It took a few minutes to remember how exactly to put together the grid for our 5-6 player Catan extension, but eventually it was set up, and we made our first placements. Richard (red) had first choice, I (orange) was last. Some people like going last, since one gets to place both settlements together... I prefer to be first, on the whole. Still, I wasn't feeling at all competitive, and decided - for once - to see how I could do without any access to ore, even though it was in short supply. There was no obvious place for me to take an ore intersection and have even reasonable other numbers, so I opted for five fairly good numbers, with extra sheep and wheat.
The game got going slowly. Here we are after a few moves, all fairly even so far. Jörn (blue), Marie (white) and I all had four points; Jacob (green), Sheila (brown) and Richard all had three [one of Sheila's settlements is slightly off the edge of the photo]. Richard was the only person who had managed a city so far.
Marie, who had no building spots in the middle of the board, continued expanding around the coast and - without aiming for it - achieved the longest street card fairly quickly. So by this point in the game, she was ahead with 7 points, followed by Jörn (6), me (5), Sheila and Jacob (4), and Richard (3).
There still weren't very many cities, due to the general lack of wheat and ore in the game.. Marie and I had both reached the stage of having used up all our settlements, so had to start trying to gain ore and wheat by whatever means possible. She had very good access to ore when 8s were rolled, and I had good access to wheat, so long as the robber wasn't sitting on my 8-wheat hex...
Marie managed three cities without too much difficulty, and also (when given a hint) built a couple of extra streets to ensure that Jörn couldn't extend his roads to take the care from her. However, none of us quite realised that Richard also had that potential... and he needed to get out towards the coast to reach a 3:1 harbour.
I managed a couple of cities by dint of some heavy trading. Jacob tends to trade a little erratically, and will often give away more than he gains, which can be useful for the rest of us. But he managed a couple of cities too, and built out to the coast where he took the wood harbour - something I'd have quite liked. I then had to use a very dull building spot that bordered the desert, although it did give me the wheat harbour.
So, a few rounds later we had reached this picture:
It was still extremely close. Jörn was now in the lead, just, with 9 points. Sheila, Marie, Richard and I were all close behind with 8 points each, and Jacob had 7. It could still have been anybody's game...
In the next round, Richard and I both built another settlement, and Marie built another city. So there were four of us, all equally in the lead with nine points...
... Except that Sheila had played two knights, and had a few other undisclosed development cards. And she had the clay harbour. And a couple of 8s were rolled. Her turn came around again, and she had a huge handful of cards... but did NOT roll a 7.
Which meant that she was able to upgrade TWO of her settlements to cities at the same time, and play a third knight, which gave her the 'Largest Army' card... and made her the winner. Quite exciting to go from 8 (and second-last) place to 12 points in one move!
Richard and Marie each had a hidden victory points cards, so they were in joint second place with 10 points.
We all agreed that it was a very good game.
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