Seafarers of Catan: Fog Island again (random setup)

We were a bit tired, so rather than tackle anything new or complicated, we decided to play another round of our favourite Seafarers scenario, so far: Fog Island. To make it a little different, we opted for the 'random' setup. The outer frame, gold and sea hexes were as in the booklet, as were the hexes and numbers we needed for the game (some face-up, some shuffled face-down). But the main island had the resource hexes placed randomly, and then the numbers were also placed randomly, with the stipulation that 6s and 8s must not be next to each other. It looked like this when we'd done the setup:


It was surprisingly well-balanced for random placement! We built our initial three settlements, as in our two-player house rules. We weren't very adventurous, choosing - as usual - spots near but not on the coast with a range of resources and numbers. I (playing orange) opted for as many ore placements as I could, and good access to both wood and clay, hoping to build cities early and trade for other resources. Once again I forgot to take a photo until we'd played a few rounds, and Richard had built his first coastal settlement.


The dice rarely seem to follow statistical expectations. Ours often achieve 8, 9 or 19 rather more frequently than the lower numbers, but not this time. 8s and 9s were not rolled for a long time, so we both had to trade for the vital wood resource, needed both for streets and ships, as well as settlements. I quickly started aiming for harbours, to enable better trading, while Richard, adventurous as ever, started building ships as soon as he could.

The point of the Fog Island game is to uncover uncharted territories, so before too long we were both doing that. The face-down hexes were shuffled, and picked up as and when either of us reached a place with no hex, either by ship or by street. And yet somehow almost everything Richard turned over was a sea-hex - no use to him at all - while mine mostly revealed resource hexes, giving me an extra matching resource card as well as the opportunity to build new settlements. I was particularly pleased when I uncovered an 8 next to a 6: not usually allowed, but possible with this scenario for the uncharted islands.


Richard really should have won this game. In the early stages, he was picking up way more cards than I was, and soon gained the longest route card. However, he wasn't entirely focused, and missed the opportunity of playing his monopoly card at a stage where he needed ore, when I had just picked up three (and had a couple of others in my hand). Instead he traded heavily, using at least seven other cards for the ore to build a city.

He also likes to move his leading ships around, a useful technique but one which I usually forget about. The disadvantage of moving them is that it's easy to lose the longest route card. That's what happened, when mine overtook his. He could have linked up his long route with a shorter one, but never quite achieved the necessary resources - or, at least, was doing other expansion or exploring instead.

We reached the stage where I had built all the settlements and cities that I could, as well as having the longest route card. So I had 15 points, and we play this game to 16. I'd picked up a couple of useful development cards early in the game, but no knights or victory points. All I could do at this stage, other than extending my 'route' and possibly exploring more, was to buy cards. And I was lucky in the rolls. I picked up handfuls of ore, which I could trade 2:1, and collected two or three development cards every round. But whereas I usually seem to pick up one - or more - victory point card, I'd collected 11 development cards in all - over several rounds - before I finally picked up a victory point and was thus declared the winner.


However, more interesting than winning was that, for the first time, we succeeded in 'exploring' all the uncharted resources, thus finishing the map.