Fishermen of Catan and the Harbourmaster

We've played quite a few regular games of Settlers and Cities and Knights; I'm only writing about more unusual variants now. One of those happened on Monday, when we pulled out our 'Traders and Barbarians' expansion, and decided to start at the beginning again. There are several interesting sets of pieces within the box, and variations on the Catan theme which can be used with or without other expansions.

The first scenario in the booklet is the one called Fishermen of Catan. There are fish tiles laid around the outside, and a 'lake' hex replaces the desert:


The little pile of blue next to the resource cards are the little fish tiles, which may have one, two or three fish on them, and which can be traded in various ways. I described this in some detail when writing about our first game of Fishermen of Catan.

We used dice rather than the event cards, but we did decide to bring in the 'harbo(u)rmaster' card which functions like the Longest Street or Largest Army. As soon as any player has three or more harbours - of any kind - that player receives the Harbourmaster card, and two extra victory points. It can then be taken by another player who gains more harbours later on:


Since there were just two of us playing (Richard red, me orange, as usual) we started with three initial settlements each. We don't play the two-player version described in the Traders and Barbarians box (although we should probably try it some time) but our own two-player house rules, although we vary those from time to time too.


As can be seen, we each took an intersection by the lake, which produces fish any time 2, 3, 11 or 12 is rolled. Other than that, we took fairly predictable spots. Richard took one on the coast, with a fish ground tile nearby (which would give him a fish any time a 5 was rolled) but I kept mine inland.

I decided to head, first, for the 3:1 harbour which was by the 6-fish tile, and built my first settlement there:


So that would give me a fish piece every time a 6 was rolled.

Richard headed for a couple of fish tiles on the coast, too, but I decided to build my second settlement on the 8-ore hex:


I decided, next, to head for the other end of my 6-fish tile, and the wood harbour. In my hand, I had a wood, a clay, and a wheat resource (and a couple of ore, which weren't relevant). I also had five hidden fish tiles, which added up to 9 fish. I knew I could trade four of them for any resource of my choice.. so was going to put down the street I could buy from my hand and perhaps buy another wood and clay. Then realised that I needed to think more strategically. With five fish tiles, I could place a free street, leaving my wood and clay resources towards my settlement. Then I could use the other four fish to buy the sheep I was lacking, and place the settlement immediately:


Obvious, I know. But we were just getting used to these extra pieces and it wasn't always easy to think straight!

We'd both built all our settlements, in a fairly even way, and had to start building cities. For some reason, that wasn't so easy, and it was good that we had the fish to enable us to buy extra resources. Richard remained one point ahead of me for the first half of the game:


He then joined up two sections of streets, so took the Longest Street card and two extra points. He then picked up the 'old boot' tile, which nestles amongst the fish tiles... which meant that he would need one extra point to win the game. He could give it to 'any player' with as many or more points than he had - but since he had more than me, he couldn't give it away...


I built out to the sheep harbour, which gave me three harbours and thus the Harbormaster card - and two more points.


The extra settlement meant that I now had nine points on the board, the same as Richard, and we each had a card giving us an extra two. Naturally, I didn't point this out (when I noticed) since I didn't want to be handed the old boot...

Play continued as ever, with resources being gathered faster than ever, although I don't think either of us was caught out by the robber. We play to 16 points; we'd reached the stage where I had built all my cities and settlements - giving me 13 points on the board - and Richard had built all of his other than one settlement, so he had 12 on the board. I still held the Harbourmaster card, and he still held the Longest Street card. Neither of had bought many development cards, but Richard had played two knights, so it was likely that he would gain the Largest Army before long...

.. so, when I managed to collect several wood tiles, and a pile of fish, I decided to spend them on streets to link up my two road sections, and thus took the Longest Street card:


So I had 17 points, winning the game, and Richard was back to 12. Even if he had given me the old boot, it wouldn't have been a problem as I had the extra point.