Nick
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Unspecified
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Chez Nick we play a curious type of Catan. We are only in two, so, having tried other variations we have settled on the official "Catan for Two" rules, which place two dummy players on the board, allow double dice rolls per turn for resources (although the numbers must be different), and give each player a starting stack of 5 chips which may be used to return the robber to the desert or force a 2-card trade, the cost in chips being higher if you are ahead. We have played this with vanilla Catan and enjoyed it, so Sunday was our first session to incorporate Seafarers as well.
All told we got through two plays of the Through The Desert scenario, and then moved on to The Wonder of Catan, which we played four times, so much did we enjoy it. The beauty of this latter scenario is that it requires several steps to be achieved before victory can be secured, which can happen either by completing a Wonder (which consists of four stages) or of scoring 10VPs and having a Wonder which is at a more advanced stage than those of your opponents. In order to secure the ability to build a Wonder in the first place, however, you have to achieve an intermediary goal, be it 6 VPs and a city, or a settlement in the desert, for example. Then you can go a-building.
From the very first game of this it became clear that it would become a favourite. Katie, my partner, raced ahead in the VP stakes, rushing to 10 before I had got to 6 or so, and needing only to begin her Wonder to win. However, she missed an opportunity to close out the game, making a rare mistake, allowing me to build Stage 1 of my Great Wall and block her victory. She managed to build Stage 1 of her Cathedral, but I built Stage 2 of my Wall, at which point it became clear to me - heavens, I might actually be able to win this game! I abandoned roads and settlements threw myself into trading resources to build the last two stages of my Wonder. I built Stage 3, leaving me one to go in order to secure an unlikely win, before Katie caught up, getting to Stage 3 of her Cathedral. I needed wheat to win.
My two rolls failed to produce any wheat, so I paid one of my "trading chips" to force a two-card swap, which would see me pick two of her cards at random. She had four cards. Might there be some wheat in there? As she fanned them out I picked...ore and ore. Maybe I could produce some wheat from my hexes next time.
But there was to be no next time. Katie's rolls yielded her the resources needed to complete the Cathedral and save the game, blocking an unlikely comeback from yours truly. Discussing the final stages afterwards, breathlessly, it emerged that her hand of four cards from which I'd picked had consisted of two ore and two wheat. The outcome could have been very different.
We played three further games, the next two being similarly close affairs, settled at 10 points apiece only after somebody pulled ahead with their Wonder, but the last was more one-sided, as I was unable to secure the resources I needed to compete at all.
I am fortunate enough to have secured a copy of Die Siedler von Catan: Das Buch zum Spielen last year, so we plan to introduce some more wrinkles into our games. Firstly, we plan to incorporate the castle - here, when playing your second Knight you can put both this and your first one at the bottom of the Development Card pile and gain a castle to place on any of your hexes, making it immune from the robber. Secondly, we plan to introduce factories - each player has one of these, and they are placed like settlements, although they do not score VPs. They cost one of each of the five resources to build. If your factory is on the rolled hex, it gets to choose a resource from any of the hexes it touches, unless there is a robber on that hex. These are both variations that can be included without special equipment, and might help serve those who hanker after a more 'tactical' game of Catan. Lastly, we're going to introduce the volcano tile. We've played Volcania before (as described in Das Buch), but the tile on its own acts like a gold field, with the danger that it might destroy your settlement in the process. Nice!
Catan has its critics, but I enjoy the game the more I adapt it to my own set of wrinkles and house rules. The vanilla version is ok for me, but a "Catan for Two" take on Seafarers with a castle, a factory and a volcano thrown in for good measure has me champing at the bit for a game. A poster here on BGG said wisely that Catan is a game but Seafarers is a game system, and I agree wholeheartedly, the moral of the story being that there is enough in the Catan world for it to be adapted to fit most gamers' tastes. If you own Seafarers and haven't played The Wonder of Catan, then I urge you to give it a go. It's like Catan but with an extra layer, and a good layer at that.
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Don Eskridge
United States
Edmond
Oklahoma
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Totally agree! Great write-up.
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