Settlers of Catan: The Caravans (from Traders and Barbarians)

Last night, we decided to try the next Catan scenario from 'Traders and Barbarians'. This one is entitled 'The Caravans', and involves an oasis hex tile (replacing the desert, and placed in the middle of the board), as well as some rather nice wooden camels:


The idea is that camel trains - or caravans - advance from the oasis, meandering through Catan. A new camel is placed any time a settlement or city is built during the game (ie after the initial placement phase), and their position is determined by a kind of voting. The camel caravan is not allowed to branch, and the camels themselves are placed alongside streets.

The advantage of the camels is that any settlement or city on a camel route has an extra victory point attached to it, and any street on a camel route counts as two streets for the purpose of counting the 'longest road'.

When we started, we weren't entirely sure what would be the best initial placement strategy. The guidelines mention that sheep, usually the most expendable resource in regular Settlers of Catan games, is one of the resources - along with wheat - used for bidding on camel placement. Thus it's a bit more important than usual.

However in our first round of placing settlements we simply opted for normal strategy: that of the best combination of numbers and potential resources. As we'd decided to play with the Catan event cards rather than dice, we knew that the numbers would mostly come up according to statistical probability. Richard (red) went first, and took a useful 5-9-10 intersection with clay, wood and wheat. It's the one I'd probably have taken if I were going first. It was one of only two clearly good spots.

Becky (white) took a 4-8-11 with three resources, and Daniel (brown) took a 5-6-10 which I thought was the only other obviously good place. I was last - as I seem to be rather often at present. I liked the coastal 8-10 on clay and wood which was near a 3:1 harbour, but since I couldn't take the spot Daniel had taken I had to decide which resource to sacrifice. I was quite tempted by the 3-5-8 with two sheep and an ore, near the sheep harbour, but couldn't quite get my head around sheep being more important than wheat. So instead I went for the 6-9-12 with wheat, ore and more wood.


Daniel - who would naturally have liked the coastal wood-clay intersection I took - decided on two sheep and a wood; then Becky took the place with two sheep and ore which I had seriously pondered. Richard had a hard time deciding where he should go; he was seriously tempted by the sheep harbour, with two good ore hexes (8 and 10); the obvious disadvantage of that is that he didn't actually have any sheep access to enable him to make use of the harbour. And he couldn't quite bring himself to annoy Becky by taking the place she was clearly heading for!

Since I started with clay and wood in my hand, and was able to trade for sheep fairly easily, it wasn't long before I built the first settlement of the game. Then - great excitement, since we had to place the first camel!

I really didn't care where it went, so I opted out of the voting. Two of the others both bid one card each (sheep or wheat). The rules say that if one person has more cards than anyone else, that person decides where to place the camel. That didn't apply in this case. If there's no overall majority, then if any two or more players can agree on a place, and between them they have the most cards, then that's where it goes. But the two people who had votes could not agree. That meant that the person who built the settlement (even if they hadn't voted) got to choose... so after all that, I placed the first camel:


I still hadn't quite grasped how significant the camels would be in the game, which is why I simply chose the starting arrow that was nearest to one of my settlements.

Richard placed the second camel, starting a new caravan from a different arrow. He, naturally, chose the one going along one of his streets so that his adjoining settlement would be worth an extra point.

Daniel placed the third one, and I thought he might start the third caravan; he was about to, since he had a street there, but then opted to add to the one Richard started, but going away from Richard's other settlement, towards his (Daniel's). Dan is very good at grasping strategies; he pointed out that eventually someone would start the third caravan, and would not be able to avoid his street. But he didn't want Richard to have one going towards more of his settlements...

It was a good move, and sure enough Daniel was able to guide that camel train to his other settlement to gain yet more points. I took this photo shortly after an earthquake event card was drawn:


Play went rather slowly, not just because of the extra time needed for voting and camel placement. We somehow didn't seem to be getting the resources we needed to do much building. When the event card was drawn requiring the person with the most victory points to give a card to each of the other players, we quickly counted up only to find that all four of us had exactly four points each:


Becky and I each had a city in addition to two settlements; Richard and Daniel had only managed one new settlement, but had an extra victory point each due to having a settlement on a camel train.

Dan, as so often happens, was buying quite a few development cards. His turn came around, and he played a street-building one, thus reaching the camel caravan which I had started. That gave him the longest street card, with six streets and a camel on one of them, making seven for the purposes of counting the longest road:


Daniel was now two points in the lead.

We soon got more efficient at camel-placement, although Daniel seemed to be bidding the most resources most of the time, and making most of the decisions. I had a fair amount of wheat, and was sometimes able to bid one or possibly two; I did 'win' the vote a couple of times. But I had no access at all to sheep, whereas Daniel had plenty, so more often than not he was the one to choose.

I didn't have much strategy in this game, and was hampered by my lack of numbers, even though I had both an 8 and a 6. I decided to aim for the 3-4-11 intersection, but was beaten there by Becky. So instead I built another coastal settlement, on a not very useful 11-12 intersection, both on wood. At least it gave me the ore harbour. So I decided to try next for another settlement on the 9-ore hex.


I was trailing in this game, with only five points at this stage. Richard was one ahead, with six. Becky and Daniel were jointly in the lead with eight points. Daniel had four settlements, two of which were on camel trains, and the longest street. Becky had two cities and three settlements, one of which was on a camel train.

Gradually the game picked up pace, although it was taking rather longer than I had expected. Daniel built his fifth settlement, but for some reason simply wasn't getting the resources to build a city. Instead, he kept buying development cards on his turn. However he continued controlling most of the camels and gained further victory points as a result.

Becky - who was also buying cards -played her third knight, and gained the largest army. Fairly clearly, either she or Daniel was going to win. The booklet said to play to 12 points, so we decided that 14 would be the right number. Daniel had 11 points by that stage, and I don't think any of us had counted up to realise that Becky actually had 12.

Still thinking that Daniel was in the lead, and with the resource cards for three streets in my hand, I did ponder whether to build them in useless places (from the building spot perspective) in order to increase my street to take the 'longest street' card from Daniel. However, it was getting late - it was past 10.30pm, and I was very tired - and I didn't actually want to prolong the game. So instead I built out towards the 9-11 intersection by the oasis, which hadn't yet been taken.

Then an earthquake struck. Becky built another city, and nobody counted up to realise that she now had 13 points.

Then it was Daniel's turn.. and he built his first city. That put him on 12 points...


.. and he then revealed that he had two victory point cards. So he was the winner. It was only when we counted up the other points that we realised how very close Becky had been to winning.

Daniel does seem to be very lucky in his development cards. In the seven he had bought, only two were knights: