What? I won at Settlers?

After the prayer meeting, Harry Li Zhen and I started off with a game of Settlers. I get to pick last, so somehow that's a good thing for me...or so I thought. The game started off pretty evenly, actually, with everyone building nicely up to 4 points or so. But it kind of stalled a bit as brick was scarce. Li Zhen took the longest road, which Harry later took away from him. I got largest army. Lots of 5s were thrown, and each time Harry would get a brick and an ore, and later 2 bricks and 2 ores. After a string of 5s, I used a monopoly to get 7 ores from Harry! But I used them badly, by trading for one development card...which was a soldier. I managed three ports and after a short string of good rolls, I managed to snatch the longest road from Harry and win the game! Wow...I haven't won at Settlers in a long time... And Li Zhen is officially not liking Settlers anymore, just like me...heh.

Final scores: Li Zhen 5, Harry 5, Me 10.

First Full Game of Settlers in the Office

So Mat saw the board when he entered unexpectedly...and the three of us played it. It was a wood-barren board, and I went first, so I picked a 3/11/6 wood/wood/wheat corner. After Tony and Mat placed their settlements, I ran out of luck. The only viable choice for me was on a 4/8 ore with 3:1 port. Doh. That pretty much doomed me, I think.

And the game begins. First, we find it funny that Mat called the development cards "devvy cards." Next, Tony was buying development cards like crazy (for a total of about 6 or 7 in the game), so Mat called him a "devvy baron"...heh. In any case, I was pretty much boxed in for expanding territories. And there is one spot that I had my eyes on for a while, only to be taken by Mat after (a) he used a road building card to get there and (b) I traded a wheat with him so that he could build the settlement there. Doh. Tony got the largest army for sure. But then Mat made a peculiar move...one where he offered to give Tony 5 cards for his "eternal goodwill"...heh. Well, obviously Mat was trying to avoid the 7, but what we didn't know is that in the next turn, he built a road to get the longest road card, upgraded a settlement to a city, then revealed his VP card to claim the victory. That was quite an interesting game, I think (though I was really never in the running). Tony had two VP cards, so he ended up with 8 points. I had lots of wheat and ore to give me 3 cities and a total of 6 points. I think we may be doing this in our office again...

Tony's First Settlers Experience

For some reason, I've decided to give Tony the rules for Settlers. He seemed to get it. And off we go... Just Tony and I now, me thinking that this is just a trial run to get him familiar with the rules and stuff. Turns out that my initial placement is so bad (because I wasn't thinking about it) that it impeded my progress greatly. Meanwhile, Tony was doing various things, building settlements, upgrading, buying development cards. Just as I started to catch up, it was time for him to go to a seminar. So we decided to end the game there. Turns out that both of us had a VP development card, so he won with a score of 6 to 5. Doh.

Tuesday evening with John and Tim (1/2)

Well, a game of supposedly "quick" Settlers with John and Tim will always be a contradiction. In this case, it ran for 46 minutes (I think). John built to a quick lead, and at 8 points, he was just one soldier away from getting the Largest Army and win. But, Tim didn't want that to happen...instead, he built a long enough road to take away John's Longest Road, so we play some more. Eventually it got to a point where both John and Tim had 9 points. It was my turn, and John had received a ton of resources. I think the only way I could win was to get more development cards, but unfortunately that didn't happen (I've already had 2 VP cards). I traded with Tim to get those development cards. Tim's next, and he used the resource that he got from me and won the game. John was not happy, obviously, because he could have won next...heh. Of course even if I didn't make that last trade with Tim, he still would have won, but John would complain about it, obviously. Final score: Me 8, Tim 10, John 9.

It was late in the day, but John and Tim wanted to play a quick game of Settlers, so we did that, promising that we would finish in 20 minutes. Of course that didn't happen...

What happened was that Tim took a very early lead, and John was not happy about that. So John decided that he would do all he could to prevent Tim from winning, and tried to make me win. The way he did that was making extreme trades with me, where I would give him a brick and he would give me 5 bricks and 4 woods (or something like that). It must be illegal...heh. From these trades, I managed to take away the longest road from Tim, reducing him down to 7 points. He built another city, bought some development cards, and could have won by playing a soldier to get the largest army. Meanwhile, John got a ton of bricks and sheet, and it turns out that I had the brick port and the sheet port, so he used extreme trading to get me to build more cities and settlements, and I won, with Tim dejected. That was one of the funniest games ever, even though we were bad. Oh, and the game ended up going for 47 minutes.

Final scores: Tim 9, Me 10, John 5.