The first thing we had to do was prepare the 'wonder' cards. We have no idea why they were not put on cards by the manufacturers; instead they were printed in the instruction booklet, with nothing on the back. Richard wanted to do it properly, so he pasted them onto card, and cut them with a craft knife. There were five different 'wonders of Catan'. Each player can choose one to build when they've gained whatever is the requirement given, and can then build at four different levels, with the resources shown on the card. Here are three of them:
This sounded rather like the city improvements in Cities and Knights, at a simpler level. So we thought we could deal with that one.
The board was quite a big one; we set it out exactly as given in the booklet. By the time we were actually ready to play, it was 8.45! The setup alone had taken half an hour.
The game didn't sound too complicated after all when we read the instructions. We had to start on the main island, we would gain one Catan chit (and one victory point) if we managed to build on a foreign island; so that was familiar. The pirate ship doesn't come into play at all. The only extra bit is building the 'wonders' - and apparently whoever first completes four levels of a 'wonder' is the winner.
So we made our initial placements, not really sure what would be the best ones since the various wonders require different sets of resource cards. Richard took the better places, overall, with a wider variety of numbers.
I concentrated, as I usually do, on expanding - building settlements and cities, and buying development cards. Richard managed to build a couple of cities very quickly, and then set out to sea. His first couple of development cards were useful ones - year of plenty, and street-building, and he was gaining rather more resources than I was, due to his better selection of numbers.
I soon found I had the longest 'trade route' so took the longest street card. Richard, however, decided to start the monument 'wonder' card since he was collecting vast amounts of wheat but had no way to get to the wheat harbour.
Within about five turns, he had bought his way right to the last level... which theoretically meant he was the winner. It was too easy. So we decided that in the two-player version of this game, we'd each have to build two 'wonders' of Catan rather than just one. So he started a second.
I hadn't really got into the wonders at all, but adopted a couple of them anyway and managed to get to the first level of each. It was really much easier than city improvements in 'Cities and Knights', but seemed a little pointless too. And didn't seem to count for any victory points.
It wasn't long before Richard got to the fourth level on his second wonder - so it was clearly time to stop the game and declare him the winner.
Except that... by that stage I had the largest army card as well as the longest street; I had 11 points in buildings, and one point for having explored a foreign island. And a victory point development card - 17 in all. Richard had only 9 points in buildings, plus the extra for building on a foreign island. It seemed wrong, somehow, that he was nonetheless the winner.
Perhaps, we thought, we should also allocate a couple of points to to each finished 'wonder'. That would give him an extra four points... taking his total to 14. That still didn't work. So then we decided we would allocate one point for each level of each 'wonder'. That gave Richard 8 more points, taking his total to 18. Except that... I had built the first level of each of my 'wonders'. So in that system, I would get a couple of extra points too, taking me to 19, and still ahead.
Oh well. We keep track of scores on a sheet, so we simply declared Richard the winner with 18 points, and me the loser with 19. I thought he deserved to win as he had the better starting positions.
All in all, though, we weren't too impressed with this particular scenario.
Thank you for an interesting view on this scenario. We've played the same scenario a few times, and one thing we've struggeled to understand regards the setup. It says that each player starts with 1 catan chip (=1 victory point) and during the game there is 10 catan chips available to the players. But when building the wonders I see that you moved the catan chip from stage 1 to stage 2 and so on. Did you take the chip from "the bank" or using the one each player started with?
ReplyDeleteWe assumed that the initial chip given out was simply to be the pointer on the wonder cards, as there would be no point at all simply allocating each player a victory point at the start of the game. Our instructions say:
ReplyDelete'Once you have handed over the resources for the first level of your Wonder of Catan, you place a Catan chit on the '1' field of the Wonder card. When you have finished the second level, you moe the cit to field '2' and so on'.
So, yes, we used the initial chits that were handed out for the first wonders. But as we decided to allow more than one wonder each for a two-player game, we simply took other chits from the bank for subsequent wonders.
OK, that sounds reasonable. Thank you for your answer.
ReplyDeleteRegards,
Gunnar