Norwegians conquer Catan.
As part of the Goodbye to Lischkes celebration held in our Beautiful New House yesterday, Kosmo, Hollywood, Cheddar Express, and Squarepants played a commemorative memorial game of Settlers of Catan, the first for the latter. As a result, Kathy and I helped her kibitzingly. Missing Dr. Heimlich, I was tasked with explaining the rules to our newcomer, who had no previous experience with these silly European boardgames as far as I knew. Anyway, I utilized my usual technique, best described as playing in the kiddie end of the pool for a few minutes and then being thrown in the deep end.
Pretty tight game, with some fortuitous placements producing a ton of Crack (Ore) and Wheat for the Norwegian team. Despite my best efforts (on a few bottles of Killian's, I hasten to add) to corral the rules, I was steadfastly ignored throughout. Cocked dice rolls were rampant, and I attempted to fix the situation using my Dad voice to no avail. When you're not actually playing, nobody listens to you.
I did check the rulebook often during the game, something most of us haven't done since the last millennium. I learned that there are names for the hexes (like "Mountain") and names for the commodities (like "Ore"), that nobody uses when they play, not one of the ten names.
Furthermore, I learned that you can't flip all the point cards you want on the same turn. The rules clearly state that (1) you can only play one development card on your turn, and (2) you can't play a development card on the same turn you buy it. The rules exception for point cards is an exception to rule (2), not rule (1).
At any rate, Kathy lobbied for the multiple point card flip, citing a precedence going back years. Since I believe that jurisprudence is largely based on precedent lest the world descend into (more) chaos, I was forced to agree. Therefore, the Crack/Wheat machine responded to Squarepants' call once more ("Roll a five! Hey, look, another five!") and the game was decided for the Scandinavians.
Not too bad when a four player game entertains six people thoroughly, and even Tee and LWC passing by had fun. I should mention briefly the Australian visitor to the soiree, who sadly did not stay for the Settling fun. Yesterday was a terrific time and some great food fixed by people visiting my house, it don't get no better than that.
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games
6 comments:
those were great links!
now, i will roll another 5.
I should mention that this was a kind of ad hoc event, and we weren't even sure it was going to happen since the Lischkes had to get their movers out on Saturday or else. So those of you we tried to contact at the last minute and others who were not, sorry about all that.
"Ad hoc" doesn't mean what I thought it meant. I guess I meant "impromptu." Or maybe "ad lib." This is why nobody speaks Latin any more.
Et al.
Yes, we did not know when the movers would finish up on Saturday. For all we knew, we would be rolling up to CK's at midnight to crash until we had to leave yesterday morning. Apologies to those of you we didn't get a chance to contact on Saturday.
That was one of the best games of Settlers ever, mostly because I believe that's the only time I was within shouting distance of having anything to do with the winning team. Dude, five is my new favorite number.
All the rules you quote I knew, due to the Settlers tournament at Prez Con one year (which, despite my rampant need for validation, I skipped out on the finals because I didn't care enough about them).
I never really got the group here caught onto Settlers, really, but every gamer here is so intensely flighty it's not funny. Gene and I were the only two people who could get into a game and stay into a game for any length of time, though I'm relatively certain that we would have stayed with City of Heroes for quite some time if that pesky WoW hadn't shown up...
Blame Smallman. He introduced me to Settlers and I introduced you guys.
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