Imagine a game of Kingdomino. On the table there is a tile with a crown that fits perfectly onto the fields you have already laid out. You are about to reach for it, then glance again at the order of tile selection. Take it, and next time you may have to wait for others to pick first.
The tile in front of you really is a good fit. But you are still missing a tile that can connect the map back, and your opponent is waiting for it too. In those few seconds with your hand suspended mid-air, the size of the kingdom has not changed, but your calculation of it already has.
That moment of hesitation is the work of French designer Bruno Cathala. In Five Tribes, he has players pick up a handful of wooden meeples and place them one by one across the map. In 7 Wonders Duel, which he designed with Antoine Bauza, taking one card from an overlapping display changes what the next player can take.
From dominoes to mancala, and on to a table of civilization cards, the actions all differ. Put them together, and you can see a puzzle Cathala often leaves players: this step in front of you is worth doing, but after you do it, who gets the next opportunity?
1. A tungsten alloy researcher who brought a prototype to Lyon
Cathala wrote in a retrospective of his early experiences that encountering Fief let him see board games beyond Monopoly, and he began to think about one day making his own game. Before he actually started, he spent many years as a player, seeking out all kinds of material and trying different types of works. At that time he worked in tungsten alloy research and development, and also had to divide his time among work, family, and activities with the local rugby team.
At the end of 1999, he continued polishing the prototype later named Sans Foi Ni Loi. According to his recollection, an early publishing contact did not reach a signing, and he later wrote to designer Bruno Faidutti, whose work he knew well. After playtesting, Faidutti recommended the game to Jeux Descartes. The two Brunos play different roles in this story: one brings his own prototype, and the other gives it a chance to enter a publisher's field of view.
When Cathala went to Lyon to meet the publisher, the work he was originally going to discuss was that one. Because they still had to wait for everyone to arrive, he suggested first playing another prototype he had brought. It was a two-player pirate game then tentatively titled No Mercy. The two played several rounds in succession, and only afterward continued playtesting the originally planned work with the people who had arrived.
I like one detail in this recollection. He went to discuss one game, but brought an extra one. How the meeting was originally arranged could not determine what would be played that afternoon. As long as there are two people and a prototype that can be put on the table, a few rounds of play can let people feel for themselves how it will run.
Some of his later works are complex, and some need only a small box of components. This meeting gave him a very good starting point. Reading his retrospective on how he entered this industry, the first thing you see is his willingness to let others sit down and play, and then see whether a set of rules can keep two people at the table.
2. Five Tribes hands the wooden meeples to everyone
The design of Five Tribes is credited to Cathala. In an interview he connected this work with Mancala, a traditional type of game of sowing pieces square by square. He said he likes to start from long-used mechanisms and try to turn them into a new experience.
In Five Tribes, the wooden meeples on the map are already on spaces at the start. On your turn, choose a space and pick up all the meeples on it, then place them one by one along adjacent spaces. The color of the last meeple needs to match a meeple already at the destination. So the starting point, the arrangement of meeples in hand, the path, and the destination all have to be considered together. The color of the last meeple determines which tribe action follows.
Suppose you have found a beautiful destination. To get there, you have to leave several meeples along the way. Those meeples may let someone else assemble the right color on the next turn, or open a route that could not originally be taken. You get what you want, and at the same time you have changed the map.
This kind of change reminds me of the feeling of playing around a shared board. Everyone sees the same set of wooden meeples, but each person is looking for a different route. One of your moves may make an opponent sigh, or may make them sit up straight, because you have just laid out for them the very piece they were missing.
Even going first has a cost. Turn order in Five Tribes is determined by bidding, and the gold spent could originally have counted toward final scoring. How much you are willing to pay depends on how hard you think the route in front of you will be to encounter again. The familiar sowing action is thus connected to another judgment. Are you willing to pay points you already hold in order to change this board before others do?
Cathala recalled in a publisher's introduction that after making a series of smaller games, he wanted to make a more substantial game. Five Tribes magnifies the consequences of a hand action. The pieces are still placed one by one, but players are already preparing for how others will read this map afterward.
3. Why two cities share one table of cards
7 Wonders Duel was co-designed by Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala. The official rules introduce it as a work designed specifically for a one-on-one experience. The shared credit matters here, because the two designers' work ultimately comes together into a situation both players must face.
