Settlers of catan with five of us

Jörn and Sheila's older children like to play Settlers, and often ask if they can stay up for a game... so yesterday afternoon Sarah and I volunteered to go and play a game with them. Sheila played with Lukas, who is 8 and a little erratic in his play, so it was a five-person game. I played orange, Marie (12) was white, Jacob (10 and highly competitive) was green, Lukas/Sheila red, and Sarah brown.

I forgot to take a picture right after the initial placement, but here's what it looked like after a couple of moves - all that had happened on the board was that Jacob had built a street.


As can probably seen from the layout of the board, and the numbers, ore was not a shortage in this game. Moreoever, 5s were rolled with surprising regularity. That meant that I was able to build two cities fairly early on in the game, and Jacob managed to build all four of his within about half an hour:


.. although by that time Marie had (temporarily) taken the longest street card.

Of course, four cities placed like that meant that Jacob kept gaining even more ore. And since 10s were also rolled fairly often, he had a lot of wheat, too. We didn't realise quite how much until his turn came around, and he heaved a great sigh of relief that he had not rolled a 7. He had - among other things - the cards for TWO cities (and almost a third) in his hand!


- but they were of no use to him directly, nor could he play them at the end of anyone else's turn, since he had no cities left to build.

He was able to trade for a good amount of clay and wood, and decided to ensure that he got - and kept - the longest street card, by building all 15 of his streets continuously. If he hadn't done that, Marie might have overtaken him again. The disadvantage of that was that he limited his building spots: he only had one more. He managed to build a settlement there, and was then stuck with buying cards; since he had 11 points by then, none of us really wanted to trade with him, so he sometimes had to trade four ore or wheat with the bank for one sheep card.

Meanwhile I had 9 points on the board, and had bought two victory point development cards. Sheila and Lukas (by this stage it was mostly Sheila playing) also had 9 points on the board. I wasn't picking up many cards at all, and thought Jacob would surely get a victory point card... he was buying two or three cards each turn. But he played, and didn't declare 12 points... so Marie played, then it was Sheila's turn. She managed to build a settlement AND a city, giving her two more points... and then showed a victory point card. So she and Lukas were the winners....

.. or so we thought. Jacob then revealed that he did in fact have a victory point card, so he also had 12 points. When we asked, bewildered, why he didn't declare it (so as to be the outright winnner) he said he was hoping for 15 points. He wanted the largest army (and could have achieved it the following round) and thought that if he kept playing he might pick up yet another victory point card. He wasn't worried about sharing his win with Sheila and Lukas; the important thing was that he beat me!

I forgot to take the final photograph until Marie had already removed her white pieces. But she did it tidily enough that everything else was showing: