies its rather hefty nature. This is a valid complaint for sure, although it doesn’t really bother me personally. Kudos to Juma for picking the perfect artist for this project.Ī frequent complaint is that the components are a bit small and can be fiddly, particularly during setup. I recognised it immediately, and it fits the theme perfectly. I adore Klemens’ style and direction, which was one of the first things that drew me to this game. Players take the role of clans in 19th-century Scotland, trading and exporting in order to grow their economic clout.Īt the time of writing, I have played Clans of Caledonia a total of 11 times with the following player counts:įirst of all, the aesthetic. It is an economic strategy game, in much the same vein as games like Terra Mystica and Gaia Project. The designer is Juma Al-JouJou, and the artist is the renowned Klemens Franz. Clans of Caledonia was published in 2017.

Gaia project vs clans of caledonia