-
Who's the more foolish? The fool or fool that plays after the fool?
United States
DURHAM
North Carolina
-
May 17th:
Mike was back and wanted to try Settlers with the Event deck. Rick was gone so it was 3 player again. There is always a scarce resource in games of this and this game it was wheat, which made the early game hard going, especially for me, as I was planning on building to the 8-wheat hex. Nevertheless, I built out steadily to a 5 settlement sprawl. Wood and brick were relatively plentiful so many roads were built, Mike grabbing the Longest Road with a triple road build, cutting across Tom and penning him in. Tom had an opportunity to take that from him by linking his two starting settlements but there was nowhere to build so he opted to expand. It seemed to be working for him as he build the first city and the second. I knew I had to build UP not out so used my Monopoly card to pull all the wood (I had the wood port) but though Tom had a good amount it was not enough to get me a city. It was however enough to get me almost there and next turn I built a city and another on my following turn. Mike and Tom fought a little for longest road and I built a road to nowhere to thwart Tom (he was likely to win in short order without that interference). Then with Tom looking like a power-house, I pulled the last Knight, built another settlement and claimed the game.
Mike: 8 points
Me: 10 points
Tom: 8 points
Tom really should have won this game. But he was the perceived leader and caught a lot of Robber trouble. I went from last to first on that last turn, but kept under the radar as it were, only taking Largest Army on that last turn, though perhaps they should have seen it coming.
There was a good bit of thwarting in this game, Mike cut Tom off, my monopoly on wood, building roads to restrict the opponent options. That made it a spirited game, but made it run a little longer - we were a bit late back to the ol' grindstone at 75 minutes.
The Event Deck was well received though the events themselves were less popular, Earthquake in particular slowing things down, though it was funny when Tom and I were on 3 points and had to give Mike a resource each. It mixes things up but at a sacrifice to how long it takes, so I am leaning to avoiding the events next time, though I'd play with the deck for the numbers again. It smooths out the outrageous runs of lucky rolls. It doesn't eliminate them entirely, there will be runs where a number comes up a time or three in succession, but there is an end to the madness. It makes things feel a little more orderly.
|
|
