Daniel (playing green) placed his settlement first, and opted for a very nice 5-6-9 intersection giving ore, sheep and wood. I was second, playing my usual orange. There were several good places available, but I could see that wheat was likely to be the rarest resource, so I chose the 5-8-9 (all good numbers) on ore, wood and wheat. I would probably have chosen that if I'd been first to place, too.
Richard (red) was third, and chose another good place, an 8-9-10 intersection which gave him clay, ore and wood. That would probably have been my second choice since it's always useful to have good access to both clay and wood early in the game. Marie (white) was next; she took the 5-8-10 with wood, sheep and ore. Sheila (brown) went next - and took the 4-6-10 with sheep, ore and wood.
Evidently this game was going to have a plentiful supply of three resources, namely wood, ore and sheep. By this stage I was wondering if I would be able to get access to clay on my second placement; sheep seemed like less of a priority. Jörn was the last to play; he was able to get access to all resources other than ore, and included a settlement on the 9-wheat which I had targetted.
On the way back, play was fairly predictable, and by the time my turn came round again I was pleased to see that the coastal place with 6 on sheep and 10 on clay was still available. It meant that I had all five resources, and five good numbers: 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10.
Play started pretty evenly, although there was a distinct lack of clay. However, despite the theoretical lack of wheat in the game, 11 was rolled a couple of times, as well as 9. So three people - Marie, Richard and Jörn - each built a city before they had managed another settlement, or even a street. I took the next photo when each of us had exactly three points:
I was particularly pleased to have a settlement on a 4, since I now had resources - robber permitting - for the six most likely numbers.
Both Marie and Daniel bought rather a lot of development cards in the 'extra building phase' of the game , so that they kept their hands of resources at seven or less, not wanting to risk theft by the robber. Marie played knights fairly regularly, and soon gained the largest army:
Marie was thus in the lead, with two cities and the largest army, despite not yet having built a single street:
Daniel was second with five points, and the rest of us each had four. I now had a useful 3:1 harbour and was hoping I might be able to extend around the coast towards the 11-ore hex, although I thought that the sheep harbour might be more useful despite being located by a 2-sheep hex.
The next excitement was that Richard gained the longest street card, by joining up his two road segments and reaching a length of seven streets:
I had gained the sheep harbour, but lost access to the 11-ore hex when Sheila built two streets in that direction. And then I lost the possibility of any more building spots when Jörn built out to the other side of the 2-sheep hex, so as to take a 3:1 harbour:
The scores were still remarkably even. Richard (with the longest street), Marie (with the largest army), Jörn, Daniel and I each had seven points. Sheila was very slightly behind with six... but she only needed to build two more roads to obtain the longest street card, and she had a couple more possible building spots. Jörn also had the possibility of building on the same two spots; Richard had two more possibilities (having had one blocked by Jörn fairly early in the game), and Daniel had a not-terribly-useful potential spot on the desert.
Marie and I had now run out of building places. I could still upgrade two more cities, and gain a total of nine on the board. Marie's largest army was increasing in size - she kept on picking up knight cards! - so there was no likelihood of her losing that; however she had only managed to build one new settlement, so had a maximum of six building points. Both of us needed to buy cards in the hope of victory points to have any possibility of winning.
As it happened, I did already have one hidden victory point. And I'd monopolised sheep at a useful point, and used my sheep harbour to build another city. Running out of building spots meant that I could trade any clay I had for ore or even sheep... and I frequently had a significant number of wood cards.
I built my next city. I bought another card, and it was a second victory point. So now I had eight points on the board, plus two hidden ones - ten in all. I needed to upgrade one more city, and then hope to buy a further victory point...
But others had hidden cards too. It could still have been anyone's game.
I took the next photo when all six of us had exactly eight visible points:
Then Daniel upgraded another settlement, giving him nine points. Marie played yet another knight and increased her largest army to seven:
A ten was rolled, and I picked up three clay. How useless, I thought. And then had an idea. I already had a couple of sheep, which could be traded for another clay. I seemed to pick up wood regularly although I didn't currently have any. Perhaps I could simply build four more streets in addition to my segment of four at the bottom - since Richard's longest street was still at seven, and Sheila hadn't yet joined up her two sections...
It was quite a risk. By the time my turn came around, I had about eleven cards in my hand. Had I rolled a 7, I'd have lost half of them... but I rolled a five. Two ore. Ore was what everyone else wanted by this stage, and they all had wood which was now useless to them... although I hadn't picked up any wood in the last round. Surely, however, nobody was going to give me wood since it was clear that I had no building spots...
But I offered ore, or wheat, in exchange for wood. Four people took me up on it without, apparently, any suspicions. After all, we all had eight points - except for Daniel, who had nine - so the game was evidently going to continue a few more rounds.
So I bought four more streets, and placed them... and revealed my two victory points:
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