Saturday, April 18, 2009

Catan War Stories

I won a game of Settlers of Catan Friday against Shannon and our friends, the Andersons. Here's the play-by-play of what seemed like a lucky come-from-behind kind of win.

Playing blue, I was hemmed in from the start. Surrounded, both of my settlements were cut off from any real expansion or reaching the ports I wanted. Shannon beat me to the valuable 2:1 wood port (purely out of spite) and Jay-rod cut me off at the other end of my road (again with the spite thing). It was so crowded in my neighborhood that my third settlement was my last; I was out of room.

Two things happened in the game that I'd not yet seen. First, Shannon built twice on a brick 6 which sat on the 2:1 brick port. That's about as lucrative as it gets in this game. Second, Jay-rod earned the longest road, stretching 12 or 13 segments long, without a single spur, dominating half the island. Every road piece he played in the entire game counted toward that one, long uninterrupted road. No one else was even close.

Unable to get the longest road or go anywhere, I just kept buying development cards and playing knights to stay alive. This earned me the largest army card and paid other dividends: I started getting lucky when I'd draw a card, repeatedly getting wheat and ore. Eventually I upgraded my settlements to cities and then I lucked into two victory-point development cards which gave me the win.

Three cities, largest army, two victory point cards, and lots of luck to come from behind for the win. Best of all, we laughed a lot and had tons of fun.

1 comment:

Dustin said...

Kyle, Alanna and I played it the other night-- I may have a new favorite game! Well done, fast, entertaining, unique, etc, etc! Two thumbs up!