Isle of Skye

2nd July 2019.

​The second game of gaming night at 'The Sovereigns' was 'Isle of Skye'.

In my imagination, one day someone was playing 'Carcassonne' and they thought. 'Y'know what this needs is more depth. Oh and it needs to be set in a remote part of Scotland!'.

And the result of that thought was 'Isle of Skye'.

In reality the link to Carcassonne is fairly superficial, both are landscape-based tile laying games and that's about it for similarities
Isle of Skye also contains an intriguing trading mechanic.

What's in a game?

• A large bag comes with the game.
• A stack of square tiles. These depict various types of landscape such as mountain, field and water, as well as other features. These tiles are placed in the bag and randomly drawn during the game.
• A main game board. This board tracks player scores and the turn counter. There are also 4 spaces for 'scoring tiles'.
  
• Scoring tiles. There are a number of these. They are shuffled and 4 are placed on the main game board.
  
• A screen for each player.
  
• And err... axe for each player?

How's it play?
First, there's the set up.
The scoring tiles are shuffled and 4 of them are placed on the main game board. Each tile has a different method or way of scoring points.
Each player is also given some currency (Which they keep hidden behind their screen at all times.).

The game is played over 5 turns and the game is scored at the end of these 5 turns: In each turn different scoring tiles will used for scoring. In the 1st turn, one tile is used, in turns 2 & 3, two tiles are used and in turns 4 & 5 three tiles are used.

Once set up is completed, the game begins. There are 3 phases to every turn.

Income
Each player draws currency from the gold supply.

Trading
The trading mechanics in Isle of Skye are like no other game I've played. Each turn, all the players will acquire some tiles and must sell them, but they use their own money to do so!

• First, every player blindly draws 3 tiles from the bag and hides them behind their screen in a line.
• Then the players decide which 2 tiles to sell and which one to discard.
• When selling tiles, the player can decide how much they want for each tile for. To do this, they must use their own money. This is done by putting coins on the tile equal to the cost you want the tile to be. Thus if you want to price a tile at 3 gold, you must put 3 of your own gold on the tile. Tiles have a minimum cost of 1 and obviously cannot be more expensive than the gold you have.
• The third tile must be discarded. You indicate this by putting the axe counter on it (It gets axed - geddit!).
• Once everybody has done this, we go on to the next stage.

So next everybody removes their screen and reveals their choices to each other. The following occurs.

• All tiles marked with an axe are discarded back into the bag (And the bag is shaken to 'shuffle' the tiles.).
• Each player can then buy one tile from another player (Players cannot bu their own tiles.). Player can pass it they have to.
• Play progresses until all players have had the opportunity to buy a tile.
• If one of your tiles is bought, then the player buying it pays you the cost you indicated, you also get back the gold you put on the tile.
• If one or both of your tiles are not bought, the you must buy them yourself! Paying the cost with the gold that you placed on the tile earlier.

Playing tiles
Once all of the tiles have been bought, players have to lay their tiles.

The rules for laying tiles is pretty straightforward. Tiles can be placed down in any orientation, but must honour all the other tiles that it is adjacent to.
Each player creates their own 'map' independent of all other players.

Overall?
I Liked Isle of Skye.

I particularly like the mechanics for selling tiles. You given some intriguing and risky strategies to use.

If you draw tiles you don't want, you can try to sell them at a low price to get rid of them. But underselling the tiles may help someone else with very little benefit to yourself.
Conversely, putting a high price on tiles may them price them out of other peoples' ranges. Ending up with you paying a high cost for tiles you don't want.
Additionally, because you use your own funds to put a price on tiles. If you price your tiles too highly, you will be left with little gold to buy other player's tiles.

There's lots of potential decisions here and that's good.

When laying tiles, there's lots of decisions to be made too.

As well as the 3 land types, field, mountain and water, there are also features such roads, lighthouses, farms etc.
All of these can be used in scoring, but they will do so differently over the rounds. So you need to prioritise how you lay tiles to maximise scoring.

So like I said I like Isle of Skye and it's been added to 'the list'.