It's best to get here for happy hour, which is before sunset.
Pete and Tony joined me for a small board with no Harbormaster variant. So victory is achieved with 10 points.
Paul joined virtually for a cameo appearance just to check out Skype.
We dined on individually wrapped snacks, including sliders:
Salty snacks (darn close to Ito Night):
You can't get toilet paper to save your life, but chips are in plentiful supply in stores!
And sweets:
We had the usual Labatt Blue Light plus a special epidemic appearance of Bud Light. And the usual non-alcoholic beverages.
Tony brought a selection of craft brews he brought from church. Don't ask questions.
But if you think any of you were getting any of my precious stock of Bailey's you're figuratively feverish.
For the games, I was white, Tony was blue, and Pete was Red.
At one point later in the evening I went through dice changes like they were Chiclets. And I don't know what was going on, but Tony and Pete seemed to roll sevens all the time. Even with just three players we really missed the Insterstellar Build Phase in the larger expansion game.
This was game one:
Pete and Tony were well place for wood while I had an edge in rocks. As with the other games we played, the board left us room to expand without any throwing of elbows contesting expansion routes. And road building was limited by the resource mix. The centered desert was interesting. Have we seen that before?
I was able to build a settlement to get to nine points, on top of the longest road that I barely held at that point, and flipped over my two victory point cards! Woo! The monopoly card helped near the end with a nice collection of wood. Pete had seven points and Tony had three with a shot at the longest road.
Game two:
Game two was really weak in rocks and Pete planted himself on them, while I placed on the coast to have a shot at them. The rest of the resources were adequate. In this game, each of us held the longest road at some point. In a hard fought game, Pete was the last to hold the longest road and he emerged victorious with ten points. Tony had seven, including the largest army. And I had five.
Game three:
Rocks were again problematic, as the kids say these days. This time I planted on the single source yet was denied the benefits of my obvious foresight and first placement by the fickle probability gods.
Tony went the blue helmet route and pushed a DMZ across Catan to divide the board. Getting the longest road was a benefit from that. But despite having nine points, Pete managed to win with a victory point card, two cities, and five settlements. I had five points and no cities despite my ample rock and wheat resources--in theory, of course. You wonder why I eventually went to the tiny dice?
Dave, excuse the condition of the card stacks. Although at one point Tony complained that he had a strange compulsion to "Dave the cards" during the evening.
Game four:
Again, we had a centered desert. I have to believe this would have been more of a problem in a more crowded four-player board. Again, rocks were weird with only one good hex. Bricks were the same. Tony parked on the rocks and I grabbed the bricks. Later I built toward the good rocks site.
By later in the game I was focused on getting the largest army with two knights down, and figuring I had to start playing them.I think I had just built a settlement that turn and had 8 points. But then I noticed that while Tony and Pete had good prospects for getting the longest road, I could get it right now! I managed to build the road and took the card with 5 road segments. Pete had six points and Tony had five.
Game five:
This game was a little more normal for resources. But the vast Catanian forest was odd. Tony lamented that we had no harbormaster variant. And he had the rock, brick, and wood ports, while pushing toward the wheat port! I don't know why he bothered to trade with anyone. I had the sheep port but only an "11" sheep.
Near the end, I was close to victory and had almost what I needed to build a coastal settlement and reveal my point card down. I had one knight card. I played it on Tony, knowing that getting two types of card would let me build the settlement. I got one of those resources! So I finished with the longest road and ten points, including a victory point card. Tony had six and Pete finished with five.
And we even watched Game of Thrones! Season 5, episode 7, rather than set a game night record of six games.
Truly, Dornish women are the most beautiful in the world (Not embedded because NSFW). And they're emotionally crippled enough to be totally appealing to your humble host! 😬
We wrapped up sometime around 1:30 or so. Thanks for attending. Fingers crossed about next month--assume it will be a late month one whatever it is.
As I've noted in emails, we will try to figure out a remote game. Either I could host and make moves for multiple people using Skype focused on the board, or some other method. Maybe we use multiple cameras so each player has one focused on their hand and one on the board that everyone sees. I'll leave that to my engineer friends.
Or maybe it is an open hand version of the game with everyone seeing everyone else's resources and development cards. That would be interesting. And I could play too, if we did that. We'll see.
The official multi-player online game could work, but I don't like the avatars and texting. Could we use that AND Skype so we can talk as well? Just texting doesn't really provide the social aspect, I think.
This is what game night might look like next month. Except with more virtual players.
Although I prefer single aimed shots to make sure that only invited guests attend:
Oh, and a Catan slide show meme for those not attending to see it rolling during the evening:
Note that I know that it would make more sense to be about sheep, but I already had a lot of sheep memes and I didn't want people to talk.
Let's hope it's all back to normal next month!
