A Night of Catan: Seafarers

We've been playing Catan for quite a few months now, nearly every weekend. With the addition of another roomate in the house, we have the ability to play Catan nearly at will (we've never tried two player). So a few Friday's ago, the three of us found ourselves playing the vanilla game of Catan. Red was cleaning up in a serious way, taking all three games. The second game was a farce, perhaps my worst. Myself (Green) and Brown left the board open to Red: we both seemed to bet on six, which just wasn't coming up. It was a slow burn, but Red finally took the win and we moved onto another game where Red cleaned up again.

The following night, we decided to try the Seafarers expansion. With just a few different rules, the game felt oddly foreign. Your typical strategy is not welcome here. Indeed, you have a main, small island surrounded by three even smaller islands. When you get to another island, your first settlement is awarded with two extra victory points in addition to the regular points for that build. You play to fourteen points instead of the typical ten.

With the condensed main island competition was a bit more fierce, as we believed we would run into each other. But instead, we all tried shooting out to the sea, which involved building settlements on unprofitable coastlines. It also meant that we were using sheep much more than we were used to. And all of a sudden the game become balanced in an interesting way: all your resources are precious, and there are more avenues to success. I found that this turned everyone into hoarders, with very little trading going on. It also opened to the door to the robber taking your extra cards more often, and the few trades that did happen were ludicrous (two or three to one trades).

Our first Seafarers game is pictured above, with red taking a victory. I was glad to see the pirate ship get moved around a bit. Myself (Orange here) started with my typical strategy of trying to get all resources accounted for, regardless of how terrible the numbers are. Again, this proves to be my undoing, and I wasn't able to secure brick at all. Normally this would be fine, but with three players and an unwillingness to trade, it proved difficult to secure. My game was pretty much over from the start, but I was able to get into a ship building routine later on. Red had excellent first placement, taking both a common wood and sheep, which allowed for boat building and quick island expansion. All of a sudden those simple settlements become incredibly valuable with those special victory points.

The second game, above, displays my own victory (which feel fairly uncommon). Unfortunately Red made a mistake due to new rules, and got a bit of a slower start than the rest of us. This game, we strayed off the predesigned board and randomly placed both terrain and numbers. Even though I didn't have first placement, I secured two rather ideal spots: one in the northern section, where I sat on both wood and sheep - both were 9. Every time nine was rolled, I was secured a boat, so it was important to get onto the sea. It was a bit harder though, as the robber was very active and prevented my rolls. It was a good thing then, that I lay on an ore (6), which proved bountiful and useful with the 3:1 trade.

What I like about the board above was Ten Island. In our Catan circle, it feels like tens are rolled quite often, and to see two tens appear on an island of their own made the venture there very attractive. If you see, the other ten belongs to Red, which produced four wheat on each roll. We all seemed to learn from our first game as well, and stayed toward the coastline where we could easily go to see. Another noteworthy tactic here was Blue going to the gold mine on 6. It came up often, and he was able to secure any two resources he wanted whenever it was rolled. Unfortunately for him, victory was just out of reach.

The third game, above, saw us try a different scenario. In this case, you could start on any of the four islands, and gain special victory points for expanding to foreign islands. The style of gaming here was so different: a couple of us started on our own islands without interference. Robber placement was incredibly difficult and personal. My initial placement on the south east island proved to be a mistake, as building in the area was early and busy, blocking me from making a long route to my other island. Once I focused on typical island life, I had more success, but by then it was too late. Red and Blue fought for longest route, with Red ultimately building five roads at once to finish it off and secure a win. Red was able to secure quite a few ports and with the robber barely moving, accumulated a wealth of cards that saw unprecedented construction. An incredibly interesting board layout, it brought fresh gameplay, new strategies and generally, a lot of fun.