A nice board, on the whole. Becky (white) played first, and took a useful 9-6-4 intersection with sheep, wood and wheat. Daniel (green) was next, and took what I thought an even better spot; a 5-8-9 with wood, sheep and ore. Richard (red) took the 3-5-9 with wood, clay and ore, and I (orange) knew that all the best spots had gone. Rather than having three resources with poor numbers, I decided to take the 5-6-10 with two wood and ore. I always like to have a reasonable ore hex at the statt of the game, since ore is such a useful resource. And I hoped I might get the wood harbour, if it was still available; as it wasn't on a particularly useful intersection, I thought it might be.
I was right. Sheila (brown) also opted for good numbers and took the 5-6-9 intersection with two clay and a wheat. The numbers were slightly better than mine, but I'd decided to opt for ore rather than wheat. Jörn (blue) was last, so placed his settlements to get access to all five resources in theory. His wood access was only the 12, but given the distribution of numbers on wood hexes, it seemed a good bet that wood would be easily available for trading.
Sheila decided to go for an intersection with an 8 - since she had a 6 already - although she realised afterwards that she had no ore. Then it was me again... so I went for the 4-10-11 intersection with two wheat and a sheep. Not the greatest of numbers, but I planned to head to the wood harbour as soon as I could. Richard then took a fairly predictable hex with 8, 10 and 12.
And then Daniel and Becky, who have played with many different people and tend to use slightly more proactive strategies, placed their last two settlements. Daniel's was in fact the obvious place for him to take - two resources he didn't have already, and two good numbers. But it was right on the 3:1 harbour which Sheila had planned to take. And Becky decided to play the potentially risky strategy of placing her last settlement right in the centre of three ore hexes - exactly where I had planned to go as soon as I could.
I didn't think wheat was going to be particularly abundant, but 11 was rolled at least twice in the early rounds of the game. And with the good numbers on ore, it wasn't long before six cities had been built:
It was pretty equal at this stage. Five points for me and four for everyone else. My problem was lack of clay, making it difficult to built streets at all, let alone settlements. And I didn't have all that many potential building spots.
Daniel decided to take another artistic photo:
.. and play continued apace. We realised that Sheila needed to take the longest street card, which gave her another couple of points. I wasn't buying many cards, but others were; Becky played knights regularly, and soon took the largest army.
So Becky and Sheila were jointly in the lead with 8 points each. Jörn and I were close behind with 7 each; Daniel had 6, and Richard had 5.
I realised that I had only two building spots left. One of them was the intersection between the two 11-wheat hexes along the coast, although it was possible that Daniel might take it first. The other was next to the desert, with a 6 on wood and a 2 on sheep. I didn't think anyone else was likely to want that one, but Richard built out that way just before I took that last photo. The Becky built out that way too. They were joking about which one would get it first...
.. then suddenly, after some useful trading, I was able to build a street and settlement, and take it myself.
So now I had 8 points, and one remaining building spot. I also had one more city to build - which I could do instantly if a 10 were rolled. I had no chance of either the street or the army cards, so my only prospect of winning after that was to buy cards. I was pretty sure I had very little chance.
Daniel took the next photo, which makes it rather confusing since the board is the other way around. It shows something that Sheila suddenly spotted.. she had somehow placed a settlement illegally! It was only one street away from one of Richard's. She had no idea how that happened, and neither had any of the rest of us, who should have noticed. We discussed what to do, and eventually decided that it had better remain since nobody stopped her.
So Becky was now in the lead with 10 points including the largest army; Sheila was second with 9; I was third with 8. Another board dominated by the women! Daniel and Jörn both had 7 points, and Richard had 6.
The game could possibly have continued longer. Daniel had played three knight cards by this time, and had plans for another, which would have given him the largest army. Jörn could potentially have overtaken Sheila's street length, and taken the card from her.
But there was another distraction, in the form of my youngest best friend Helen, who was having trouble with teething, and beginning to cry at full volume. She really needed to sleep, and the only current method by which this desirable state happens is to take her for a walk in her buggy. So we were all quite anxious for the game to be over rather than prolonging it too much.
So it was with some relief that somebody rolled a 9 at the point at which Becky had 11 points (nine in buildings plus the largest army). A 9 gave her three ore and two wheat - an instant city.
She played it on someone else's building phase... and although, technically, we should have waited until her turn before she was declared the winner, we didn't worry about that detail this time.
So, once again, Becky won the game. I had a victory point card, bought early in the game, so I had 10 points. So did Jörn, who by this time had the longest street as well as four cities. Daniel had 7 points on the board, but two victory point cards, so he had 9. Richard and Sheila both had 7 points on the board and one victory point card, so had 8 points each. It was really all very close.
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