Seafarers of Catan (Fog Island scenario) for four

Jacob was out sailing with Richard and Mick. Marie wanted to play Seafarers... so we set up a four-person game. We played with our usual colours: brown for Sheila, blue for Jörn, white for Marie and orange for me. We decided on our favourite 'Fog Island' scenario, which is enjoyable to play but rather time-consuming to set up as it requires pieces from both the regular Settlers and the Seafarers boxes. There are hexes and numbers that show, and piles of them to be 'discovered' by building ships.

We opted for random placement of hexes in the main Catan island, but put the numbers according to the booklet.

There's never much room to set up initial settlements in this scenario; I always hope to sail out to discover further resource hexes. So I opted for the best numbers I could, in the circumstances. The only resources I started with were ore, wheat and clay.. which, I realised later, was a bit foolish in this game since it's wood and sheep that are needed to build ships!

Sheila was lacking clay, Marie was lacking ore, and Jörn was the only person with all five resources at the beginning. Marie was the only one of us who began with a ship rather than a street, and was thus in the best position to begin exploring first.


.. and, indeed, that's what happened. Sheila (lacking clay) and I (lacking wood) both managed a city before anything else. Jörn built a street and a settlement.. and Marie built ships, sailed away from Catan, and discovered a very useful 6-sheep hex:


I managed another city, then by dint of some trading was able, at last, to build a new settlement. Sheila started sailing out from Catan, and discovered a wood and a sheep hex. Exactly what I would have liked... but with neither wood nor sheep easily available to me, I didn't have much hope of building any ships. Nor, I realised, did I have anywhere to go since my coastal settlement was in between Marie's and Sheila's shipping lines... I would have to concentrate on building on Catan.

Marie was first to gain the longest street (or shipping route) card:


However, Sheila was just in the lead with six points. All the rest of us now had five.

That 'longest street' card changed hands several times in the game. However, Marie was also first to gain the largest army - she kept buying cards, and kept getting knights - and nobody got anywhere near challenging her on that.


At this stage, when Marie held the largest army and longest street card, she had seven points. So she was just in the lead: the rest of us each had six. It was a pretty even game, point-wise.

The longest route card went to Sheila, and then back to Marie, who was determined to keep it. The problem was that she used her resources on ships, and so didn't take the opportunity to build any settlements. I had eight points on the board - still just on the main Catan island - and Jörn had seven. Sheila also had eight points, including settlements on her discovered hexes. We also noticed that Jörn was gradually extending his streets, and might soon be able to take the longest street card himself...


However, it was Sheila who eventually took and kept the card. She had nine points on the board in buildings... and when her turn came around, she was able to build another settlement, and thus won the game with twelve points:


I was quite pleased to have eleven, since I hadn't built a single ship.