We had game night early in September, ably hosted by Joe in the South Lyon outpost and attended by Dennis, Matt, myself, Paul, and Pete.
Joe plied us with pizza, bread sticks with garlic dip, potato and corn chips with appropriate dips, cookies and candy, a sweet and salty trail mix, assorted beers including the official beer of game night (Labatt Blue Light), plus some traditional liquor and liqueur.
We played on the expanded map with the usual harbor master variant, meaning one needed 11 victory points to win. Well, each us did, actually.
GAME ONE
The order of placement and movement was Matt (brown), myself (red), Paul (white), Joe (green), Pete (orange), and Dennis (blue) in the double-placement position.
The opening positions:
TONY rankings:
What happened?
- All the resources seemed adequate, with rocks at the low end of that measure.
- So that blue drive to the sea and settlement set the stage for the night:
- I built out to my minimum of five settlement sites but my rocks did not come in until it was too late, as my city upgrade stockpile displayed at the bottom shows. Missed it by that much.
- Joe also built out to five settled areas with 2-4 more spots available. His rock resources were worse than mine.
- After blocking Joe and savagely preempting Paul's planned settlement on the northeast port, Dennis constructed a little dipper wrapped around a 3 wheat, and challenged for harbor master.
- Paul, cut off in the north, stretched out his southern settlement to build the longest road and promoted a city.
- Matt basically build a city-producing machine on two 5s, using all his cities. And with a VP down, needed another VP or three deployed knights to reach 11.
- Pete also fully urbanized with his city-building machine on 6s, but with the harbor master raced to 11. Congratulations!
The final map:
Matt came in second with 10 points (including one victory point card), followed by Paul (8 including longest road), Dennis (7), and Joe and myself tied at 5 each.
"Probability":
Visually fairly normal but for the weak robber showing.
GAME TWO
The order of placement and movement was Paul (white), Joe (green), Pete (orange), Dennis (blue), Matt (brown), and myself (red) in the DP position.
The opening positions:
TONY rankings:
What happened?
- Rock and brick were pretty bad with only one good resource each.
- Dennis managed to thread the needle to the coast but lacked rocks. His inland push came to a crashing halt when Paul exacted his revenge from game one by cutting him off to connect his enclaves. Dennis had but one more settlement option open after losing his inland race.
- Joe got on the longest road treadmill and spent what it took to make a run for it. With time he could extend his road more than Paul could. But resources were scarce. As was time.
- Pete somehow built three cities despite having just a 2 rock! Not sure what kind of alchemy was needed for that with just 3:1 ports.
- I used the DP spot to get all resources, counting on good sheep and a sheep port to provide road-building resources; I promoted two cities on my way to getting harbor master, and hoped my city-building resources bolstered by ample sheep and a sheep port would give me the last two points needed. So naive'.
- Matt had a nicely expanding footprint balanced with city upgrades, in a race with Pete and myself for a coastal building site. Of course, the city-building was achieved with a monopoly card that gained him 12 rock cards (5 from Paul and 4 from me).
- Paul cut off Dennis inland to link his enclaves while taking more road-building resources to make his longest road more difficult for Joe to take. Which was enough with four cities and a settlement to win. Congratulations, Paul!
The final map:
Matt and I (with harbor master) followed with 9 points each; Pete had 8, Joe had 4, and Dennis had 3.
"Probability":
The robber was out in force this game. The ends of the curve punched above their weight.
GAME THREE
The order of placement and movement was The order of placement and movement was Paul (white), Joe (green), Pete (orange), Dennis (blue), Matt (brown), and myself (red) in the coveted DP position.
The opening positions:
TONY rankings:
What happened?
- Rocks were good or poor.
- Dennis was hobbled by lack of road building, and was cut off in the northeast from the coast. In theory, the center of the map was open.
- Joe had the same road-building capacity as Dennis; but slightly better city-building capacity.
- Paul barely spread out but promoted two cities. People really just weren't thinking about longest road in this game. Paul had the distinction of being the only player to build more than two roads from the coast in the Great Catan Void.
- Pete couldn't even build out to get a flux capacitor as he often does, with an empire that looked exactly like Paul's. Just with the enclaves a bit closer to each other.
- Matt took harbor master with his settlements only, on three port locations. And he curled around the Great Woods aiming for a settlement site. Which left him with two 4-road segments. Like I said, we really weren't paying attention to longest road this game. Which left a mark given Matt had two victory points and harbor master. Hoo boy. If anybody noticed, nobody did anything stupid by pointing it out.
- I focused on city-building in my DP selection, resulting in only one road from resources. I needed a road building card (hidden under my harbor master) to place two roads to port building spots. With 6 points I managed to build a settlement to take harbor master. Then, pondering that the wheat pile was down and that with some rocks in my hand and 3:1 ports, playing my monopoly card would be a good idea. I took 16 wheat and managed to parlay that into two city upgrades to reach 11! Funny enough, it probably would have been easier to get longest road. But it didn't occur to me. I like to think it would have if I didn't have enough for two cities. But we really weren't thinking about longest road this game. Tunnel vision is real, people.
The final map:
Matt followed with 7 points (2 VP cards), Paul and Pete had 6 each, and Joe and Dennis (one victory point card) had 4 each.
"Probability":
That game was a left-shifted abomination of a normal curve. But at least the robber was relatively quiet.
GAME FOUR
Paul needed to beat post-game traffic to get home, so fled rather than defend his win in the last game.
The order of placement and movement was Pete (orange), Dennis (blue), Matt (brown), myself (red), and Joe (green) in the always coveted DP position.
The opening positions:
TONY rankings:
What happened?
- Bricks and wheat were weak-ish by being unbalanced.
- Dennis built around the 9 hex in the south with his good road-building resources. But lacked rocks or sheep.
- Pete built just one road but promoted two cities.
- Joe settled on four sites with another staked out and leveled for a settlement; and promoted one city.
- I too had little road building capacity but late in the game snatched a great brick site. Sadly it was a coastal non-port site. But I did fully urbanize my four sites and had one more lined up (although I wanted to go one more hex side to get a third port point! Surely the 8 brick would pay off!
- Matt stretched out to connect his enclaves, promoted three cities, took longest road, and had a victory point card down to claim the win. Congratulations, Matt!
The final map:
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"Probability":
Huh. So that happened. Paul went home and took probability with him! Hey Tony, where's your Moses probability noooow?
We who remained wrapped up game night yet stayed to watch the end of the football game, which involved a Hail Mary pass into the end zone on a redo granted by superior clock technology for Michigan to win the game. I swear that before the plays I cited our repeated game night experience when somebody needed to buy a victory point card to win, and flipped one over upon purchase for the walk-off victory. Our team's victory felt like that. My ride home coming from the east was okay and only muddled by road construction that my phone didn't know about. But I blindly followed my phone's directions and just floored it at the "bridge out" sign.
Thank you to Joe for his great hosting again! Joe also stepped up for stats in the last game after Paul abandoned his responsibilities ably done for the first three games to skedaddle home to run the game traffic blockade.Miscellaneous
The Grim Reaper of Catan Award for rolling the most 7s and unleashing thievery on the peace-loving people of Catan goes to ...
Nobody.
Pete and I tied, so I retain the title from last month. If I calculated based on robbers rolled per game, Paul would have won. But no tie-breakers. We don't do higher maths on this site.
Also, we have data for who can validly claim victim status, robbery-wise, from holding too many cards when the 7 robber strikes.
"Congratulations" Paul, with three hits in the evening.
And a meme (courtesy of Joe)!
Great to see everybody!
It will be back to Casa Beej in October. As Klaus intended.
