Settle this, y'all!

Game night rolled around, and because I haven't complained about it enough, we ended up not playing Forgotten Realms, argh, haha! So we poked around a bit in the game room, I think sometimes it's a curse having quite so many options to choose from. We opted away from minis though and Ray pulled this one off the shelf, good ole Settlers of Catan. Holy crap, it's my own game and I've barely scratched its surface before now. It kicks so much arse it's not even funny. We whipped it out, fumbled through the first few turns, then we're rolling. It was a good night, there was some Michelob and Yuengling, we thoroughly trash talked one another, and listened to the Smiths, Talking Heads, the Refused, and, if there's adult beverages present, you've gotta have Skid Row!

But I haven't talked about the game. Where to start? Well, go here to get the gist of the mechanics. You lay out some tiles to represent a vast island full of natural resources; sheep, ore, wheat, and wood. I may have left one out. Anyway, you've got a build chart that shows you how much of what kind of resource you need to make roads, settlements, cities, and the like. You can also buy up development cards which really do a lot for you, I need to take more next time. You only get resources if you have a city bordering one of the producing lands when that land's number is rolled. If you're lucky, you'll be spread out enough to have access to varied resources, if not not, you have to trade...that's where the trash talking starts! There's also a 'robber' piece, but that's a whole other story.

We got two games in and a few close calls when it came down to determining a winner, there weren't any blowouts, the game plays very well balanced. The first game I messed up and went for the win just a tad early, a turn, maybe two turns actually. The win eluded me, but it was fun nonetheless. In the second game, that nefarious Ray blocked my route to getting access to wheat early on, argh! I was dependent on trade for the rest of the game. My resources were pretty scarce to begin with too. Jon pulled the win out with game two, sneakily pulling off quite the multi-combo in the end. It was pretty impressive actually. All in all it was a good time, a really good time. I see us playing it a bit more in the future.


With Catan, it's kind of hard to have any "action" shots, lol!