The Settlers of Catan:
A
New
Beginning
With earthquakes, the economic crisis, traffic, the burden of being assigned a lot of homework, and the urge to find the simpler things in life, I decided to go out and settle in the countryside. As I ventured into new territory, I along with three other travelers, Andy, Michael, and Bowen, set out to find a new home called Catan.
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| Setting up |
At first, Catan looked like a complicated boring land, but once we settled in, the thirst for gaining more land or at least 10 Victory Points becomes apparent. Andy and Bowen were the only two who had some previous knowledge about Catan, but it wasn't until reading the rules, that Andy realized he was playing the game wrong the whole time. It was a shaky start as me and Michael, the newcomers, had to constantly asked about the details about Catan. There were some miscues, but Andy and Bowen were forgiving.
The first few rounds were mellow as we all were just getting familiar with the rules and collecting our resources as friendly neighbors. Once someone rolled a seven, they got to choose where to put the robber (the tall gray figure that looks like a bishop chess piece shown in the picture below), which blocks one resource and the owner of that resource can no longer receive any resource cards until the robber is moved. The person who rolled the seven must also pick a random resource card from the owner of the blocked resource, which as you can tell can lead to bad blood between settlers. While I was waiting for my turn, I decided to use the remainder of my unused roads, settlements, and cities to build a small tower, which has absolutely nothing to do with the game, but I thought I would give you an idea of what you could do if you played this game and were waiting for your turn to come. I probably should have taken a picture of it, but I will leave it to your imagination on how it was constructed. Back to the game!
Throughout the game, we had a struggle trying to obtain any clay resources since somebody had to roll either a 10, 11, 12 to obtain any clay resources. With clay being a vital resource to build roads and settlements, which are also needed to expand your territory, it was clear that whoever had clay would have the edge over the game. Most of my turns was spent trading with others for sheep and wheat, which I used to obtain development cards. I would trade for clay, but no one was willing to give up clay because they were all selfish, just kidding. I kept rolling a couple of seven's and gaining a lot of development cards, which were mostly Knights, which meant I could move the robber. As you can tell I was the person who kept stealing from other people. I even had a resource card that let me obtain all the cards of one resource from all the other settlers. Of course the time I used it to obtain clay from everybody else, it resulted in just one measly clay card. Nevertheless, I used that clay card to build me a road. As it became more apparent that rolling a number higher than 9 was becoming rare, the others decided to plan out another strategy, which was expanding their territory to the ports (the locations with ships labeled next to them), which you could exchange any 2, 3, or 4 cards for any one resource card.
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| Tension rises as I have built two cities, gaining closer to victory |
In the picture on the right, you can see how I (the red pieces) have gained control over most of the wood resources and some ore thanks to building two cities, which allowed me to obtain two times the resource cards. Unfortunately for me, I needed more than wood to expand my territory, particularly clay. (You see what I'm doing here right?)
We then spent the next couple of turns doing the same thing, collecting resources, stealing clay from whoever owned the clay resource tiles, and improving our settlements into cities. With a few advice about building my next road piece (in order to obtain the longest road card, rewarding me with the last Victory Point needed to win the game) and with class time almost ending, I came out as the victor in the end. I must say I was skeptical about playing the game, but found it fun and would love to play the game with friends/family or even strangers on my free time.
For more information about the game, rules, or other info, visit: The Settlers of Catan Brochure
To buy the game, click on the Amazon link here: Buy Here
To visit the actual game website, visit here: http://www.catan.com/game/settlers-catan
Due to time constraints, I was only able to play this game.
Thank you for reading my blog. You are welcome to leave a comment or any feedback. Have a nice day!
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