Luckily, Isle of Skye does all it can to remain speedy: most of the difficult decisions (like pricing and placing tiles) are handled simultaneously.

Secretly and simultaneously, behind their screens, players assign their ax token to one tile (which will be discarded) and assign a value of at least 1 coin to the other two tiles.

You can only use the money that is not currently assigned to a tile, so you might not want to put all your money on the tiles to raise their value as you won’t be able to spend it.

I have taken the time above to explain these key mechanics because they are in my opinion what makes this game really impressive.Here’s one game that is going to strongly incentivise players to build contiguously complete regions – you get points for each completed feature on your island, and more points still for each completed mountain. Tiles must match orthogonally edge to edge with landscape (meadow to meadow, mountain to mountain, water to water), although roads need not connect. At the end of the auction phase of the game comes the tile laying phase where you can lay any tiles you have bought or have remaining in your hand unpurchased by your opponents.