Regular Settlers of Catan game with our friends in Cyprus

It was three days since we'd left the UK to return to Cyprus, so definitely time to play a round of Settlers of Catan with the friends who taught us to play more than a year ago.

Richard (red) placed first, I was second (orange), Sheila (brown) third, and Jörn in the fourth position, which some people like best. Personally I prefer to go first - or perhaps second.


Richard opted to place his first settlement on the best clay hex, so I put mine on the intersection with the best selection of numbers, statistically, which included a 10-clay hex. When it came back to me, I was a little surprised to find that I could get the other two resources I needed, also with good numbers. I didn't have an 8, but I did have 5 and 6, two 9s and a 10. And a 2, which I didn't expect to be relevant. I decided my first strategy would be to aim for the 5-4-11 intersection which would give me a couple more useful numbers.

It took me a LONG time to get there, however. I was able to build a couple of streets within a few rounds, but was stuck on two points for quite a while. 8s were rolled frequently, 6s hardly at all.

But I bought a few cards, and played a couple of knights. Then I picked up a monopoly card, and - since I rolled a 10 - played it on clay, taking four from Sheila, and enabling me to build a city and a settlement. Suddenly from being fairly behind behind, I was doing fairly well. I now had 6 points. Sheila had 7, including the longest street, Jörn had 5, and Richard had 3 although I expected him to take the longest street card at any moment. It could have been anyone's game.


I had one more potential building spot, but thought it more likely that Jörn would take it, since it was also his last one. I don't like to fight over such things, so didn't place any streets. Instead I concentrated on building cities - quite easy since 9s were rolled fairly often:


Then with 9 points, and nowhere left to build, I started buying cards. Sheila also had 9 points and had extended her longest street; all she needed to do was to build a few more cities to win.

However, since I had already played two knights, I was able to play my third and gain two more victory points for the largest army. Suddenly I was ahead with 11 points, with nobody else having more than one knight, so it was fairly safe.

On my next round I bought two more cards. By that stage it was simply a question of luck. One of the cards was a 'year of plenty'... and the other was a victory point.


So, although I didn't really intend to (or expect to), I won the game. Sheila wasn't far behind, with 10 points. If I hadn't picked up that victory point card, she might well have won. Jörn and Richard had both been unlucky with 7s, finding themselves with too many cards and having to discard half of them, just when they thought they might build...