Tile laying game from Pfister? I am in!

Have you played ⛰️Isle of Skye? We really like tile-laying games, and we really like Alexander Pfister games. Isle of Skye from Lookout Games is sitting in the intersection of these two things and we finally got to try it last weekend. 😁

You are the leader of your clan, building your kingdom striving to have the most points after 6 rounds. You place square shaped tiles into your own territory (as do your opponents) obeying some of the usual placement rules, like placing adjacent and having to match terrain types on edges. The twist in the game is how you get these tiles! ☝️

At the start of the round everyone draws 3 tiles from a bag then secretly places them behind their screens. You all have to discard 1 🪓, then price in the other 2 💰. This is important, because you have a chance to buy one tile from an opponent. It is a double-edged sword, because if you price high and no one wants it, you have to pay that much to place it yourself. Too cheap and people will just take it from you. 🙀

I really love how the scoring works. 🧐 You use 4 out of 16 scoring tiles, all of which will score 3 times during the game, always in different combinations. This way you don’t just draft and build whatever you want but have to keep an eye on what gets scored at each round's end. This also means that some tiles will be that much more attractive for the others too.

💬 The game is over pretty quickly after 6 rounds. This is normal for gateway games such as this, but I do feel like it would be nice to place some more tiles. On average you will only get about 12 tiles in addition to your starting one, so your kingdom won’t look as formidable as you might want it to.

💭 Pricing in tiles also needs some practice, as you won’t know at first what a tile is worth. Auction and bidding is not our strong suit, and I usually prefer an open market where you can buy tiles from a row, but this is just a matter of taste. This system has its own strengths, and brings more interaction to the game.

If you like tile-laying games you should definitely take a look at this, as it is considered a classic.☺️