Stayed awake with the life-changing magic of playing #Caylus over the phone (with Simon — we each had a board set up). I won 2-0, first with a tailor strat and then with, uh, not sure how to describe it. I kept threatening to make big plays and my opponent spent so many resources denying those plays at the expense of his own position. Basically applying miai thinking to Caylus writ large — normally miai is a basic strat (“Food is not urgent because there are two food squares before the carpenter square, if they go on one I can take the other”) but reading a whole sequence of moves as miai is next lev♥ I feel like I’m getting better at Caylus.
It was a great game because the opponent had all the roles and I would pass early and spend my last three workers on the bridge but… he was so afraid of me getting gold that he paid to cancel that, turn after turn. He had the role that gives extra workers but I had more residences so I was happy that he went for the zero-sum grind. Those residences kept ticking until he was broke on his denial-style game.