Dear readers — Happy 2021! As you may have noticed, I didn’t end last year with a recap of the best games I’ve played in 2020 because, to be honest, I didn’t play too many new games last year and overall just felt so drained and uninspired. 2020 was such a bleak year for many, and it seemed for a brief moment that 2021 wasn’t off to a much better start.

This past week though, everything seems slightly less horrible. And that, my friends, is a start. And guess what? I even got some gaming in!

I received The Field of the Cloth of Gold, published by Hollandspiele, during the holidays. Designer Tom Russell provides this charming description about it: “This game was created to commemorate the five hundredth anniversary of the world’s most famous three-week party, in which King Henry VIII of England, and Francis I of France, spent ridiculous amounts of money and resources to peacock at each other.” 

The Field of the Cloth of Gold is a two-player game that plays in about 20 minutes. One player is the king of England, and the other the king of France, and players work to amass a hand of tiles so they can play those tiles into their court and score them when taking actions. 

Tiles come in four colors: gold, blue, white and red. Your hand is kept secret from your rival (I used tile holders from Rummikub so I wouldn’t have to hold tiles in my hand) while your court is in public view. Tiles that aren’t in your hand or your court, or on the board are kept in a container of your choice so that you can randomly draw them when needed. This place is called the Darkness — and yes, that’s what the rulebook calls it. Also worth noting that the rulebook is a mere four pages, making the game easy to learn and jump into.

There are seven locations on the cloth board — a very nice bonus to the game, I might add — and players have two tokens each that they can choose from to move to an open location for their one action on their turn.

The game can seem like your standard worker-placement point salad but for each action you take, your rival is presented with a gift — the tile that’s randomly drawn and placed at that action location — to be placed in their court.

This very thing creates an unbelievably high tension between you and your opponent, a strategic dance to avoid giving your opponent the tile they need, which often sits on the action you truly want to take. It’s an absurd gift-giving mechanism that forces you to hand over a gift while you smile through gritted teeth. 

There are seven action locations on the board. 

• The first spot is Dragon, where you move the dragon token so that the dragon blocks a location from being activated.
• The second spot is Secrecy, where you can tiles from the Darkness. The number of tiles depends on where you’re sitting on the score track. 
• The third spot is Gold, where you reveal gold tiles from your hand and place them in your court. If you have more gold tiles than your rival, you score 2 points. 
• The fourth spot is Blue, where you reveal blue tiles from your hand and place them in your court. If you have 1/2/3+ tiles, you score 1/3/6 points. The blue tiles in your court are then removed from the game. 
• The fifth spot is White, where you reveal white tiles from your hand and place them in your court. You score 1 point per white tile in your court. The white tiles in your court are then removed from the game. 
• The sixth spot is Red, where the active player reveals their red tiles from their hand and places them into their court. Both players receive 1 point for each red tile in their court and then the red cards are discarded from the game. Note, the rival player does not get a chance to place red tiles into their court during this action. 
• The seventh spot is Purple, where you reveal all tiles from your hand and place it into your court. You score 2 points for each set in your court. A set is a collection of four tiles, one of each of the colors. 

This back and forth continues until one person hits 30 points or there are no more tiles in the Darkness. Also, as one moves up the score track, they draw more tiles during Secrecy (represented by the black box in the photo below), ramping up the game. But as you move up the score track, your gold tiles are worth less at the end. These points from your gold tiles are added to your score on the score track, and the player with the most points wins the game. 

The Field of the Cloth of Gold is incredibly tense but also very fun! Game play is quick, and the game is over before you know it. A simple decision opens up opportunities for your rival and you try your best to mitigate them. I know I spent my games staring daggers at my opponent, hoping he’ll vacate the spot I need to score points. But then again, I also left my one token on the location he wanted to go to. And when in doubt, you can always send out the dragon to wreak some havoc!