December 2021 Game Night

We had game night last Saturday.

Joe, Paul, and Pete joined me. We had hoped for Mega Catan yet played on the small board.

We dined on Chinese food and egg rolls, plus corn chips and dips. Joe brought Buffalo flat pretzels and dip. Cookies, chocolate-covered donut bites, and peanut M& Ms provided desserts.

Labatt Blue of the regular and light varieties were available, plus assorted pops.

Sadie was curious but reserved this game night, no longer hiding in the stairwell.

[Not an actual game night image]

I forgot to take pictures of the start map of the first two games and so just dropped that feature for this recap. Did I mention we drank? Early and often?

I was red, Paul was white, Joe was orange, and Pete was blue.

Of special note, this was the first all-tower game night. Paul and I used the original dice tower; while Joe and Pete used Pete's arguably heretical dice tower.

We played the harbor master variant, of course.

Game One

Wood was horrible this game while rock was unbalanced.

This is the end map:

I started on two different rock settlements but with without wheat. I moved to get wood first, expanded to better sheep and increasing payoff for wood, and fully staking out the rock quarries. It is not a shock that I had 80% of the cities this game. I built on a 3:1 port which helped. And with my very constrained territory having so many rocks was a big help.

Joe built the trans-Catanian road to get longest road. How he did that with his 12 forest escapes me. Everyone else had two port points, but nobody reached 3. Paul spread out on the coast, with a shot at longest road. And Pete built out a bit, like my expansion, but with one more build spot possible. He also promoted one city.

Eventually with 9 points and one more city to promote I had to focus on buying development cards. I bought two in one turn, getting a victory card and a year of plenty. The next turn around that got me a city upgrade and 11 points!

Joe followed with 7 points, including the longest road. Then Paul with 6, including a victory point. And Pete with 6.

 

Game Two

Wheat and wood were highly variable.

This is the end map:

I started with no wheat and expanded to the coast a a shepherd's hooked staff empire. I was at the point of deciding whether to reach out for a weak desert-view settlement or keep going south to extend my longest road without hope of building on it. I was at least one road closer to the build site than everyone else.

Joe built out both of his settlement starting points. He had no hope for harbor master and little hope for longest road.

Paul staked out a nice enclave on the west coast with plenty of build sites. And his other enclave gave him a 2:1 brick port for his own ample brick resources.

Pete was pretty penned in. Yet with both the wheat and rock ports, he managed to waste them completely by fully urbanizing! But that worked out well as he reached 11, with a victory point card and harbor master.

I followed with 9, including longest road, then Joe and Paul tied at 8 each. Congratulations Pete!

Game Three

This map was fairly reasonable with resource distribution. The vast grazing land is interesting.

This is the end map:

This time Paul made the trans-Catanian road. And with a strong rock presence, he had three cities.

Joe was blocked in the south but he had room in the north. Of note, Joe had both the harbor master and longest road cards at the same time until he lost them. That left a mark.

Pete had no bricks and it crippled any effort to expand.

I was at 8, and made it to 12 by building to get the harbormaster plus my hidden victory point card. 

Paul, who lost Lord knows how many cards when the robber parked on his 8 brick and did not move--I may have placed it there in retaliation, I'm sure--ended the game with a fist full of cards. Had I not gone over the top, barring a 7 he's have gotten the game.

Paul followed with 10 points, including the longest road. Pete had 6 with a victory point card. And Joe had 4.

Game Four

The desert in the center resulted in initial placements by all of us on the six hexes around the desert close to but not on the coast. It was kind of interesting. Except for my one pick on the coast to get the wheat port, as I figured "what the heck."

Joe, Paul, and Pete all had road building efforts that could have given any of them longest road. Pete had the edge in a unified road net first. But Joe and Paul could have grabbed it with a bit of effort.

Joe had a secure enclave in the north for building spots.

Pete was a lineland but he had lots of room around the desert for building.

Paul hemmed in my southern enclave and also could have moved toward the desert.

Somehow I expanded around the good wheat and planted another rock resource. With a rock and wheat port, I finally got what made that nice with wheat and rock resources. There was nice flexibility for city promotion! And it made it easier to get wood.

At some point I turned to Pete and said, "now I need 6, 3, and 2 to kick in. And they did--even a single 2. And just as important, the robber that had plagued us constantly early in the game finally decided to sit it out.

Pete had 10 with the longest road and a victory point. Paul had 7. And Joe had 4.

And that was it.

Despite heavy drinking and a fair amount of eating junk, I managed to wake up Sunday with only a slight sleep deficit and no food- or beer-related agony or even discomfort. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I was.

And a meme:

Thanks to those attending game night! You guys aren't really emotionally crippled.

As always, feel free to add thoughts in the comments. Especially who moved first each game and what your initial placement was. I know I rolled 3 1s and a 2 during the evening for game order, so never moved first. I think I had double placement once and third placement twice. Other than that, it's a blur.

