June 2019 Game Night

Paul, Pete, and I rattled around on the small Catan board last night.

We dined on pinwheel sandwiches, corn chips with cheese and salsa, Chocolate chip cookies, chili lime peanuts, and peanut M & Ms. And the usual Labatt Blue Light and some other leftover beers from May game night. Nobody even touched the pop, although Paul had his usual Bailey's with a giant umbrella.

First off, I'm just going to say that I was the only player to use the magnificent dice tower.

Also, we used the harbormaster variant as is now almost required.

Game one was short on bricks. I tried the double placement strategy of a sheep port and a sheep investment (a 6 and 8 sheep hex). Pete was rolling along with the largest army and nine points, just one point from getting the harbormaster. And that's when my sheep ship sailed in. I built a road (and got the longest road with 5) and a promoted a port to a city (to get the harbormaster) getting 5 points and rocketing to 11. This represents a tie with most points in one turn set by Pete, but I guess he still holds the title until someone surpasses that.

Game two was short on wood. Paul tried the double placement port and sheep resource strategy. Eventually he had at least one city on each sheep hex. But he just didn't hit sheep early enough to take off. Luckily I was able to get the longest road (at 8) and with four cities and a settlement on my line land empire, hit 11!

Game three didn't have any particular shortage although Pete was the only one with sheep for quite some time. Pete pushed into the lead but stalled at 10 with the largest army as Paul and I savaged him with robbers and knights. Paul cut off a major expansion route for Pete, and Paul pushed on to win the game with 12 points including the harbormaster. I remained stuck at 5 points.

The less said about games four and five the better. I managed to get the longest road in game four and was able to build a city to get 11 based on playing my monopoly card and getting the two wheat I needed from Pete. And in game five I don't remember how many points I built on the board. But the first thing I bought that turn was a development card. After I used all the cards I had to build assets to get to 10 points including the longest road., I flipped the development card over and it was--of course--a victory point. One odd thing was that game four was short on bricks but Pete seemed to roll 11 and 12 constantly in the last part of the game where his brick resources were.

I'm just saying I'm not driving today and I'm staying safely inside because I think I used up all my luck last night. It was uncanny. And I'll try to hang on to these memories in my next victory drought.

Although did I mention I was the only player to use the dice tower, right?

We also had a rare case in one game when I hit wood and could pick up three, but there was only one wood in the pile. As written the rule is that I could not pick up any wood because all wood due must be available for anyone to get any.

We wrapped up at 12:30 rather than push for a record 6 games, and I put in season 5 episode 1 of Game of Thrones.

July is a long way off but we'll try for that difficult month, too. Dave is still on tap to host an outdoor Catan night in August. But if that falls through Joe is eager to host game night in August, too.

Beej