Daniel (green) played first, and chose a rather nice intersection with 5-6-10 on wheat, ore and wood. Jörn (blue) was second, and opted for a fairly traditional opening giving both wood and clay, with the useful numbers 4, 6 and 10. That's the spot I'd have opted for too, since it looked as if clay was going to be the most difficult resource to get hold of in this game. Sheila (brown) was next, and took the 4-8-10 with wheat, ore and wood. Then it was my turn; I wanted that 10-clay hex, so chose the intersection with a 4 on wheat and 5 on sheep. Not ideal, but there weren't too many great spots left.
Richard was next. and took the 3-8-9 near the top, which at least gave him access to clay if a 3 was rolled. John was last, so placed two settlements together. He didn't get any clay, but four good numbers (5, 6, 8 and 9) with access to all the other resources, particularly wood. And since he built on the coast, he was only one spot away from the wood harbour. A good move, if a little unusual from our perspective.
Richard needed sheep and wood, and couldn't get both, so he opted for a spot with two good sheep hexes, heading towards the sheep harbour. And, in doing so, made my first placed street useless - but that's how the game goes. I needed wood and ore and couldn't get both, so for once I decided to do without ore, and hope that I could get some by building towards the 8-ore in the bottom corner. I didn't really have great numbers at all; 9 and 5, but no 8 or 6.
For the first round, a surprising number of 6s were rolled, which of course were no use to me at all. However, other useful numbers came up, and I found that I was easily able to trade for ore, despite not having any access to it myself. Ore was a great deal easier to come by than clay, since 10 wasn't rolled at all. I would have done better to have gone for a 3-clay hex!
I was quite pleased when I managed to build my first city, using ore I had traded for:
It was a fairly slow-moving game, with so little clay available. I did, eventually, manage to extend out to the 3:1 harbour, which seemed more useful than getting ore (since I could trade for it so easily). And, indeed, I was able to upgrade another city without too much difficulty.
Although 10 was still not rolled, 3 was, more than once, meaning that there was clay in the game after all. However, it wasn't enough that anyone wanted to trade it at this stage. Jörn managed to build out to several useful spots, and gained the longest street too. And since he had been buying cards, and playing knights, he also gained the largest army:
So Jörn was now significantly in the lead, with nine points. All the rest of us had five.
It still wasn't a particularly fast-moving game, but Jörn continued extending his long street, so that nobody else could even think of challenging it. I still wasn't picking up many cards - ten STILL wasn't rolled - but did manage to build streets out towards the 8-ore hex.
I took this photo when Jörn had managed to gain 11 points, still holding both the longest street and largest army cards:
Sheila did attempt to build out into his street, and I did manage my settlement on the 8-ore hex... and a ten was, eventually, rolled (when clay was no longer any use to me).
But all Jörn needed to do was to upgrade one more city... which is what he did:
So he won the game resoundingly with 12 points. Sheila had a victory point card, so 10 points. John had 9. Daniel had two victory points, so he and Richard both had 8 points. And although I had one victory point card too, I was still last with 7 points.
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