At this point, unless you’re interested in finding out how the game is played, you can scroll down to the Thoughts section to find out what I think about Clans of Caledonia. In the production phase, each player collects basic resources, refined goods and cash from their production units built on the game map. After playing this for the first time we immediately started playing it again as the first game was so much fun! It’s incredibly freeing, and yet you never finish a round not feeling like there was something more you would have liked to get built. Most people can just pick them up and play them decently, but other clans like mackenzie and macdonald, can take more skill to use, but can be just as good, if not better.

Overall this game has far more potential (especially with the market board), but unfortunately does not ultimately deliver.

Overall, Clans of Caledonia is an accomplished piece of work and deserves all the credit and praise it’s already received since it’s debut (at Spiel ’17, I suspect, but I may be wrong) — it’s gaining fans at a steady pace, and is already in the BGG Top 200, and deservedly so, I think. I mentioned contracts earlier in the article, there is a huge amount of luck in contracts, the most in the game. During the Production phase, each player will receive income based on the number and type of workers that they have deployed. Economic simulation games set in 19th century Scotland are few and far between, but Clans of Caledonia by Karma Games is one of those rare games.

If you like building up an engine that consists of cows, bread and whiskey, and don’t mind your friends constantly talking in poor attempts of a Scottish accent, then Clans of Caledonia is the game for you! It can only be used a few times a round, and there is a lot of competition with other places for the desired spots. Almost always you fulfil a contract and get a new one, then spend the round setting up your engine for it so you can complete it at the beginning of the next round with the stuff you get during end of round production. Your role is to expand your influence in the Highlands, cut wood or mine ore for income, plant the land with wheat, as well as herd cows and sheep.

During this period, Scotland made the transition from a predominantly agricultural economy to an industrialized one, heavily reliant on trade and export. Some of these will have better overlap with what you are trying to do, both contract and faction wise, so you should pick 2 or 3 to score well and score the others if you can. If I didn’t capitalize on the ability of going to the market with greater frequency than the other Clans, I would have tanked in the scoring.

Preparation phase: the Scoring tile from the previous round is flipped over to signify that it has been used. During last round there isn’t much to do when you can’t afford to take many (more than one) contracts. Each action is simple and doesn’t really lead to any big chains of actions that you need to sit through with the biggest action chain being getting a neighbourhood market bonus. At that time, Scotland was transformed from an agricultural to an industrial nation that became increasingly dependent on exports and imports.I had the Clan which boosted my waterway travel and provided a few extra tradesman in the beginning. It’s not uncommon to see a table of Terra Mystica Players huddled around the table, heads down, deep in thought. In the 19th century, Scotland made the transition from an agricultural to an industrialized country that heavily relied on trade and export. There are several other ways you can get points throughout that shouldn’t be ignored, such as the end of round bonuses and the end game settlement scoring. You will get more settlements, more imports, more hops, more resources end game, overall you just score more points all around when going big econ than when you don’t.