Seafarers of Catan: second scenario

This afternoon, we tried out the second scenario for Seafarers of Catan. It was rather more challenging than the first scenario, since it forced us to think about building ships and sailing to new islands.

In this scenario, every detail is given: both placement of hexes, and the numbers. We thought that might limit us, and make it too easy for one person to dominate, but it turned out to be a very interesting game. There are four small islands in this scenario. Each person's first two settlements, which can have either a road or a ship attached, can be on the same island or two different ones. These are then the 'home islands'; extra points are scored for building settlements on 'foreign' islands. The booklet suggested playing to 13 points.

Tim (blue) started, and chose a good ore-wheat-wood hex on the smallest island. I chose a similar one on a second island. Richard then placed his two settlements on the two other islands. We had two each, to start with, and the game proceeded fairly slowly with nines and fives being rolled more often than the statistically more likely 6s and 8s. We all started to build ships fairly quickly, not realising at first that the trading harbours are on the opposite sides of the islands to the routes to other islands.


We were fairly even at first, slowly building up cities and settlements as usual, with a few ships going towards other islands. I was the first to build on a 'foreign' island, and gained the longest trade-route card for doing so. I'd picked up a victory point card, too, and within about 40 minutes had nine points on the board (including the extra one for my foreign island settlement), plus the longest street - although, as ever, I kept losing count. I built another city and Tim commented that I had 12 points - so I showed my victory point card.

It seemed rather an anti-climax, so Tim suggested we play on, to 15 points, and they would try to forget that I had the victory point card! I was happy about that - the game was only just starting to get interesting, and we ended up playing for another half hour, builing considerably more ships. Richard soon took the longest trade-route card, and Tim took the largest army card by playing three knights. We didn't use the pirate much, preferring to move the robber onto other people's hexes to reduce resources, but the pirate did come into play three or four times.

There was a fair bit of luck: Richard kept picking up large numbers of cards, but the only time he rolled a 7 was when he had only seven cards in his hand! Unlike the game a couple of days ago where Tim or I rolled a 7 almost every time we had too many cards in our hand.

I realised - a little late - that I could have broken up the longest trade route by building suitably sited settlements, although I would also have to build extra streets or ships. As it was, Richard retained the card and, by dint of building right around an island, managed to get a final settlement on a second foreign island, which scored him two extra chits - meaning that he won with 16 points. By that stage, Tim and I each had 12 points so it was a fairly resounding win.