Three-person Settlers of Catan with Sheila

Shortly before we finished our three-person Settlers game with Tim, our friend Sheila arrived. It was only just nine o'clock when we had finished it, so we decided we'd play a game with her - Tim wanted to do something else at that stage.

Sheila (with brown pieces) rolled to go first. She likes to use the wood-clay strategy, so she opted for the 3-8-10 intersection with sheep, clay and wood. I was second, again. It didn't look as if any of the resources would be in particularly short supply in this game, so I took the other obviously good place: 5-9-10 on ore, wood, and wheat.

It wasn't such a nice board as in the previous game; I don't know what I'd have done in Richard's shoes. He did manage to get access to all five resources with reasonable numbers, although he wasn't too happy at having two 6s and no 8. I needed clay and sheep, and in the basic Catan game will always sacrifice sheep (so to speak!) when there is a necessary choice. So I built on the coastal 4-8 with wheat and clay as my second choice.

Sheila then had a difficult decision. Ore is crucial, and there was nowhere to build on one of the good ore hexes. So after some pondering, she took the 5-10 coastal intersection with ore and wood. She wasn't too happy about having only four numbers, and no wheat; but the only real alternative was the 4-6-11 on three wheat, which would have left her lacking ore.


There was plenty of clay and wood in this game, so we all managed to build the streets we needed early on without much difficulty. I decided to aim for the 8-sheep hex, taking the ore harbour along the way (not that it was particularly useful to me). Richard aimed for the same 8-sheep hex, gaining access to the 4-sheep hex at the same time. He also built an early city, and then headed out to a 3:1 harbour.

He said later on that he decided to try and get access to all the possible numbers if he could. Even by this stage of the game, fairly early, he had managed to get 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 and 10, and was clearly heading for a 10 and 11.


We thought that Richard was just in the lead at this stage, with five points, then we realised he had the longest street. So in fact he had seven. I had four, and Sheila still had two.

I'm not quite sure how it happened, but there seemed to be no stopping Richard in this game. I suppose it was due to his having so many numbers available - all he lacked was a 2. That meant that he picked up a lot of resources; when he was worried about getting too many, he bought a development card, but he frequently found himself able to build too. His longest street got longer, and he took the wheat harbour. All I managed was one upgrade to a city and one more street in that time, while Sheila had very bad luck with the roll of the dice, and didn't manage any building at all.


So Richard was zooming ahead. He had ten points, including the longest street. I had five points, Sheila had two.

The end was not far away. Richard had already played two knights, so when his next turn came around he played the third. That gave him the largest army, and two more points, which made him the runaway winner:


The whole game had only lasted about 45 minutes.