September 2023 Game Night

Dave was the gracious host for September game night in Dexter. We had an extended happy hour for pizza-making in Dave's outdoor wood-fired oven plus drinks and snacks, so only had time for one game of Seafarers of Catan. But we were able to follow the Michigan game on my phone. 

When Dave sends in his review of the game, I'll add it in!

Until then I'll add a framework. 

Rolling a 7 unleashed either the robber or the pirate with different problems caused for each. The pirate was a robber with the added penalty of stopping placement or movement of ships on hex sides around the pirate.

I was blue. Joe was orange. Dave was red. Pete was white. And Paul was green. Oddly, there is no harbor master point bonus. Just largest army and longest road (which can include ship segments). I don't remember the order of placement and movement. Although I know I wasn't first. Was I DP? The victory points needed to win were 12.

I think half of the face down hexes two from the main island were water once flipped over upon discovery by building adjacent to them. And discover of a land hex gave you a resource from that hex's production. Which was nice.

Please note that my road on the coastal city should be a ship. After a rules clarification, with my build sites clearly intended for a sea strategy (no bricks!), I was allowed to replace that road with a ship before play started.

I was the only one who built on the coast. Dave was two roads from a coast and everyone else was one road away.

The starting map:

I went all in on the sea strategy, building just one road during the game--and that was overseas where I built on 4 sites. Although late in the game I thought about expanding on the continent to get a trading port when city-building freed a settlement back to the force pool. But I probably would have used a free settlement to protect my exposed fleet road by building a settlement on that overseas wood 5 hex. Although my first two hexes explored came up water, my luck was fairly good with 5 of 8 hexes explored being land. I briefly held longest road and was working to readjust my ships to reclaim it. And while I got plenty of good building sites out of my sea focus, my two Gold resources (which are wildcards) just didn't produce. Which hurt.

Joe built enclaves on the southern and northern parts of the main island, giving him ten potential build spots. But he was blocked from overseas expansion by me in the north and Paul in the south.

Dave was rapidly blocked from sea expansion by Joe and Paul cutting off access to the coast. He clearly began a strategy to get the longest road and largest army with 4 build spots established by the end of the game, but with one more possible without maximizing his road at 15.

Paul headed out to sea in the south and also discovered 5 land hexes. For a while he had the longest road--largely at sea. He built on 4 locations overseas.

Pete reached the sea on the east and west coasts, with a later surge to sea that gave him three overseas hexes (with really poor resources) to support a largely land-based empire. But the sea effort did give him the extra length to extend his land road of four enough to take longest road. And with the largest army, Pete reached 12 points! Congratulations, Pete!

The end map:

Following Pete, Paul and I had 9, Joe had 7, and Dave had 5.

"Probability"

I needed 4 and 6 to come up a lot more. But at least my 5 produced nicely. Three and 10 were shockingly productive. Sorry, 2.

And thanks to Joe who once again took up his statistical duties!

We broke up relatively early because it was clear that a second game would take us well into Sunday to complete.

Thanks for hosting, Dave! It was a great evening.

And a meme!

We keep doing this things so these posts will keep on coming.