Cities and Knights game for two

It was only 8pm, so we decided to play another round of Cities and Knights. I still find it a lot more mentally tiring than other variations of Settlers of Catan, but Richard likes it best and it's certainly an interesting game.

Initial set-up strategy is a little different from the other games. Wheat is vital, so as to enable knights to be active - I did remember that much. But it's also important to ensure that cities can be built (and preferably the one initial city) on intersections with wood, sheep and ore hexes, so as to gain the commodity cards that enable city improvements. Richard usually does better than me with that - and since he got to start, he was able to take what was clearly the best place from that point of view. I concentrated primarily on wheat.


After the first three rounds, we started rolling the event die as well as the two number dice, and the barbarians advanced rapidly. Indeed, there were so many barbarian faces rolled that they got to Catan before we had anything like enough active knights.


So nobody gained a victory point as 'defender of Catan', and I lost one of my cities: demoted to a settlement. Ah well.

Play proceeded fairly rapidly, with not much building being done. I was pleased to pick up the merchant card, and placed it on a sheep hex since I had a lot of sheep and the two-to-one trading was useful in buying another settlement.

I did also manage to buy another knight, and had high hopes of being defender of Catan... but alas, Richard picked up one of those most unpleasant 'deserter' cards, meaning that he got to place a knight at no cost, in place of one of mine. From that point onwards, he had continually more knights in the game than I did, although I never again lost a city.

The second time the barbarians attacked, Richard gained a victory point as 'defender of Catan'.


Tessie, who's determined that Richard is her current person, insisted on sitting on him while we played. That was fine at the beginning, when she was asleep, but she suddenly decided that dice would make rather interesting toys:


I think the barbarians must have been a little scared of Tessie, as are most of the neighbourhood cats, since the next few rounds gave us fewer of the barbarian rolls, and more of the coloured faces, enabling us to pick up more progress cards and also to expand our buildings. I realised I was only likely to gain one metropolis, so I went all out for that, and also took the longest street card. Richard managed a metropolis too, shortly afterwards. He also got control of the merchant, which deducted a victory point from me and gave an extra one to him.

I forgot to take a photo of the next barbarian attack - but once again Richard gained a victory point. Earlier in the game I had been ahead on points, but now he had clearly taken the lead.

Before long the final barbarian attack took place:


I had 13 points on the board (including my metropolis) and the longest street card, giving me 15. Richard had 12 points in buildings, including his metropolis, one point for the merchant, three 'defender of Catan' cards, and one victory point card which he'd picked up as a progress card. 17 in all, and we play to 18.

I don't think he'd realised how close he was, however; so after we'd dealt with the barbarian attack and de-activated the knights, he built two streets (with one of the useful street-building cards) and a settlement. So he had 18 points, and was the winner:


It seemed very abrupt; if I hadn't counted up we wouldn't have realised. It was tempting, for a moment, to continue... but we remembered that this game tends to get tedious after 18 points, and that it's definitely the time to stop.

So Richard was clearly the winner this time.