The cards of each age are stacked in a specified shape, and players take turns taking cards that can currently be taken. When the cards below are no longer covered, cards originally face down are also revealed. So taking a card has two layers of meaning. You gain the immediate benefit, and you may also open an entrance for the other side's next choice.
For example, a card can let you continue developing your city, but the opportunity revealed beneath it may exactly connect to the science route your opponent is pursuing. You need to estimate what the other side has accumulated, and also judge whether waiting any longer will leave even the card you want gone. Some cards on the table are open and some are not yet revealed; the judgment has a basis, and also retains risk.
The victory conditions make this more urgent. Military or scientific supremacy can end the game early. Only if neither player wins in these two ways do they play through the third age and compare scores. A person who appears to have the advantage in score still has to see how far the other city is from another kind of victory.
From my player's perspective, this shares a common thread with Five Tribes. A meeple passing through a space turns it into another situation, and taking a card from the card array also redistributes opportunities. Each city is built by its own player, but at the center of the table someone is always changing what you can do next.
4. A box of dominoes given to skiing families
The predecessor of Kingdomino came from a very concrete commission. Cathala recalled in his own article that he made a series of small-box games for the Grand Massif ski area, given to guests who bought a specified family week pass. The box needed to be small enough to be handed out from the cable car ticket window. By the 2015 project, he thought of using the familiar domino and made K’dominoz.
The small version's box limited the number and size of components. Cathala played it many times himself and wanted to develop it further so it could be released as a regular board game. Later Blue Orange released Kingdomino in 2016, with art credited to Cyril Bouquet. It won the German Spiel des Jahres Game of the Year award in 2017.
Putting one tile next to another is a very easy action to understand. The standard game limits the kingdom to five by five, and areas formed by connected terrain of the same type still need crowns to score. You have to see whether the terrain can connect, and also whether it can bring points to this land. The tile-selection position also determines turn order for the next round, so people cannot simply stare at the tile they most want this round.
I think the small-box experience left this game with an interesting sense of scale. Players can start acting very quickly, but to make a piece of land large, they also have to leave room to connect new tiles. Keeping it compact is sometimes leaving space for later choices. Extending it one space outward is sometimes equivalent to promising yourself that you will have to keep building in a certain direction later.
What the award records is a moment after release. Going back to the author's own account, the story begins with how a small gift was handed to skiing families. That real-world limitation made him think of dominoes. In the official version, players are also given a clear limitation: every expansion step has to fit into their own limited map.
5. Let players have a story of their own game
In a 2021 interview with CCAS, Cathala said that board games can let people communicate with others in different ways, and also let people gradually reveal their personalities within a game. In another interview he said he likes it when players can tell, after finishing, what they experienced in their own game.
Put these two statements next to his works, and a design connection becomes visible. You may remember spending too much gold to buy first turn, and finally completing a route no one else saw. You may also remember having to change the order of your city's construction in order to block a scientific victory. When playing Kingdomino, you may even remember who ended up with the tile you gave up.
These things are worth telling because another person also made decisions. What they saw, what they were waiting for, and why they took that particular card first often only become clear after the game ends. Some answers will make you realize that two people at the same table have already lived through two different stories.
Looking back at the two-player prototype Cathala brought to Lyon, and then at these later components that can be picked up, placed down, and flipped over, that invitation has always been very concrete. Sit down first, make a move, and then look up to see how the other player is preparing to respond.
【chengcheng's discussion topic】
When did you take a card, place a tile, or make a move and only then realize that you had opened up an opportunity for your opponent? If you could go back to that moment, would you make the same choice again?
I'm chengcheng, see you next time in Designer Story!
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Resources and Further Reading Cathala Recalls the Initial Design and Publishing Experience Cathala Discusses Traditional Mechanisms and Tabletop Stories Days of Wonder's Five Tribes Introduction and Words from the Author Five Tribes Official English Rules Repos Production's 7 Wonders Duel Introduction 7 Wonders Duel Official English Rules Cathala Tells of Kingdomino's Ski Resort Predecessor Spiel des Jahres's Kingdomino Jury Records CCAS Interviews Cathala on Board Games and Communication