Campanile (1996)

About this game

Very nice combination of tile placement and betting. Players lay long tiles to build 5 towers taller and taller, whilst betting on which will be the tallest to shortest. The trick is that when you lay a tile to raise a tower one, two or three stories tall, this controls how much you can bet (1,2 or 3 tokens) and crucially, which draw pile you take from (pile 1, 2 or 3). Since the draw piles are face-up, I might want to draw from pile 3 to get a tile which will boost a tower I've bet on, but that means I have to lay a card three stories, and so I might have to play a tile from my hand that helps the other players! A very nice mechanism which gives those simple, frustrating choices we all enjoy. The scoring gives points to the first and second majority backers on each tower.

Does it fit your group?

• Group size. Works with 2 to 5.
• Rules load. At 1.7/5 this is a light game — explain it in a few minutes, good for a table that has not played much.
• Age. The publisher suggests 10 and up. That rates the rules rather than the artwork, so judge the box yourself for younger players.