Settlers of Catan by Facetime, for five

It's over a year since we first played Settlers via Skype with our son Tim (who is in the UK). Since then, we've played several such games with him, and have gradually changed the technology; Facetime is now the usual method, and there is always some discussion about what microphone and cameras to use. 

But we've never played a five-person game this way. With our other son Daniel and his wife Becky staying, Tim suggested we try. Richard and Daniel set up a proper microphone, balanced on a stand in the middle of us so that Tim would be able to hear us all, and we got started... 

Daniel took these first two pictures.. while we were doing the initial set-up, Becky played with her remaining pieces to make some little stick figures: 

Then I took the camera, so the board looks a little turned around. Here were our starting places - Richard was red, as usual, and I was orange. Tim played white, Becky blue and Daniel brown:

Of course it's quite hard to see all the numbers in a photo of the bigger board. We all had fairly evenly distributed numbers and resources at the start. It wasn't long before Becky built a city, and Richard managed two of them fairly quickly: 

I was struggling through lack of clay, and thus was last at this stage, still on two points.  Richard was in the lead with five. 

Becky was adapting her stick figures to suit her remaining pieces, and produced this, possibly a cyberman of some kind: 

I traded and traded, and at last managed to build a few streets and settlements, and even gained a possible clay resource, although as it was on a 3 it wasn't all that frequent:

So suddenly I was sharing the lead with Tim and Richard - all on five points - while Daniel had four, and Becky was still on three.

Here's a photo showing Tim thinking about his move, with the little Settlers picture at the side being the image of what he was seeing:

I managed my first city, then decided to expand a little more in the hope of more clay - and someone pointed out that I had the longest street. So, bizarrely, I was in the lead with eight points. But only just. Daniel was building cities as fast as he could as well as expanding, and was on seven. Tim, playing his usual ore-wheat strategy, had three cities and thus six points. Richard, who for some reason was not getting cards, was still on five, and Becky had four: 

I managed another city, and thus nine points. Tim built, in quick succession, a settlement and then an upgrade to a city, so had eight points. Then Daniel not only expanded but took the longest street, so now he was in the lead, with ten points.  

Becky and Richard were trailing a little with six each. But since Becky had won each of the last three games we had played, she didn't mind!

Then Tim played a third knight, giving him the largest army, and sharing the lead with Daniel, also on ten points. Daniel then took his turn, built another settlement... and showed a victory point development card.  So Daniel was the winner:

Here's how the board looked at the end:

Daniel won with 12 points, but Tim also had a victory point so he was close behind with 11.  And the rest of us had eight points each... Becky had a victory point card too. It was a good game. 

Settlers of Catan... via Skype!

I decided a few weeks ago that I would stop writing about every single Catan game we play, and only include new posts when there are variations (such as those in 'Traders and Barbarians') or other unusual features.

One such very unusual feature - indeed, unique from our perspective - occurred on Tuesday evening, when we were chatting online to our son Tim, who is a student in the UK. We live in Cyprus. Tim was feeling a bit bored and made an idle comment about how he wished we could play Settlers over Skype. Immediately, I wondered if it would be possible. Would the quality of my webcam be good enough...? So we set up a board, out of curiosity, and put Richard's laptop on the sofa, where we could see Tim:


Then we set up my little portable webcam on a chair, pointed at the Settlers board:


And Tim could see it quite clearly enough!


Of course, it was quite absurd to suggest actually playing a game. And yet... it looked rather a nice layout. And we had half an hour before Richard needed to go out, and Tim needed to eat. So we thought we might just try a bit of a game to see if it was possible. And since Tim wanted to see us as well as the board, Richard set up the internal webcam on his computer to point at us, via yahoo chat. We were probably at our maximum bandwidth...

Tim had to go and fetch resource cards from the set in his house, and we were all set. We chose three fairly distinct colours that were easily distinguishable via the webcam. I had my usual orange, Richard opted for white rather than his usual red, and Tim took blue. We rolled our dice, Tim used a random dice generator on his computer when it was his turn. I went first and placed my settlement, then it was Tim's turn - since we were playing clockwise - and he told me where he wanted his one to go. With the second settlements, he took the cards from his set of resources.


Then we played our first few moves. It must have felt a bit odd to Tim, but I was surprised how oddly 'normal' it felt to be playing a board game - a physical board game - with someone a couple of thousand miles away.


Trading resources with Tim was easy enough. We agreed the relevant exchange, then each traded with our own 'bank' of cards, as if trading with each other.

We had to think for a moment when Richard wanted to place the robber on one of Tim's hexes and steal a card from him. But it wasn't a problem. Tim held his cards up to the screen, so Richard could choose:


.. and when Richard decided which one he wanted, I closed my eyes, Tim showed Richard what the card was, and discarded it himself, while Richard took the relevant card from the bank. I didn't take many photos of the board; I was too interested in the game and the technology. We did take a break when Richard and Tim had to depart, temporarily, but then resumed an hour later.

Tim was in the lead for a while, then I took the longest street card and had eleven points. However, Tim took it from me fairly quickly:


- he then built another city, which put him in the lead with ten points, while I was back to nine:


Richard, who set it all up technologically, wasn't doing so well in this game.

Tim built another city, and so did I. Then I built another settlement, too. So we both had eleven points:


Oddly enough, very few development cards had been bought in this game.** Partly, I suppose, because ore was a relatively rare resource, so when any of us had any, we used it to build cities. Even at this stage, clearly near the end, I had bought - and played - one knight card, and that was all.

My turn came round. I could trade my cards to built another settlement, and I had a building spot, which meant that I could win... except that I didn't have any settlements left to play. I needed a city first, but could not gather the resources for that. And since I didn't want to be caught by the robber, I opted to buy my second development card of the game.

It was a victory point.

And so, although I had rather hoped Tim would win, I was the first with 12 points.



**If Tim had wanted to buy a development card - which didn't happen - we would have picked up the top card, and put it under the webcam (without looking at it ourselves) so that he could see what it was, and then take the equivalent card from his own set. We would then have replaced our card at the bottom of the deck.