Two-person Seafarers game: fog island scenario

We finished our Settlers game at about 8.30 last night, and decided to try, for the first time, a two-person version of Seafarers of Catan. We thought we would basically use our two-player Catan house rules, in addition to the Seafarers rules, and see how it worked out.

Rather than trying a new scenario, we opted for Fog Island, the third scenario in the booklet, which we played with Tim at the end of December. Setting up takes a while; we decided that, instead of setting up our own random placement of hexes and numbers, we would once again follow the exact layout in the booklet for the main island:


Then we had to find more hexes to shuffle for the face-down exploration pile, and also more numbers. It's a bit confusing needing numbers and hexes from both the regular Settlers of Catan game, and the Seafarers game, but thankfully doesn't take too long to separate them into the correct boxes again afterwards.

Oh, and we nearly forgot the robber and the knight, both of which come into play in Fog Island:


For initial placement, since we were playing the two-player version, we both started with three initial settlements and streets (or boats). We haven't entirely worked out the best strategy for this game. Boats, which are built with one sheep and one wood resource, are vital for moving beyond the main island. One still needs to build cities and settlements, but sheep suddenly become a lot more significant, not just as trading entities. And then there's the balance of deciding where to build: should it be near a useful harbour (which might be a long way from any exploration possibilities), or should we aim to set out on our voyages immediately?

Here's how it looked after our first settlements were placed:


Since we used the numbers and hexes from the booklet layout, none of the resources was obviously going to be in short supply to begin with. Both of us built cities fairly early on in the game, and also started buying cards rather sooner than we would usually. And before long, we had both set out on our first voyages of exploration to Fog Island:


As usual, I was playing orange and Richard was red. He turned over an ore hex, and a useful 8; I turned over a sheep hex, and a not-so-useful 10.


We both decided that we'd explore as much as we could, so our 'trading routes' kept extending, and the 'longest street' card changed hand at least half a dozen times in this game. Rather than the usual Settlers maximum of 15, it's theoretically possible to have a 'route' up to 30 in length, since there are also 15 boat pieces, so we had to keep re-counting, any time our routes lengthened.

I managed, eventually, to build a settlement on the useful gold hex, which yields a resource of one's choice (or two, with a city). Unfortunately 11 was only rolled once after that, so I didn't really take advantage of it.


And so, we reached the point where I had built all my cities and settlements, so there was nothing left for me to do but buy cards, and also extend my trading route in the hope of keeping the longest street card. Richard, once again, claimed the largest army... and since he was buying cards too, I had no hope of gaining that. Every time I played a knight, he played another so as to keep ahead.

So I had 13 points on the board, he had 10 in buildings plus the two cards, making 14 in all. I picked up a street-building card, and then on my following turn made a strategic error. It was getting late, and I was tired. I could have extended my current longest route by two streets, thus taking the card. But it would have left open a route for Richard - if he had two spare streets - to block me from joining it with my other, shorter street in the bottom part of the island. And I'd got rather bored of the card going to and fro so often. So instead, I built my two streets onto the shorter one, meaning I only needed one more to join them - but Richard couldn't stop me.

Mistake.

I knew he had one development card which had been face down for a long time, so realised it was most likely a victory point. All he needed was one more building, and he would have 16 points. If I'd taken the longest street from him, even temporarily, it would have at least delayed the end of the game by a few more rounds. And he probably wouldn't have blocked my eventually gaining an unassailable longest route, because it would have stopped him from doing constructive building.


So Richard won, 16 points to my 13. We decided to start keeping track of our scores (as we have with the Settlers game for some months now). It will be interesting to see if he wins Seafarers more often.