The Pillars of the Earth is based on Ken Follett’s best-selling novel. Players join together to help build Kingsbridge Cathedral. Using your workmen and resources, you must wisely deploy assets to overcome unexpected difficulties and shortages to prove yourself the greatest builder of them all! Will your efforts be recognized when the Great Cathedral at Kingsbridge is complete?

Any news on what Mayfair has done to the art?  I love the board in the original....

Valerie, from what I’ve heard, I believe that the board will be identical to the Kosmos edition aside from having English text. I’m following up with Mayfair to make sure this is the case.

Mayfair has realized the economic benefits of co-production and doesn’t reinvent the wheel any more, do they?

How many of you have read the book?  I ask only because to use a book’s title for a boardgame usually involves quite a payout.  This could be justified if there was a vast crowd of readers out there who are overjoyed to see a favourite book translated into a boardgame (like “Lord of the Rings")
I accept that this is a German game and maybe the book was a runaway best-seller in Germany.  But it is a British book and as a Brit. I have to say I had never heard of it; nor has any of our gaming group. 
Of course, I suppose this could be a reversal of the norm and the book publishers have actually paid the game publishers to use the title as a form of publicity.  If so it worked in my case because I went out and bought all 1075 pages of it just to see what I had been missing!!!

The book came 33rd in the BBC’s top 100 “Big Reads”, as voted by the British public, so someone in the UK must love it. 

It came third in the German equivalent.

Valerie, Mayfair reports that no substantive changes have been made to the look of The Pillars of the Earth, so keep the love flowing…