Oh, and...

[serene]

I learned to play Settlers of Catan, and I liked it! sogwife mopped up the floor with me and stonebender, but we'll get her next time. It's a fun game, and it lends itself to friendly bickering and petty revenge. :-)

Comments

[troublesjournal.livejournal.com]

i'm so not a game-person, but a bunch of my friends have been playing SoC rather often, and i am thinking of trying it out. any tips?

[sogwife.livejournal.com]

Settlers of Catan is a strategy game, with a good bit of luck tossed in. It sounds complicated, but it's really not that hard to learn, even well enough to begin winning occasionally fairly soon. I win sometimes, even against seasoned players, and I am no strategist. I suck at chess, and I've known how it's played since I was a kid.

Here's what I've learned about playing Settlers:

Try to make sure, at the beginning of the game, that you place a settlement on a wheat hex, preferably with a decent number (5-9 are best, 4 and 10 are okay). Wheat is required to build everything but roads, and you'll be screwed if you can't get it.

Brick can also make or break you, because you need it to build roads, and you need roads to be able to build new settlements. But, brick can be hard to come by regardless, because there are fewer brick hexes in th board. I'd say that maybe a quarter of games have brick really accessible. For the rest, brick is terribly dear. The good thing is that it will be hard for everyone to come by, so there's not a big disadvantage if you can't get it with a good number.

If there's any resource you're just unable to get, see if you can take the port for a resource you do have readily available, then build on that resource as much as possible.

When all else fails, focus on road building and development cards. Having the longest road over 5 sections long gets you the Longest Road card, worth 2 points. Having the most (3 or more) Soldier cards from the developement deck gets you the Largest Army card, also worth 2 points. People seem to forget about the Largest Army card, at least until someone does take it. I think it's because having a soldier card, once it's been played, is only good for getting the Army card, while building more road gets you closer to your next settlement site, as well as earning the Road card. The Road and Army cards can only be taken away if someone exceeds the number of road segments or soldiers you have - they can't just meet the number. This gives you a bit of leeway for keeping posession of the cards if you pay attention to what your opponents are doing. If you can be the first to use all 15 of your road pieces in a single length of road, (and be sure no one can break your road by building a settlement in the middle of it) then no one can take the Road card from you, as no one can build a road longer than 15 segments. Admittedly, I have never seen this happen in a game with people (just on my computer version - the computer is a little single-minded), but it is a possibility. The developement deck also has cards that help you build, cards that will take resources away from everyone else and give them to you, and cards that are victory points all by themselves.

These tips apply to the basic Settlers of Catan. I haven't played any of the expansions enough to give any advice on them.

Have fun!

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

There are also just no end (http://www.mayfairgames.com/shop/brand_catan.htm) of add-ons and spin-offs, plus even an Official Catan Food Contest (http://www.mayfairgames.com/news/news-arc/newscatan-food-contest.htm) going on right now.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Oh, fun! James was thinking maybe a lamb pie made with stone-ground wheat in a wood-fired brick oven, with a little port. :-)