At least, that's what we thought...
Tim set the board up for us, and rolled to go first. He had the green pieces, and chose a nice-looking spot with 8, 9 and 10 on clay, wheat and ore. It looked as though the tiles were fairly evenly distributed, and that there wouldn't be anything in particular in short supply. However wheat is particularly useful in this game, and that looked like the best hex to get wheat.
Richard, remembering the importance of commodities in Cities and Knights, took the place with sheep, ore and wood on 5, 6 and 9. Then it was my turn to place my settlement and my city together. Both the spots I liked had been taken... so I placed my city on the other one that had the three commodity-related resources, and my other on that useful-looking 9-wheat hex. it bordered the desert, but also a 5-wood, which I hoped would be useful since my only other wood access was on a 3. I hoped to build out towards the 6-clay hex as soon as possible, since I didn't have any access to clay.
Richard was quite tempted by the intersection with three sheep on 5, 8 and 10, which would have given him a lot of the cloth commodity... but decided that it would be more useful to have clay and wheat. Tim did consider the intersection with three sheep, but two of the numbers were the same as number he had already, so instead he chose three new ones including a 6 for his city, with wheat, ore and sheep.
So Richard was the only one of us who had theoretical access to all five resources at the beginning.
Play was very slow to get started. Quite a few 6s were rolled - no use to me at all - and a few 5s and 11s. We don't roll the event die, or count 7s in the first two rounds, which - theoretically - gets it going more quickly. But it didn't seem to work. By the time the barbarians made their first attack - and that was after quite some time, since we rolled the coloured events more than half the time - we had each managed only one street. To be sure, Richard had built a settlement on that three-sheep hex, and Tim had upgraded his settlement to a city. Richard and I each had a double-strength knight, as well. With four cities, we had enough to defend Catan and hoped that we would each gain a development card.
We had also, slowly, been upgrading our cities. Richard and Tim, who were both getting more clay than they needed, built fortifications to their cities on the board so as to allow more cards in their hands when the robber attacked. Tim had also been gaining coins fairly rapidly since 6s and 10s continued to be rolled, so he was picking up the blue progress cards.
Then, right before the barbarians attacked, Tim reached 'mighty knight' status with his coin upgrades, and was able to buy and activate a three-strength knight. Which made him the first defender of Catan:
9s were not rolled as often as one might expect, but they did come from time to time. 4s came fairly often. So we had enough wheat to keep the knights activated - not that we used them for anything other than defending Catan in the entire game. And since ore was also fairly plentiful, more cities were built. By the second barbarian attack, Richard had three cities; Tim had two, one of which had turned into a coins metropolis. And since I was behind the others - despite having picked up one victory point card - I was able to play the 'wedding' card which I had acquired, that meant they both had to give me two resources of my choice. Tim gave me two ore, and Richard gave me two clay, which was useful since I could then fortify my city.
At last I managed to build a settlement on the 6-clay. It felt like very hard work. But I did, now, have my own source of clay - and 6s continued to be rolled reasonably regularly.
When the barbarians attacked for the second time, we were in the same situation as before. Two strength each for Richard and me (since neither of us had yet reached mighty knight status) and three for Tim. So he gained a second Defender of Catan card:
Play should have picked up by this stage, but wood seemed to be in very short supply, making it difficult to build any roads or settlements unless we were prepared to trade quite heavily. My hope of wood and books - on the 3 - was in vain; in the entire game, there was not a single 3 rolled. Yet there were at least three 12s, and a couple of 2s. 5 wasn't exactly frequent either.
In the next few rounds, Richard and Tim had each played the useful progress card that enabled them to move an open road. Not that it really helped either of them significantly since we still lacked wood. I managed to upgrade to a city, as well, and Tim built another settlement which he then upgraded. 8s were being rolled reasonably often, so I was gradually collecting and upgrading my cloth improvements.
My turn came around shortly before the third barbarian attack. By then, Richard had a mighty knight, and Tim still had his one, while I was still on my double-strength knight. And I had picked up two 'deserter' cards. I don't like them - Richard has sometimes played them against me in our two-player games, but I'm not sure I've ever used them, since I don't usually collect many coin commodities. I didn't want to play just one, since it would have meant victimising one of these two beloved people... but when I realised i could play two, right before the next barbarian attack, I decided it was worth doing.
We had some debate about whether I could in fact do that, since they were both mighty knights and I had not yet reached the status of being able to buy those. If I'd simply had to remove them from play, it would have meant both Richard and Tim would have lost a city in the next attack, which would have slowed the game down even more... so I didn't want to do that.
So I checked the almanac in the rules... and sure enough, it actually said that this card could be used to gain a mighty knight, even if the player had not reached that status.
So now I had the strength of eight knights, and was unquestionably the Defender of Catan at the next attack:
Tim was well in the lead with ten points (including his two previous Defender points). Richard, who had control of the merchant, had seven points, and I caught him up at last, since I had one victory point card, and now also had a Defencer of Catan card.
Slightly to my surprise, I managed to gain the metropolis on cloth. I had not expected that, since Richard had far more access to sheep with his cities. I pointed out that any time I gained a cloth from the 8, he did too... and he realised that he had forgotten to pick up sheep or cloth from that hex. When 8 was rolled, he had remembered to collect his clay only.
The game was still going slowly. We usually play to 15 points with a three- or four-person game, but agreed that we would stop at 13 since it felt so frustratingly slow, and rather hard work. Each of us managed another settlement in the next few rounds - there were still lots of building spots, but without much wood it was very difficult to build anything at all. For my settlement, I had to use the merchant card to trade two-for-one wheat, and also the temporary merchant card to enable me to trade two-for-one ore in the same round.
Richard was planning to gain the longest street, and also hoped to get to the last cloth improvement, and thus take the cloth metropolis from me. He would probably have succeeded... but Tim's turn came up first. He upgraded his settlement to a city, and took control of the merchant again. So he won the game with 13 points - and no settlements on the board! He couldn't remember ever before having run out of cities with all five of his settlements still in his hand.
Slightly to my surprise, I was second with ten points, and Richard was in last place with seven.
We all felt exhausted by the end. Rarely has a theoretically enjoyable board game felt like such hard work!
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