Seafarers: fog island scenario (for four)

John and Sarah have left, and Jörn was still away. Tim leaves in the early hours of tomorrow. So we decided to have one more game with Sheila while Tim's still here. She came to our house, so we played with our set. Rather than regular Settlers of Catan, we thought we'd try our favourite Seafarers scenario: fog island. It always takes awhile to set up since it needs pieces from two sets (but not all of them). We used random distribution of the resource hexes within the main Catan island, but placed the numbers according to the booklet.

Richard (red) went first. He took the 8-9-10 which is on ore, sheep and wheat. Sheep are important in Seafarers as they're needed, along with wood, to build ships.

Tim (white) was second, and - unsurprisingly - chose the 3-8-9 on clay, ore and wood. Sheila (brown) took the 4-6-9 on clay, ore and sheep which is the spot I would have chosen if I hadn't been the last to play place. While some people like being in last position, I don't particularly like it. Particularly in this game where there aren't all that many places available! So I decided I'd focus on exploring and hope for some better numbers that way. I built one of my settlements on the 6-9 with wheat and wood, and a ship rather than a street. Then I took the 5-8-12 on wood, ore and sheep. I had no clay at all, and rather feeble access to sheep, so I hoped to be able to trade for what I needed, and find some better places out at sea.


By the time the second settlements had been placed, Richard and Tim had theoretical access to all five resources, but Sheila had no wood, which was going to make it tricky to build anything.

However, 3s and 4s were rolled surprisingly often, giving Sheila a great deal of clay. So she was able to trade easily every time she wanted wood, and soon started expanding. Within a few rounds she had managed six points, including two cities. In the same time period, the rest of us each had three points...


Since I was slightly stuck by the initial position of the pirate ship, Sheila was also the first person to head out to sea.. although the first hex she turned over was another sea one:


However, she then discovered a useful sheep. And took the longest trade route too. I managed to set sail too, was pleased for a moment to see that I hadn't found a sea hex.. and then realised it was the desert. However, I then managed to uncover a wood hex, with a fairly useful 4:


So I built a settlement there, and started to explore across the land with another street, hoping to head for the gold hex. I uncovered.. yet more wood.

Sheila, meanwhile, found rather a nice ore hex (with 5), but decided to move her leading ship and then explore in the other direction, where she found a 9-wheat hex.

And Richard managed to set out to sea too:


So Sheila was well in the lead with nine points, including the longest trade route. Richard and Tim each had five, and I had four.

I was very pleased to discover an 8-sheep hex, so quickly built a settlement there, bordering two reasonably wood hexes. Sheila went back to the ore, and discovered some more. And built her remaining cities. Tim also set sail from the main Catan island:


So Sheila now had 11 points. Seafarers can be a very long game, but we'd only been playing for about an hour. She was evidently going to be the winner by a long way ... Tim had six points, Richard and I each had five.

Sure enough, Sheila was able to build one more settlement... and thus was the clear winner: