Seafarers of Catan: fourth scenario - Through the Desert

Having discovered that our regular two-person Settlers rules could easily be used in two-player Seafarers, we decided to try another scenario. Moving through the booklet, the first one that we hadn't yet played was 'Through the Desert', the fourth scenario. In this one, there's a large island with a desert area near the bottom, and extra resources below; there are also some small islands. We decided to set up exactly as in the booklet rather than using random resources and numbers.

Since there were just two of us playing, we set up three initial settlements each. Red for Richard, orange for me, as usual.


It's harder to work out best placements with Seafarers, and the instructions told us that we could only build in the main part of the large island, so options were a bit limited. There were no obviously excellent spots, but several reasonable ones. We both managed to get a fair range of resources, or so we thought.

Unfortunately my only access to sheep was via an 8 hex, which statistically should have been rolled fairly often, but in practice did not turn up until about half-way through the game. Since ships require sheep and wood, rather than trading heavily I opted to build streets and explore the bottom part of the main island. Richard, meanwhile, built ships and set off to one of the small islands. He quickly gained the longest route card, although I then extended my streets and - eventually - managed to build a few ships, and the card changed hands several times.

We were both awarded an extra point for our first buildings on 'foreign' territory, and kept fairly even as far as points went. Eventually I had built all my cities and settlements. Whereas in the regular Settlers game, the only thing to be done by that stage is to buy cards, with this game the longest route can get considerably longer (up to 30 in all, since there are 15 ships in addition to the 15 streets) and with just two of us, neither blocking the other, it was well worth continuing to build streets and/or ships to extend it.

I'd picked up a victory point card, so while Richard was holding the longest street card, I had 13 points on the board, and an extra one in my hand. Thus I suddenly realised that if I could build an extra three streets - or ships - I would win the longest street card, and also the game. The last roll of the dice gave me exactly what I needed, and the game was over.