So Richard, who was first to play, put his initial settlement on a coastal intersection with 8-wheat, 10-wood, and 6-fish.
And here's how the board looked after our setup phase, and a couple of turns since I forgot to take a photo until after Daniel (brown) had bought another settlement.
Sharp-eyed readers might spot that there is no desert hex; instead there's a lake, which is part of the Fishermen of Catan scenario. The lake is teeming with fish; anyone who builds next to it picks up a fish token if a 2, 3, 11 or 12 is rolled. And while none of those is all that common, the probability - as Daniel pointed out - is actually higher in any one roll than either a 6 or an 8.
Oh, and rather than rolling dice (other than to determine who started) we decided to use the Catan event cards, which are also part of the Traders and Barbarians box.
Becky (blue) quickly managed to build out towards the lake hex, and placed a settlement there. I headed to a 3:1 harbour, and the 9-fish tile. And Richard built a city. So each of us had three points:
It wasn't long before Becky and I also managed a city, and Richard (who did rather well for both ore and wheat) built another city. Becky then shot into the lead by taking the longest street card too. She had 7 points, I had 6, Richard and Daniel each had 5. But it was clear that Daniel would be able to build rather more streets than Becky, if he chose to.
At the top edge of the board Becky had neatly arranged the fish tokens that had been played so far.
What, you might ask, are these fish tokens for?
Well... they're upside down when picked, and can display either 1, 2 or 3 fish. These fish can be used for certain actions on one's turn. Two fish can be used to remove the robber from the board altogether (until a 7 is rolled or a knight played). Three fish can be used to steal a card from another player. Four fish buys a resource of one's choice from the bank. Five fish allow a free street to be built, and 7 fish allow a development card to be bought.
So they're rather useful, and add an extra dimension to the game.
One of the fish cards is an old boot. Whoever picks it up has to gain an extra point to win the game. Except that they can pass it (on their turn) to any other player who has the same or more points than they do.
And when there are no more fish tokens to take, the ones that have been played so far are shuffled and turned upside down again.
Playing with the event cards means that not only are the numbers drawn with true statistical likelihood, there are extra 'events' on some of them. For instance, sometimes we all had to pass a card to the player on our left. Sometimes extra cards were given to the person with the most knights, or the most harbours. And sometimes there was an earthquake:
- which left each of us with a crooked street that had to be mended with a wood and clay, before any more streets could be built.
It wasn't long before Daniel gained the longest street card:
So three of us - Richard, Daniel and I - each had 8 points, and Becky had 7. It was still extremely close. Richard had built all his cities and was rather struggling for streets and settlements. I was picking up a lot of cards, but three times in the game managed to draw a 7 card when I had 8 or more cards in my hand, meaning I lost half of them. It was quite frustrating. I started trading away my excess wherever I could - offering Daniel (who played before me) two cards for one of his, at least twice.
And Daniel, twice, played monopoly cards. Which did at least relieve me of some of my excess.
Then in the next round or two we had high drama, where Becky re-took the longest street card, and Richard and I fought over what was the last potential building spot for both of us. I took it:
- and since I had now built all my cities, I had 11 points. I had nowhere else to build, so had to buy cards from now on. Richard, likewise, could only buy cards; he had 9 points on the board but had already played a knight and was evidently hoping for the largest army. Becky, with the longest street, had 10 points.. and Daniel had 8. Still very closely matched.
Oh, and I had the old boot card, as shown in the next photo. So although I was ahead, I needed two points to win - the same as Becky did.
Then Richard played a third knight. He stole a card from me. Then he played six fish, and stole two more cards from me. If he'd managed to draw a 7 card, he would have taken the last card from my hand...
So now he too had 11 points.
So when my turn came around, I presented him with the old boot card.
But it was a bit pointless, because he gave it straight back to me on his turn.
Then Daniel joined up his two sections of roads, giving him a stretch of 14 and the longest street card. Now he had 10 points, Becky had 9, Richard and I had 11 each. And Daniel still had one potential building spot:
But he didn't need to use it. He built another city on his next turn... and then displayed a victory point development card.
He seemed a little surprised to have won such a tightly-fought game:
No comments:
Post a Comment