Review
Friendly neighbors, ambitious competitors
Clans of Caledonia
Earn Money, produce and export the scottish way
Karma Games has, on occasion of Spiel 17 at Essen, published a new game that has caused very varied reactions on Internet Forums. Some players list it among the best new releases, other believe it to be too simple, compared to Terra Mystica or Gaia Project. One good reason, anyhow, to give the game a test run to make up one’s own mind.
Clans of Caledonia can be played by 1 player and with up to 4 players. As you play exactly five rounds, you can assess the duration of the game nicely, the publisher puts it at ca. 30 minutes per player. In those five rounds, which all follow the same scheme, players resolve their actions, after a short preparation phase for the round, in the action phase, one action per turn, until all players have passed their turn. This action phase is followed by a production phase, in which players receive commodities and money (pounds). The round is then completed by a scoring phase. The turn order of the next round is determined by the order in which players pass their turn. To pass your turn early has two advantages, as both the turn order and the starting income of the next round are determined by the order of passing your turn.
Despite the rather small box of the game, players have lots of components of very good quality at their command. The initial setting up of your personal game tableau during game preparation at the start of the game can take a bit of time. Among other items, there are workers, cattle and sheep or bakeries and cheese dairies. They all serve one purpose only: To expand your own clan on the main board and to achieve more income and a higher production of commodities, which are mainly used to export wares. As is the case in most of such games, a player who has the right commodities available at the right time, will be the most successful.
The main events of the game are taking place on the central game board. This is assembled from four rectangular pieces which can be, while adhering to the rules, can be assembled into 16 different arrangements and, in total, represent a Scottish landscape. This landscape is partitioned into hexagon cases, featuring typical Scottish terrain: Lots of meadows, a few mountains, a few forests and of course, not to forget, the rivers and lakes, those famous Lochs.
Those hexagon cases are settled by clans, that is, players, during the game; for this, the type of terrain determines for the clans what they can use to claim this hexagon case. Makes sense, as it would be difficult to turn a mountain into a field or to keep sheep and cattle in a forest. When your clan has claimed a hexagon case, this hexagon case cannot be settled any further, neither by your own clan or another clan. There are no conflicts to resolve here - first come, first served is the motto here! The settling of a hexagon case usually remains constant to the end of the game, only in case of cattle and sheep a player might have to take them back.
In addition to the variable board arrangement, there are variable harbors. Four out of nine harbor tiles are randomly selected and added to the corners of the board. Players can arrive there to use the respective bonus once only in the game.
So, players represent Scottish clans and set up several production sites of varying types on the board. After the set-up of the game, each player has two workers on the board. Those workers, too, are used for production. Workers are either woodcutters in the forest or miners in the mountains. The earn a player a fixed sum of money in the income phase, the amount varies for forest or mountain and with available improved equipment. For the workers the same rule applies that applies to all other production options: For each player, there are only four of a kind; each player, for instance, has only four miners and four woodcutters. Workers can not be used in the meadows; in that terrain, you have the options of breeding sheep or cattle or to cultivate your land; those options produce basic resources - wool, milk or grain. The disadvantage with those goods is that they can only be sold cheaply, and, to some extent, cannot be exported. Therefore, a clan should also set up cheese dairies, bakeries and/or distilleries on the meadow hexagons, which will enable you to process the basic resources into high-value commodities, which in turn can be sold for more money and also exported.
Each of those acquisitions has, of course, its costs, which is calculated from the fixed price for the acquisition according to the notation on the player board plus the „land slot price“ on the main board; each hexagon case has its own special price, which has to be paid when the hexagon case is settled. When the payment has been made and the hexagon case has the right type of terrain, even if only in part, a placer is entitled to build adjacent to his existing, occupied hexagons. Unfortunately, this neighborhood rule is already broken by rivers and, of course, by lakes. And this can turn cheap hexagon cases into unattainable goals. Fortunately, however, each clan can educate itself in the art of shipping. Depending on the level on your shipping track on your tableau, hexagon cases on the other side of a river or in crossing of one or several lake cases are considered to be adjacent and can be settled.
Neighborhood has another significant role in this action. If a clan settles a hexagon case adjacent to the hexagon case of another clan he is entitled to shop cheaply at this neighbor in the course of settling, provided he owns enough money. It is understandable that you want to be on good terms with your neighbor. And a bit of neighborly assistance can only be an advantage!
In consequence to the expansion of the clan in the Scottish Highlands, the productivity of the clan raises. Each field provides two units of grain in the production phase, each cow one unit of milk, each sheep one unit of wool. If the clan owns cheese dairies, he can in this phase convert one milk per cheese dairy in his possession into cheese one unit of cheese. The same goes for the processing of grain into bread via bakeries owned by the clan or into whiskey via its distilleries.
Those commodities of higher value can now be converted into money or can be used to complete export orders.
For trading with commodities, a market tableau is available. To be able to use it, a player must use his merchants. At the start of the game, each player owns two merchants and can buy up to maximum five more from his player board as an action. Each merchant may sell or buy exactly one commodity. In general, all produced commodities can be sold and bought for their individual price. As usual, the price decreases after selling goods and increased after buying. In one action, you can use several merchants, but only for one type of commodity and a player is not allowed to buy and sell the same type of commodity within one round.
The market is often used to acquire money that might be needed or to sell commodities one owns in order to buy commodities in a following turn, commodities that you not own but need to complete an export order.
