Four person Settlers in the UK

We're now in the UK.. so away from our usual Settlers of Catan playing friends. But we won't have to suffer withdrawal symptoms because we're staying in my mother's house, where there are TWO Settlers sets. Tim lives here as a student, at present, and has a copy of the American version of Settlers; my mother who also likes the game has the modern version of the game, plus 5-6 player expansion.

So we decided to play our first game on Wednesday evening. I played orange, as usual; Richard was red, Tim blue, and my mother white. it was quite a nice board with the desert in the middle and a selection of reasonable initial placement spots. We did try to persuade my mother that her coastal one wasn't such a good idea, but she wanted spots near to where she was sitting. Ore, it seemed, was going to be in short supply.


The first few rounds went fairly evenly. Ore was not as lacking as we expected, and we soon each built either another settlement or a city. Then Richard and Tim each built another settlement, giving them both four points.


Ore continued to appear, and numbers like 2 appeared more often than it should have done. It wasn't too long before Tim had built all his cities. So he had 8 solid points, and some building spots left; Richard, however, took the longest street card, giving him 9 points by this stage of the game. My mother and I were lagging far behind with 4 and 5 points respectively. I didn't think my numbers were too bad, but somehow they didn't come up.


Richard and Tim kept blocking each other with the robber, which was fine as it gave me a chance to expand a bit more. Richard hoped to extend his long street right across the board, but Tim blocked that - although it didn't particularly help him. By this stage in the game, Richard had 10 points while Tim still had 8, and I was catching up with 7:


Richard and Tim were also rather fighting over building spots. Tim took what turned out to be his last settlement, and started buying development cards and playing knights.

After a little over an hour, Richard had gained 11 points including the longest street, and I - since nobody was attacking me - had also somehow managed to gain 11 points. Tim had 9 points, but had played a couple of knights so was evidently going to gain the largest army card. So any of us could have won, if we had just one victory point card.

I was going to buy two more cards when my turn came round... but Tim played first. So he took the largest army card, and then displayed his victory point.


He was pleased to be the winner in what was a very enjoyable game.