Setup was rather quicker, and although it took us a while to get through our initial placement of settlements and streets, the game got going by about 9pm. Here's how we set up our starting positions:
I (with orange pieces) was fourth to place; I realised that if I wanted a variety of numbers, I would have to sacrifice one resource. Since wood was likely to be plentiful in this game, I hoped I would be able to trade for it.
The game started well with some useful rolls of the dice meaning that we were all picking up a reasonable selection of cards. I was indeed able to trade for wood, and soon built my three other settlements and some streets. My problem was gaining any ore. It wasn't so plentiful, and I picked up almost none.
John (green) claimed the longest street card fairly early on; I decided I might as well see if I could take it from him, and built a few more streets to do so. He began building towards me, hoping to break into it and divide it into two: a risky strategy, since it used up roads without giving him any new building spaces.
I was in the lead by that stage, by a couple of points, so the robber was placed on one of my hexes. Almost continually! I did pick up one knight card to move it, but the lack of ore meant it was difficult to pick up any other development cards - and besides, I needed to keep my ore in the hope of building some cities.
Although several 7s were rolled, there were very few on turns when anyone had more than 7 cards. Jörn was pleased when his turn came up, and he didn't roll a 7, since he had a vast handful of cards that couldn't be played on anyone else's turn:
Richard (red pieces) realised that he was in the running for the longest street, if he built quickly; so I extended mine, despite it not being very efficient from the building space point of view. At least I had an entire section of coastline to build along. I was quite prepared for Richard to take the street from me, then Jörn (blue pieces) grabbed his last building spot which happened to be in the middle of Richard's street, breaking it up and ensuring that nobody else could take the longest street card from me.
Right through the game, the points were surprisingly close. Both John and Jörn ran out of building spaces, so John kept buying development cards and quickly gained the Largest Army card. By about 10.30 we'd reached the stage where three of us (Jörn, Sheila and I) all had 10 points, Richard had 9 points, and John had 8 points. All three of the guys also had at least two unrevealed development cards, so we knew there was a high chance that at least some of them were extra victory points.
It really was a very good game. I thought that Jörn would probably win; if he had a victory point card, he was only one point away from 12.
Then Richard had his turn. An 11 had just been rolled, giving me two valuable ore cards. I hoped I might manage to build a city on my turn, directly after his. Alas for my hopes. He played a monopoly card and took all the ore in the game - about five or six cards in all. He had plenty of wheat, so was able to turn two of his settlements into cities. And since he had a hidden victory point card, he went from 9 to 12 in one move, and won the game.
We all agreed it was a very good game, which could have been won by any of us. Jörn and John did each have a victory point card, and Sheila had built another city on the turn before Richard played his monopoly... so the final scores were very close indeed: 12 to Richard, 11 each to Jörn and Sheila, 10 to me, and 9 to John.
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