Settlers of Catan for four, with Traders and Barbarians 'event' cards

Having finished our six-person family game of Settlers on Friday by about 8.45pm, we decided we'd try another game. Daniel and Grandma opted out, so that left a four-person game of some kind. After some discussion, we decided to play a four-person Settlers game, but instead of using the dice we'd use the 'event cards' from Traders and Barbarians, which I'd bought the previous day: these cards are supposed to make the game less random, since there are 36 of them with the correct statistical distribution of the numbers.

However, some of them have additional 'events' on them, to add to the interest a little.

I could see that ore was likely to be in short supply, so placed my first settlement on the 8-ore hex. Then, knowing that 8s and 6s WOULD come slightly more often than other numbers, opted for a 6 as well on my second placement. It was a bit risky as I was without access to either clay or sheep - but I hoped to be able to trade for them.


Unsurprisingly, I was easily able to build a couple of cities before I had even one street, while everyone else - particularly Becky (blue) was expanding faster.


Then... the 'earthquake' event card was taken. That meant that each of us had to turn a street sideways. Moreoever, we were told we all had to pay another wood and clay to 'mend' the street before we could build any new roads.


We all managed it, though it took a fair bit of trading for me - and I still didn't have the resources to buy any new streets. Becky, however, was expanding rapidly and quickly claimed the longest street card. So she was ahead with 6 points, Tim second with 5, while Richard and I had four points each.


Gradually I started trading and was able to expand somewhat. Cities were much easier for me than settlements, but at last I did get some access to clay. We rather missed the extra building phase allowed in the 5-6 player game - since, with the event cards rather than dice, we KNEW that a 7 would be rolled sooner or later - and that after several turns without a 7, it was actually more likely. It made us all more inclined to use up as many cards as possible on our turns, meaning that a lot of development cards were bought.

Tim, who had no access to wood, did better with trading than I did and fairly quickly managed to have built all four of his cities.


Shortly afterwards I built my fourth city too, and had no more building spots available. All I could do was buy cards. By this stage, Becky had 10 points (still including the longest street) so I didn't have much hope of catching up. Tim and I both had 8 and Richard had 7. The only person with places left to build was Becky.


By this stage we'd had to reshuffle the event cards, and were working through them for a second time. So another earthquake struck... but since we didn't need to build any more streets, it didn't worry us. However, Tim happened to have a street-building development card so decided to use that to repair his broken street and place another random one.


Unsurprisingly, Becky was the winner.