Cities and Knights game for two again

After playing a long five-person Seafarers game last Sunday, and a very enjoyable Settlers game on Tuesday, we decided to have a two-person Cities and Knights game yesterday evening. The board looked very small after playing the two extensions earlier in the week, and it took us a moment to remember the variations necessary for a two-player game!

I placed my first settlement on what looked like a useful intersection with ore, wood and sheep (which give commodity cards when the settlement is upgraded to a city), and two good numbers: 5, 6 and 11. Richard then placed his two settlements so as to get all five resources, and a fair selection of numbers. I then put my second settlement and city using similar strategy, although I was lacking the 8 and the 4. I placed my city on an intersection with two wood and sheep, which would give me the cloth and book commodities, since I like the relevant cards much better than those associated with coins (which come from ore). Richard then placed his city in the place I'd considered... giving him two ore hexes next to his initial city.


So we played for twenty minutes or so, during which time Richard did indeed gain a lot of coin commodity cards, and was able to build city improvements using them right up to metropolis level surprisingly fast. He also gained victory cards for the first two barbarian attacks. I wasn't too happy about that; I'd bought a two-ring knight fairly early in the game and activiated it, and Richard also had an active two-ring knight. We had four cities in all by the first attack, so should have received one card of our choice each. However... one of the 'coin' related cards Richard had collected was the 'deserter' card which enabled him to remove my knight and have a free knight himself of the same status. Thereafter, although I did buy another knight, I was never able to catch him up. However I managed the longest street card, and kept hold of that, which was something.


By the third barbarian attack, we hadn't been counting our cities carefully enough... and the barbarians won! Since Richard had the stronger knight force, I had to give up one of my cities and return it to a settlement.


I did manage to gain the metropolis using the book commodity cards, which gave me an extra two points, and I did have control of the merchant for almost the entire game, which was useful. Particularly when I also picked up the card enabling me to have six free wheat cards (since I had settlements bordering three wheat hexes) and could thus build a settlement using seven wheat (since the merchant was on wheat).

It was quite close near the end. I had worked out that Richard had 17 points: 12 in buildings, 2 for his metropolis, and three 'defender of Catan' cards. I had 16: 10 in buildings, 2 for my metropolis, 2 for the longest street, one for the merchant, and one for a victory point progress card which I had picked up. I had also worked out that, by careful trading, I could manage the commodity cards necessary to take the final metropolis - so long as Richard didn't - and win by a breadth.

He was also working out whether he could take that metropolis, but realised that he couldn't. However, when I pointed out that he only needed one more point to win, he built his final settlement, taking him to 18 points.