Evening Settlers game with adults

Even I was beginning to feel that I had almost had enough games of Settlers of Catan by last night. But we wouldn't miss the opportunity to spend an evening with our friends, and it's slightly different playing with their German set anyway. Tim decided he would play with Richard (red pieces) rather than on his own. I had the orange tiles, as usual; Sheila had brown; Peter had green, and for some reason Jörn was playing white rather than his usual blue.

I'm convinced that by far the most important part of the game is the initial placement of settlements. I was third to play, so had not expected much. I was tired, too. But I was still alert enough to realise that, in this game, ore was likely to be lacking. The ore hex with the robber on it in the photo below had number 9; the others were 3, 11 and both 12s. So I knew I needed to be on that 9 ore. I was a little surprised that neither Richard nor Sheila had already taken it. I could have chosen the spot with access to clay (4) and sheep (6) but decided it was more important to have a good supply of wheat (6) and thus also had access to sheep (10).


By the time I got to place my second settlement, there was no way to get both clay and wood. I wanted an 8 hex, since 6 and 8 are the most commonly rolled, and decided that wood was probably better than clay, since it gave me another possible ore hex (albeit on a 12) and another wheat (9). If I'd opted for the clay 8 hex, it would have been on its own since the corner with wheat and ore was taken. In addition, the 8-wood hex was close to the wood harbour, so I knew I could use it for trading.

Not having clay, I wanted to build the minimum of streets, trading wood for clay in the early stages. I found myself, repeatedly, with the resources for a development card; so, as it was the extended game where we could all build/buy after each turn, I bought another card every time I had 7 or more cards in my hand. In the course of the game, I collected seven of them. I hoped, of course, for some victory points or at least a 'year of plenty' resource card. Instead, I managed to buy six knight cards, and one monopoly. I used the monopoly (on clay) about half-way through the game, when a fair amount of clay had just been collected, and was able to build another two streets and a settlement on (ironically) the clay harbour.

As so often happens, it wasn't obvious that I was doing quite well. It took me a while to get any cities, since I kept having to give up a wheat and an ore for another development card. Peter went straight for the longest street - and retained it. I rarely go for that anyway, but knew there was no chance without any clay hexes. But with my handful of knights, I could easily get the largest army. I expected people would move the robber onto one of my resources but they didn't - since I wasn't winning - so I started using the knights when I had about eight points. I got the largest army and was suddenly co-leading with Peter. I still had a couple of unplayed development cards, which of course were knights but everyone else thought perhaps one of them was a victory point.

Then I managed to gather resources for a couple more cities (and yet another development card) during the last rounds, meaning that, once again, I won. Only just. I don't know why I won, since I didn't have a lot of numbers. 4s and 5s were rolled quite a bit, and I had neither. I had two 9s, but they didn't come up all that often, and by the last round my ore 9 was blocked by the robber. And Richard - who played first, and had pretty good numbers which were frequently rolled - didn't do well even with Tim advising on strategy. I suppose it's because he had no access to ore.