Settlers of Catan for four

It had been a long since we played a four-person regular game of Settlers with Jörn and Sheila. Looking back at the archives, I think last night was the first time this year! We've enjoyed the five- and six-player games, and Richard and I also like our two-person games. But four is what we were most familiar with during last year. As usual, my tiles were orange, Richard's red, Sheila's brown and Jörn's blue.

We started around 8.30 by the time we'd set everything up. I was last to place, and realised I couldn't get all five resources. I realised that there would be a fair mount of wood, so hoped I'd be able to trade for that. Then I forgot to take a photo until we'd played a couple of rounds, although all that had been built was two streets.


I thought my numbers were at least reasonable: 3, 4, 8, 9 and 10 in addition to the probably not-so-useful 2. But for the first round, I didn't pick up a single card: 5s and 6s were the main numbers rolled. Jörn, who played second, had the best selection of numbers: 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10. No wood, but he could get to a wood hex fairly easily. Sheila's numbers were almost as good, statistically speaking: 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9; she had access to all five resources, too.

The game got going fairly quickly, other than in my case since I continued picking up very few cards. Still, within about half an hour I had at least managed to build two more settlements, and now had access to a useful 5-wheat hex and the ore harbour (less useful). Richard realised he was lacking potential building spaces, so concentrated on buying streets in order to ensure at least a few spots for settlements. Jörn and Sheila were both doing well, expanding and building much more rapidly.


By that stage in the game, Richard had 3 points, I had 4, Sheila had 6 and Jörn had 7.

Then followed the battle of the longest street. Richard took it at first, with just five. He was simply buying more streets to secure building spots and the longest street was a by-product. Not long afterwards, Sheila overtook him and there were a couple of rounds where they both built streets, realising that neither could get more than 10 so whoever got there first would keep the card.

It was Sheila who succeeded; and with her other buildings, she was up to 11 points. Nobody else had more than 9... but she pointed out that I could theoretically take the street card from her. A 2 had been rolled, giving me three unexpected clay resource cards, and I also had some ore as well as sheep. By that stage I'd used all my building spots, and although I'd like to have built a city, we did want the game to continue beyond 9.30... so Richard and Jörn both traded with me to enable me to have the wood I needed.


So Sheila was back to 9 points, the same as Jörn. I had 8, including the longest street. Richard had 7. All very close, and the game could potentially continue for a while since all building spots had been used up: so all we could do was build cities and buy cards.

I did think about the largest army; three of us had each played two knights, but having built all those streets I didn't have enough cards left to buy anything more. Jörn had bought quite a few, so we weren't surprised when he played a knight, a couple of rounds later, and gained the largest army - giving him 11 points. He then tried to trade in order to build a city, but naturally nobody would oblige since he only needed one more point to win.

Or so we thought.

When he discovered that he couldn't actually build another city, he said he'd been hoping to win with 14 points... and turned over two victory point cards. So he won the game with 13.