Seafarers of Catan: fog island (for two)

We thought we'd have a change yesterday evening... so we played Seafarers of Catan. We hadn't played that for the whole of March. Once again, we decided to play our favourite scenario, Fog Island. We used random setup of the main island hexes, and mostly random numbers.

As ever, we started with three settlements each. We both managed a reasonable spread of both numbers and resources:


As the game started, Richard (playing red, as usual) found himself picking up a lot of cards. As he likes boats, he soon started on a sailing and exploring expedition:


He did fairly well with the hexes he turned over. He quickly took the longest street card too, with his lengthy route. I set out to sea a few turns later, and discovered a useful sheep hex:


However, my next few explorations produced nothing more interesting than yet more sea. So I kept going until I discovered that Richard's island - so to speak - had more land at my end.


I also spotted that my 'trade route' was now longer than his, so it was my turn for the longest street card.

Richard should really have won this game. He did very well with the rolls of the dice, often picking up three or more cards per turn. Unfortunately, they weren't all very useful... and he got caught three times with a 7 being rolled, when he had collected 10 or 11 cards. Having to give up half of them was not very encouraging. Even so, he managed to build all his cities and settlements several turns before I did. He then started buying cards...

I bought a fair few development cards earlier in the game when I couldn't do anything much else - and the first three were knights. So I played them, and took the 'largest army' card.

I realised, when I played my last city that I now had 16 points... but suggested we play to 18. Richard didn't think he could take the longest route card from me, but he had played two knights, and had four or five undisclosed development cards so I thought it likely he might gain the largest army. It would then be a question of luck, if we found victory points amongst our development cards.

I suppose 16 is a more sensible number of points for this game, really. But I wanted to see just how long I could make my longest route...! Richard moved the pirate ship to stop my explorations in their tracks... however I realised that I could sail from the other side instead. So I did that, and played my last settlement:


The following turn I bought another development card...and it was a victory point. So I had 18 in all, and had won.


Richard then revealed THREE victory points in his hand - two from earlier in the game, and one from the previous round. So he had 16 points.

It was a very close game, which he should definitely have won.

Oh, and my Catan 'trade route' was 26 pieces long. I had one street rather wasted at the top of the board, and three ships remaining in my stack. I wonder if it's possible to get all 30 in one route...