Cities and Knights of Catan for two

An evening to ourselves, and another two-person Cities and Knights game using our normal two-player Catan house rules. I've stopped photographing and writing about every single game - there were just far too many - but the layout of the board looked rather interesting, with resources rather clumped together, so I thought it was about time I logged another game.

As this picture shows, all the wood was together in the middle; all the clay was together at one edge, and all the ore was also together. It made initial placements quite tricky:


I had most numbers, but was lacking a six, and my clay was apparently going to be rather limited. Richard lacked only 2, 11 and 12 number-wise, and looked as if he was going to do pretty well with city improvements using cloth.

We always play a few round before bringing the robber (and third die) into play, and with plentiful ore and wheat, we both built cities, rather bravely given that we also needed sufficient knights to defend them, once the pirate ship started sailing towards Catan.

Oddly enough, the 10 was rolled rather more often than would be expected, giving us both enough clay to fortify cities against the robber... it was wood that was lacking. We had both managed one street and one new settlement by this stage of the game; I was particularly pleased to have built on a 6, as I had originally planned.

But there was only one knight (mine)... and the pirate ship was rapidly approaching....


... happily, non-black 'events' on the third die came up a few times, enabling me to upgrade my knight, and Richard to buy and feed a two-strength knight, so by the time the pirates landed, Catan was safe. No victory points awarded, but we each picked up a progress card of our choice (inevitably they were both green ones).

.. and the knights were de-activated. It looked as if it was going to be a slow-moving game...


City resources were coming in thick and fast, due to our well-placed cities, but not much else had happened by the time the second pirate attack happened - just a few more streets, an extra settlement for Richard, and some more knights - basically bought because the relevant resources kept arriving and we didn't want our hands too big.

I hadn't activated any knights other than my double one, so Richard won the victory point for the next pirate attack:


And, once again, black events were rolled fairly often. All that happened before the third pirate attack was that a couple more settlements were built, and Richard managed a metropolis (with cloth, unsurprisingly)) which would probably have led to his winning the game, but for one thing: I picked up the card which allowed me to exchange any two of the numbers on the board, other than the 2, 12, 6 or 8. So I changed the 5 on clay (which Richard had) with the 11 on wood, which I had.

This time, I had the most active knights and won the victory point:


Richard was well ahead, though. He had 11 points on the board, including the metropolis, one victory point from a progress card, and one victory of Catan point. I had only 8 points on the board, plus my newly one victory of Catan card.

Then suddenly the action hotted up. I claimed the longest street card... only to have it snatched from my grasp when Richard took it from me. A mistake on his part, as it turned out, because it meant that he did not consolidate his cloth metropolis, and I was able to take it from him (permanently):


Our scores were now very even. Not that we tend to notice while playing.. .sometimes one of us has won several rounds before either of us notices.

The action continued - Richard built a wood metropolis, and I built a couple more streets, thus getting the longest street card back again, at least for a turn or two...


So I had 12 points on the board, the longest street card, and one victory point. 15 in all. Richard had 12 on the board, and one victory point. Unusually, the merchant had not yet come into play.

Then I played the merchant, giving me an extra point. I built another settlement, and another city, and gained the third metropolis too, all in one round...


... which gave me 20 points, and thus a fairly resounding victory, which I had not expected given how far Richard was ahead in the early stages of the game. However, there's a fair amount of luck, and I happened to be lucky with the rolls of the dice.