We Played It!

Only four months and one marriage break-down after ordering it, we finally played my Settlers of Catan Anniversary Edition today. Arnold Horshack came over for a day of two-player games, but as the kid left his PlayStation games in mum's car there were a few three-player games as well. For the final game of the day we pulled out the Settlers set and played it as the sun set and the temperature dropped. (BTW, my stats say that today was my best day of gaming ever, which is a pleasant change after the last couple of disastrous months).

So it was "just" a game of Settlers, but it was one of the most expensive games I have ever played, and also the first time I have won. The defining feature of the game was the rarity of wheat, mostly because the kid kept putting the robber on the 6 wheat hex. I had a settlement there and also on the 9 wheat hex, but of course 9 rarely came up. Even 6 was rare for a while. When the wheat did start to trickle through I refused to trade it because I needed it for settlements. Arnold was doing 4-for-1 trades to get wheat, and the kid eventually realised he had a 2 ore port, and built a settlement on the 6-wheat hex. The kid and I got into a pissing match for longest road (kids like pissing matches), which he won for a long time after I gave him 3 brick for 2 ore. However I build a city with the ore, and started getting a bit more wheat and ore. I then managed to build another city on the other wheat. A sequence of very nice dice rolls left me with 6 ore, 4 wheat, a wood and a brick on my turn, and I built two cities and a road in one turn to take longest road and the game.

The kid plays pretty well, but maybe not aggressively enough on the trades. It was Arnold's first game, and although he didn't make obvious mistakes, he didn't seem to make enough trades. Of course, the fact that I was not interested in trading wheat at all didn't encourage him. He'll probably win next time.