We started by placing three settlements each, as usual for a two-player game. I rolled to go first, so I started by placing one. The board looked like quite a nice layout, with several good combinations of numbers. I could see that ore was likely to be the scarcest resource, so I knew I wanted my first placement on the 10-ore hex, which was the best option for it. It was a fairly easy decision to place it where I would also have access to the 5-wood and 9-sheep.
Then it was Richard's turn to place two settlements. He acknowledged later that he made a strategic error in not also taking the 10-ore hex - there was a good spot with an 8-clay and 3-wood which I would certainly have taken if he had played first, and taken the spot I did.
Instead he looked at the intersections with the best numbers. He likes to start with a 6 and an 8, as the most likely numbers to be rolled. So he opted for the other 8-clay, a 6-sheep, with 3, 4, 5 and 11 as his other numbers. He had theoretical access to all five resources, but his only ore hex was the 11. He took cards for his second placement, the one that included both wood and clay.
I then placed my other two starting settlements, and took cards for both. I also like to have a 6 and an 8 if I can, and a variety of numbers, so I took the other 8-clay hex with a 3-wood and 4-wheat, and alsothe 4-6 woods with a 3-ore. I could see that my first settlement wasn't far from the wood harbour, so hoped to be able to make use of that. And whereas my numbers could have been better - I could, for instance, have taken the 4-6-9 with the same two wood and a sheep, I thought it would be a good idea to have another number that might give me some ore.
For Richard's last settlement, I thought he would take the 5-9-10 with two wheat and clay. He would then have an excellent range of numbers - everything from 3 to 11 - and great access to wheat. However, he was already heading for that spot with one of his other settlements, so he went instead for the 9-6-12 with wheat and two sheep, heading towards the sheep harbour.
We allow up to 9 cards in a hand before the robber can steal any in the two-person Catan game, since we don't have any player-to-player trading, meaning that there are often more cards that can't be used. And we don't acknowledge any sevens in the first three or four rounds. As it happened only two sevens were rolled in the entire game!
Despite two 8-clay hexes, wood was a much more plentiful resources in this game, with very few 8s being rolled. We both had the resources needed for streets in our opening hands, but the had to trade heavily with the bank to continue. It wasn't long before Richard took that nice spot with the 9 and 10, meaning that he now had access to every number other than 2. I took my nearest 3:1 harbour as soon as I could, so that I didn't have to trade four cards each time!
Oddly enough, 3s were being rolled more often than one would expect, so I had more ore from that than I did from the 10 - and was soon able to build my first city.
Richard, unsurprisingly, took the longest street:
So at this stage in the game, each of us had six points exactly. We were both rather struggling to get clay or wheat, having instead rather an excess of wood (both of us), sheep (Richard) and ore (me).
Richard built on a 3:1 harbour next, which helped with trading, and extended his long street to join up various sections and ensure that I didn't overtake him. However, his problem was that he simply wasn't picking up any ore. Now he had played all five settlements, he had to start a city. He had bought a couple of development cards early in the game, both of which were knights; so he played them on my ore hexes simply so as to enable him to pick up ore from the bank!
Finally he did manage his first city, and soon after built another settlement:
So now he had seven points on the board, plus the longest street, giving him nine. I was managing to build cities almost every turn, so had ten points on the board - but as Richard had also played two knights (and the only card I had bought proved to be a monopoly, which is not all that useful in two-player Catan) he was evidently going for the largest army as well...
... and, indeed, he took it:
I had finished all the possible buildings, giving me 13 points. We play to 16 when there are just two of us, so all I could do was to buy cards and hope for some victory points. In the meantime, Richard could gradually progress with his buildings and reach 16 first. I did have both the wood harbour and the wheat harbour, which were extremely useful since I continued picking up vast quantities of wood on almost every roll of the dice.
Then I suddenly realised that although I had little hope of building a larger army, I could in fact overtake his longest street. I didn't want to make it too obvious what I was planning, so as I couldn't immediately build the streets (wood suddenly became scarce, temporarily), I bought three cards. To my surprise, two of them were victory points... so I had 15 points rather than 13.
On my following round, I picked up sufficient wood to buy two streets... so I won the game with 17 points.
Richard also had a victory point card, but his total was only 10. I was surprised that he was so far behind, since we'd been so close throughout the game... then we remembered that when I took the longest street card from him, I effectively leapt ahead by four points since I gained two and he also lost two. Ignoring the victory points, I'd had 13 and he'd had 11 a moment earlier...
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