Board Gaming - Isle of Skye

ratticus (58)in #gaming • 6 years ago

Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King

Isle of Sky is a tile placement game where each of the players are building their own lands in an attempt to become the best chieftain of the tribes. Each turn you each draw 3 tiles from the bag, and secretly decide which one to scrap (return to the bag), and how much to value the other 2 tiles at.

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^{I was playing as chieftain of clan MacKinnon. This little barrier was how you hid your finances, tile options and choices before each reveal}

You then reveal the tiles, values, and get rid of the scrapped tiles. Starting with the first player, each player gets to opportunity to purchase 1 of the tiles from any of the other players, paying them the value they'd placed on the tile. After all players have purchased 1 tile, any that weren't purchased are bought by the player that valued them, returning the coins to the bank. If you value your tiles to low, you might only end up with the tile you purchase from one of the other players. If you value them too high though, it could cost you a lot and reduce your available coins for the next round. This auction phase is one of the many things that help to make this a better game.

The theme is pretty good, with the artwork being reminiscent of the Scottish highlands and Lake districts. Along with this there are many ways to score points, and a good catch up mechanism as the game progresses, allowing for those that are further back to gain some points just because they are further back. I think this is needed in this style of game, as there are certainly times where the luck of the draw can play a significant deciding factor in a player's strategy and available options.

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^{My clan's land and the scoreboard showing each of the 4 scoring options and which is active in each round}

One of the interesting things during the game is that each round there are different things being scored, which are determined at the start of the game. In our game there was a bit more of a focus on having sheep and boats, with the latter being a fairly significant deciding factor at the end after one of the players got a big lead in them early.

Much like other tile placement games, working out quickly where the points are going to come from, and what's more important is very helpful to a good strategy, and while I'm still a fan of Carcassonne, this game has so much more to offer that I'd play this in preference every time. It also plays quite quickly, with even our learning game taking around 45 minutes for a 4 player game.

If you're a fan of tile placement, I'd highly recommend Isle of Skye. If you're a fan of auction mechanics, it's certainly worth a look at for the style it uses. If you like variable scoring options in different plays of the same game, this certainly has that, and with the expansions that are out or coming out, I'm sure there will be more variations available in the future. All in all it's a very good game for the 30-60 minute time slots, with a bit more to it than Carcassonne and some other simple tile placement games, without being overly taxing on the brain.