The Old and the New

I didn't have karaoke to worry about today, so I invited Sarah over to play games with us. Darrin was busy in his mid work/sleep schedule. After picking up a new fan and cleaning up a bit, Sarah showed up. We played one we use to play before all the other games got in the way:

Settlers of Catan, The 3-6 players
The standard game of the new generation. It's the game one sees in news articles and I think, "Where have you been if this is news worthy? I mean, this game came out in 1995." When people know you're not playing Monopoly or Risk they jump to this next. It's the game that most people would call their gateway game. And it is a great gateway game. You roll dice to gain resources and make trades with the other players to get what you need to build settlements, cities, and roads. It doesn't come out as often as it used to, but I wouldn't say we've played it to death as some others might do. I've only ever played the main game, but I did get the 5-6 player expansion.

This was a very close game. It was pretty slow at first with no one able to make a move for a while other than building roads. Each of us was able to build another settlement. Then things get intense. I grabbed longest road and was able to set up a trade route on the coast. Sarah had massive ore production with a 2:1 trade route on it. This allowed her to grab development cards nearly every turn. Liz was also able to set up a trade route and was sneaking up on me for longest road. The longest road race went on for a while, causing both of us to waste resources and ignore Sarah who had, by now, built the largest army. I was eventually able to get just the right resources and not have them frittered away by a robber allowing me to make a settlement getting me 10 points for the win.

I wanted to mention a few other things about this game on the grander scale. They have recently changed it's name to just Catan for the 5th print run. I think this is stupid since most people call it Settlers, but I guess they have their reasons. Also, there was a short film made called The Lords of Catan about a couple who gets really into this game. It looks great, It isn't available to own yet, but it should be coming near the end of this year. I've pre-order it.

We played a quick game of Blueprints before going and getting food. Sarah was winning after the first round. We all paid close attention to what dice people we grabbing after that. I was able to nab the top spot ever round (once in a three-way tie) getting me gold every round. Since I was able to finally earn bonus point I secured the lead and won.

Keyflower 2-6 players

This is the one game I owned before this started that I had never played before. Or at least the only one I wanted to play. I got it for Xmas and just hadn't found the right time to get it on the table and teach it. In this game, meeples count as money and workers. They are used to bid on hexagonal tiles that are added to your town and also used to gain resources from the said tiles. Each color of meeple is its own currency, meaning you can only be outbid by the same color of meeple. If you use them for gaining resources, then others can only get resource from there too if they have the same color meeple as you started with it. After 4 seasons of bidding, the person to earn the most points wins. It seemed like a very diverse bidding game and I was willing to make room for it in my closet.

We started out real slow. As slow as it gets. I read the rules. It hurts me to saw that. I hate reading the rule book aloud. I'm usually prepared and know most everything about the game. Again, I had never played the game and the last time I read the rules was Christmas. I eventually trudged my way through the rules. The girls got their brains scrabbled a bit listening to it. I thanked them many times along the way for putting up with it and I have to admit that they did their damnedest to say focused and not throw in the towel.

Once we got started, we all felt pretty comfortable on how the rules worked, but none of us had any semblance of a strategy. We all knew for a first play that was fine, so we didn't really complain about it. As the season went by, our towns and populations grew. Our towns took on characters. Liz had the resort town where you could drink, smoke, sleep, and take a boat ride. Sarah had the blue collar town full of hard working blacksmiths and the likes. I had the high society town with jewelers, sculptors, and a cathedral. By the end, we were all having a lot of fun and knew what we needed to do. We each had our own worry about what we might miss out on from another players move. It was tense, a good tense. When the points got counted I was on top again. I'm very much looking forward to playing this again.

Tally: 56/152  Bonus: 13/50