1/10/14

Today, we played Settlers of Catan for the entire class.

Settlers of Catan
Settlers of Catan, or Settlers for short, is a game of expansion. Each player starts with two settlements and two roads and throughout the course of the game, expand by building more settlements, roads, cities, and development cards. Settlements and cities help you gain resources through the die rolls that each player takes each turn. Harbors help you trade resources with the bank to get the ones you want, so you can build what you want. The robber steals from people and blocks off certain production. The goal of the game is to score victory points, which is done through this expansion.

Today, we split up into groups depending on our level of Settlers experience. Professor Blankespoor has made several variations, so my group finished one of his, and started another.

Team Settlers

The first variation our group played, which we finished, was the professor's basic team game. The four players are split up into two teams who add points together, but do not add any of their other interaction together. Also, resources can only be traded blindly with your teammate. My team won by a large margin, in part because I had the harbor of the most rolled resource, partly because placing the robber on one of us meant also meant blocking off some of their own production, and partly because we got lucky.

This team variation had very little trading in total, because the motivation is low. The only reason you'd help your competitor is if it helped you more, at which point they wouldn't want to help you at all. I liked how the team mechanic worked in general, but the team interaction seemed a little low. There was all the normal chance of a settlers game, and my opponents got unlucky.

The game was as simple as any settlers game, although the blind trading concept was a little hard to grasp at first.

Adding a cooperative element to settlers is a nice change up to the regular cutthroat settlers. In fact, I think everyone was a bit more friendly to each other.

In conclusion, a fun variation, especially when getting sick and tired of fighting tooth and nail with everyone.

Own Game Settlers

The second variation our group played, which we didn't get very far in, was the professor's "own game" variant. The idea is, everyone gets the same tiles, harbors, and similar numbers, and creates their own board. The dice rolls still give everyone production, and trading is still allowed, but the for the most part, the players don't interact with each other. We didn't get very far.

It is an interesting game, but I think eventually the best setup can be found, and then it's just a game of chance. We didn't have enough time to really explore the game, but it hadn't been play tested much, so there was a small problem with the harbors. I think it could be fun; I'd like to finish a game.

In conclusion, a variation relatively fun early on, but a longer playthrough is needed to get a real sense of the game.