Mega Catan!

So we have Mega Catan available. In theory--if we can fit around my table--we can handle up to ten players.

I bought another Catan set because it was cheaper than buying parts separately.

Mega Catan board

I made two extra small pieces for the border--one 3:1 port and one blank. So there will be alternating port and blank extensions. This allows for a Catan of 4 hexes on each side, totaling 37 hexes.

Place a 3:1 small border piece between section 1 links; a blank piece between section 2 links; a 2:1 sheep piece between the 3 links; a blank piece between the 4 links; a 3:1 piece between section 5 links; and a blank piece between section 6 links.

I added hexes by type in consideration of the original small map that has more wood, wheat, and sheep. But I could only make two of those three have two hexes so I demoted sheep to the one hex category. And no new desert. So Mega Catan adds 1 sheep, rock, and brick; and 2 wood and wheat.

One 3:1 harbor piece is also needed.

 

Mega Catan circular resource distribution chits

I added 7 new circular chits marked Zd throuh Zj. Because the expansion pack adds 10 chits with a total point value of 31, I made the 7 new chits equal 22 points. But I arbitrarily assigned them numbers. From Zd as a 12, with subsequent chits 5, 3, 6, 2, 9, and 8.

 

Mega Catan buildings and roads

One day I may spray paint the buildings and roads, but for now the extra sets have roofs painted black; and the ends of the road segments painted black.

The Trade and Build Phase

For any Mega Catan game of 7-10 players I modified the revised special building phase that now has a Trade and Build Phase with a Settler1 phase and a Settler 2--who is three players to the left of Settler 1--special building phase.

The Mega Catan Trade and Build Phase will have a Settler 1 and a Settler 2 who is four players to the left of Settler 1. 

In addition, your hand is safe from the robber with 9 cards instead of 7. So the robber takes half (rounded down) when you have 10 cards in your hand instead of the 8 in the basic and expansion games.

Victory points

For victory point levels I looked at the maximum theoretical points per player, using 13 points for building per player, plus 5 victory point cards and 6 points with the harbormaster, largest army, and longest road bonuses. This ran from an average of 16.75 points per player with 3 players to 14.8 points per player at 6 players. I set a rounded 15 as the threshold for 10 victory points for a regular game and 11 victory points for harbormaster variant.

Calculating theoretical points per player from 7 to 10 players, I was looking at 14.6, 14.4, 14.2, and 14 points. So I established the victory points needed for victory at 10 and 11 for 3-7 players; and 9 and 10 points for 8-10 players.

I hold open the option of going to 8 and 9 for 10 players because I did not factor in players to space.

 

Additional pieces

Playing Mega Catan requires the basic game, plus the expansion kit pieces, plus the following additions:

One small blank frame and one small 3:1 harbor frame (which I had to make using my copier and cardboard).

One 3:1 harbor piece.

Six knights, and one each of year of plenty, monopoly, road building, and victory point cards.

Six each of bricks, rocks, sheep, wheat, and wood.

Seven circular numbered chits Zd (12), Ze (5), Zf (3), Zg (6), Zh (2), Zi (9), and Zj (8).

Four sets of building pieces and building cost cards.

/NOTHING FOLLOWS/

So that's it! I have 9 small chairs, 4 patio chairs, plus some stools. But food and drinks may compete for table space. I'll have to make sure their are flat surfaces around for setting cans and plates.

Although honestly, if we use Mega Catan I suspect it will "just" be at 7 or 8 people. But who knows? Thank God I have a car again despite the dread chip shortage. Because if we go to 10 I'll need to run our for more beer and food!

Game Night Light 20

Monday was the weekly beer exchange and game night.

The game of choice is one some of us remember from a previous company in a different graphical format. If you played in Pat's World War II campaign game (well, really a complicated system to generate naval and air battles) way back in the day, you played Air Force.

And the beer exchange:

We played a simple two fighter versus two fighter sweep. Early model Me-109s and Spitfires.

Just the basic rules to keep it simple. But the concepts and rules came back fairly quickly. 

And the game is certainly much better than the Richthofen's War played earlier.

There are a couple rules on half-loops and disadvantaged aircraft that we need to clarify. But the way we played them made sense in the latter case and in the former both of us fulfilled what we think is the prerequisite unintentionally. But we wonder if it is required.

The game does take a while. We did not finish with a winner before the game night time limit. But it is fun and we moved along pretty quickly as the night went on.

I really like these weekly game nights for hauling out little-used games or new games. 

And it is good to exercise brain paths long-unused but heavily used when I was in high school--reading rules and using them to play sometimes complicated games. Playing simpler games or even computer-driven games has left that skill atrophied to some extent. Heck, we experienced that playing Catan online and had to remember basic rules again (sorry, Tony, that victory point card issue hurt to see ...).

Anyway, a fun evening of new beers and an unfamiliar game revived from the dead.