Tuesday February 8th - Settlers of Catan

Discussion-G1
Originally uploaded by coljen.

Todays game is basic Settlers, the original unadulterated version, vanilla flavour.....well, you get the idea. Only four of us tonight and nobody needs a rule revision so its straight into the fray. This game was over fairly rapidly taking just over the hour. We have a house rule that the robber is not activated until the 3rd turn and would you believe the number of 7s that were rolled on the first two turns. Neil rapidly established a very strong powerbase with excellent numbers and resources in abundance. I got a bit restricted with my options to expand (as usual). The longest road was controlled by Neil throughout I think. Steve has made a note of the dice rolls for both of tonights games and hopefully will post these as a comment. I did get a 3 for 1 port which helped a bit. If anybody can remember a bit more about this game feel free to post.
Having thought about it I am still not a totally converted Settlers fan. I still think that you are at the mercy of the dice. I know you can trade for resources, but if you are close to getting 10VPs nobody will trade and you are relying on the dice. Notice in our second game I had the sheep sown up on a 9 and Neil had the ore on a 12. Everyone knew I was on 9 VPs so no trade also no 9s rolled. Whereas Neil had the luck to have several 12s rolled and steam in for the win.

Final Scores (*denotes starting player)
Natalie 3, *Steve 4, Neil 10, Colin 5