Our regular group has been playing Settlers for a while now, with one particular member having now reached a level of dice annoyance that it was decided to get the event cards to stop the whinging.

Although we have just had the one game, I do like the cards. The expectation was that they were simply the 36 possible die rolls in a deck. But, its a little bit more, plus a nice little mechanism which retains some random element.

First, the mechanism. The pack of cards also includes a "New Year" card; when this is reached, the pack is reshuffled. So, before you form the pack, you deal five cards face down, place the new year card on that, then the rest of the pack on top. When you do go thru the pack then reach the "New Year" card, you can then flick over the five cards not used and see the numbers missed. It provided a nice 1 minute discussion of moans, groans and "that’s where it was" as you restack of the deck.

The cards also provide in some instances events which include directions to swap cards amongst players, or an earthquake event which means you need to rebuilt a road before you can buy another. Further, in addition to the Robber 7's, it also includes cases where if a 4 occurs, the robber returns to the desert. So, the scenario that sometimes happens in the original game where a robber just sits on the same spot for extended periods just does not occur.

In summary, the Event cards provide a nice diversion. My preference is still for the dice, as you simply can't rely on the numbers to even out as expected. The difference is that with the cards, your game feelings are about expectations, when with the dice, your either excited or exasperated.

The funny thing with our game was that the anti-dice player came last. In some respect, I think he was more frustrated, as he really couldn’t blame any dice.

And this is my recommendation: if you enjoy Settlers but have started having one of you group whinging about the dice, you can extend the life of the game with the cards.