And just to make it a little different, Daniel suggested that rather than using dice we might try the 'event cards' from the Traders and Barbarians of Catan set. We'd only played one game with the event cards previously.
Josh (white) played first (we did use dice to determine who would begin!) and chose an intersection with clay and wood, despite wood being on a 12. We knew that, with the event cards, 12 would come at some point, albeit not frequently, unless of course it happened to be amongst the bottom five which do not get picked. Becky and Shenna (green) opted for a double-ore slot with some nice numbers, after discussing the fact that they might also try and get the ore harbour. Daniel (red) then opted for a wood-clay spot, which I thought slightly better than Josh's choice, and Nicole (blue) took another wood-clay spot, although clay was 12.
I was last, meaning I could place both settlements... I couldn't see any particularly good places. Clay looked as if it would be in rather short supply, but in theory I had access to all five resources and six numbers. Becky and Shenna were pleased to find that they could still take the ore harbour and planned to trade for wood.
Ore was reasonably plentiful in this game, so three of us managed cities fairly early. The event cards don't just have statistically correct numbers on them; some of them have extra bonuses - such as a free resource card for whoever has the most harbours, or the largest army - or problems, such as the 'earthquake' card which means everyone has to turn a street sideways, and then pay another wood and clay to restore it.
It wasn't long before Shenna and Becky took the longest street. With an 8 on clay (in a game lacking clay generally) and the ore harbour, they had no trouble trading for wood. This put them ahead with 7 points, while I had 6, Josh and Nicole had 5, and Daniel had 4.
The next excitement, not long afterwards, was when Daniel took the longest street card:
- although Josh then built a settlement which effectively ensured that Daniel's street would not get much longer. Unusually, we all managed to have 7 points at the same time:
Slightly to my surprise, I was able to take the longest street card shortly afterwards, giving me 10 points. Becky and Shenna had 9, Josh had 8, Nicole had 7, and Daniel had 5.
It was quite an exciting game. We continued gaining points slowly - Daniel, alas, was still far behind but the rest of us were between 9 and 11; it was still almost anybody's game. And one of the event cards (maybe more than one) required whoever was ahead to give a card of their choice to everyone who wasn't ahead. So that made it all the more even, in a sense.
t could have gone on a long time. Nicole had played several knights, and gained the largest army. So she had 9 points, Josh had 10, Becky and Shenna had 10, and I had 11. Daniel now had 6.
Nicole built another settlement. Josh built another settlement. He and I were in the lead with 11 points...
It got to Becky and Shenna's turn... they built their final city, and then produced a victory point. So they were the winners. And since Nicole also had a victory point, it meant that three of us had 11 points at the end - only Daniel was still behind.
Here's a picture of the winning team:
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