Export orders are by far the most important action to sell the commodities you produced. Five or six export orders are openly displayed on the export tableau in each round. Those export orders can be taken by players as an action. However, every player can only have one open export order at a time. When an order has been completed, you can acquire another one. For the acquisition of an export order you must pay the cost, those costs rise by 5 pounds in each round. Interesting details: In the first round you do not pay those 5 pounds, on the contrary, you receive 5 pounds when you take an export order.
Export orders always come in two parts: On the left side the state the commodities necessary to complete the order, and the profit is stated on the right side. The profit can either be an immediate bonus or victory points at the end of the game, usually a combination of both. Bonuses can be, for instance, money or an expansion without having to pay the price of the hexagon case, or the upgrading of a technology, that is, to equip all miners or woodcutters at a cheaper price, or take a merchant free of charge from your player tableau or improve your shipping free of charge.
Victory points at the end of the game are awarded based on the commodities on the completed export order. If it is, for instance, a given number of hops, each hop is worth one victory point at the end of the game. When a given amount of the import commodities of cotton, tobacco or sugar cane is stated on the export order, the amount is marked on a special separate track for each import commodity. The import commodity that was important the least often by completing export orders, is therefore in last position on the track, is worth five victory points per unit of commodity, the other two, in relation to their position on the track, four or three victory points. In order to complete an export order, you must discard the combination of meat, wool or upgraded commodities as depicted on the order. Discarding meat, however, means clearing a hexagon case, that is, depending on the type of meet, either one sheep or one cattle on a meadow case.
In addition to those victory points acquired at the end of the game, you also acquire victory points during the game. This happens in the scoring phase at the end of the round. Five of nine scoring tiles are displayed openly at the start of the game; at the end of each round, one of them is resolved. The acquisition of victory points is always coupled with a condition; for instance, you receive two victory points for each worker present on the board.
Another option for victory points during the game are the Clan tiles. At the start of the game, clan tiles are laid out in relation to the number of players, and in reverse turn order, each player selects a clan that he will represent during the game. Each clan has his own special ability, which in some cases even determines the strategy for the game. There is, for instance, a clan that delivers three money units for each production of whisky, another one can sell milk. Yet another one has a second chest, that is, room for a second incomplete export order. An interesting clan, too, is the clan who includes fishermen in addition to its miners and woodcutters; fishermen can be used on Loch cases and can move on the Loch.
At the end of Round Five, a final scoring is resolved, in which you add victory points for commodities and money as well as for hops and import commodities on your completed export orders to the the victory points acquired during the game. Then, there are majority victory points for most and second most export orders, 12 and 6 points, and for most adjacent settlements. As settlement for this scoring all your own adjacent settled hexagon cases are considered, albeit without any river or lake in-between. Then you count all your settlements that you can reach due to the level of shipping that you achieved. If you have the majority here, you score 18 points, second and third position gives 12 and 6 points. This is a rather interesting way to score insofar as the number of settled hexagon cases is NOT the deciding factor here.
Clans of Caledonia is an exigent, demanding game of economics with manageable and, in addition, the advantage, that the duration of the game is rather moderate and not overly long. The mechanisms are straightforward and not interlocking in ways that are too complex. Therefore, the game is also suitable for a shorter games evening; you gain access to the game rather quickly and a game doesn’t take too long.
As regards to mechanisms, do not expect new ones. On the other hand, it is rather unusual that you get money for taking an export order or that you are forced, in a development game, to dismantle a production site that was acquired very expensively, so that you can complete an export order.
The game is also NOT a game of extreme scarcity, you have always rather a lot of money to be able to implement some of your plans, but of course not enough to implement all of them. In this, a good ratio of scarcity to availability has been achieved.
As regards to clan tiles, my view is somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand, they offer an individual advantage to the clan player in his game and therefore provide variation, but on the other hand they force a player to use certain strategies. If you play contrary to the ability of the clan will probably not result in winning the game. Maybe this is the reason, that an optional rule offers the alternative of playing without the clan tiles. Furthermore, the strategy is, similar to Terra Mystica, influenced by the scoring at the end of the rounds, which provides advantage for various actions in respective rounds.
Clans of Caledonia count be tagged as a “solo game”. Interaction between players is very rare, especially in case of three players you rarely encounter each other on the board, may be due to the fact that the board has the same size as for a game with four players. All you need to consider is the competition on the export tableau. Therefore, Clans of Caledonia works best in a game of four players.
Finally, a word on the element of luck. In general, Clans of Caledonia can be planned rather well. The only imponderability is the export tableau. For every round, there are only a few export orders available. If there is nothing suitable for your own production, all that remains for you is to put your hope on a bit of luck in the next round, which, however, comes with a rise in cost for this action. >On no account you should take an export order that is hard to complete, as you must complete an order that you took, you cannot discard it. There is also no mechanism to change an export order at the end of a round. In case that no export order was taken in a round, all export orders remain on the export tableau for the next round.
Bernhard Czermak
Players: 1-4
Age: 12+
Time: 30/pl
Designer: Juma Al-JouJou
Artist: Klemens Franz
Price: ca. 50 Euro
Publisher: Karma Games 2017
Web: www.karma-games.com
Genre: Economics
Users: For experts
Special: 1 player
Version: multi
Rules: de en + es fr it
In-game text: no
Comments:
Little interaction
Many options for planning your turn
Compares to:
Terra Mystica
Other editions:
Currently none
My rating: 5
Clans of Caledonia is a game on economics that plays fast and offers many different scenarios due to its variable set-up. The planning of a turn is fun, due to the availability of many options, but is not as complex as to result in excessive pondering. In my opinion, however, the game could have done with a bit more interaction.
Chance (pink): 1
Tactic (turquoise): 2
Strategy (blue): 2
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 2
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0