Caylus: a journey, not a destination

[jazzfish]

mnemex was curious as to how I'd managed to get a copy of Caylus, seeing as how it's moderately out of print at the moment. That story, my children, is a long and tangled one:

August 29: Hurricane Katrina starts wiping out much of Nawlins.

September 7: ThoughtHammer announces that the profit from all games purchased in the next twenty-four hours will be donated to Katrina relief. I mention this in a couple places and get several people to go in with me on an order. Among these people is rubinpdf, who wants a number of not-yet-reprinted games.

September 8: I place two separate orders with ThoughtHammer: one containing a bunch of stuff that can ship immediately, and one containing stuff that's not yet available. This includes Reef Encounter for me, Tigris and Euphrates for rbandrews, and reprints of Citadels, The Great Dalmuti, and El Grande for rubinpdf. All of these will supposedly be available "fourth quarter 2005."

Late September: A big box arrives from ThoughtHammer. It contains a bunch of games I'd expected it to, plus Tigris and Euphrates.

September 22: The reprint of The Great Dalmuti is officially released.

October 19: Caylus is released at Essen Game Fair in Essen, Germany. Scores of BoardGameGeeks encounter Caylus for the first time and universally declare it to be the Best. Game. Ever. Everyone else dismisses this as "hype."

Early November: Rio Grande pushes El Grande release date to February.

Late November: The reprint of Citadels, incorporating the Dark City expansion, is released.

December 17: The English edition of Reef Encounter is released.

Mid-December: Rio Grande Games releases an English version of Caylus. At least one online game store sells out in twenty hours. The English edition attains a semimythical status.

Christmas eve: I get to play Caylus at a meeting of the Arlington Boardgamers. It's pretty cool.

Christmas day: I get to play Reef Encounter. I am underwhelmed.

Late December to early January: rbandrews and his German edition of Caylus are the life of every party.

January 7: rbandrews takes his copy of Caylus and moves to South Dakota, leaving Blacksburg without. I place an order for my own copy of Caylus with ThoughtHammer, to be shipped with the much-delayed El Grande etc. order. I figure one more not-yet-reprinted game can't slow it down any more, after all.

January: About this time, Rio Grande announces that the much-delayed reprint of El Grande will be a Special Decennial Edition, and as such will include material formerly available only in The El Grande Expansions. It will be available in April. Gamers worldwide begin tearing their hair out.

February: About this time, a limited number of "second edition" English copies of Caylus become available, with better money and an "expansion" tile. The wider release won't be until April.

February 12: I break down and order the last two decks for the card game Blue Moon, to be shipped with everything else. (Hey, shipping's free on orders over $125, which this definitely is.)

March: I hear about Britannia for the first time. It's a multiplayer wargame that simulates the first thousand years of British history. Fantasy Flight is doing a reprint.

Late March: Caylus and El Grande release dates slip to May. "This time fer sure!"

April 4: I'm bored, so I check the status of my ThoughtHammer order to see if iI lucked into one of the early second-edition Caylus copies. I did. After a bit of internal wrangling, I send off an email to ThoughtHammer asking them to go ahead and ship everything except El Grande, and please replace Reef Encounter with Britannia. ThoughtHammer customer service comes through admirably, even crediting my account for the $4 difference in prices.

April 7: I acquire Caylus.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Cool! We are the life of every party! Well, all three of them before I left, anyway...