I wasn’t going to make a post this week since I didn’t have
anything particularly exciting to write about, but then I thought: wait, this
blog is also about current events! So I’m going to take some time to talk about
the Conservative Party scandal involving former conservative senator Mike Duffy…
Just kidding! I’m sure everyone has heard that subject to
death in the news over the last two weeks, although information is still
leaking out. Apparently Duffy was trying to use his influence as a senator to
get him more perks as early as six months into an appointment!
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| It figures that a journalist who got their start covering political corruption cases would end up messed up in all this. It's like the circle of political life! |
No, in this edition I am going to talk about the grandfather
of all Eurogames: The Settlers of Catan. This game can be credited with
kickstarting the new golden age of board gaming that we are all currently enjoying
as we speak. With its arrival on North American shores in the mid 2000’s (The
game itself came out in 1997) it revolutionized the way people thought of
games. Up until that point the most popular kind of games had been western style
war games such as Risk or the classic Milton Bradley/Parker Brothers games such
as Monopoly, Clue, Sorry or the like. In any case, these games focused on
competition where players could be knocked out of the game and the first person
to the top won. In contrast, Eurogames tended to focus on softer competition
with everyone being able to play until a time limit was reached or someone met
a predetermined objective.
Settlers of Catan was one of the first of the popular
Eurogames to arrive in North America, and its easy to learn game design drove
its popularity as a ‘gateway game’ (that is a game that is relatively easy to
learn and can be used as a springboard to introduce more complicated games). Don’t
let the easy of play fool you though, Catan has an underlying complexity that
gives it staying power in the world of gaming, once you know how to play there
are many ways to go about mastering its component mechanics.
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| I can not emphasize enough that the wood for sheep/wood for anything joke never gets old. |
The Settlers of Catan starts out with a simple premise, you
have landed on an unexplored island (or continent depending on your
visualization) and everyone is scrambling to establish villages to exploit the
abundant natural resources located here. The core mechanic is that you can’t
build too close to your neighbours, and after your initial placement, you need
to connect new villages to existing ones using roads, this makes both initial placement
and road building very important.
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| It's also a good way to exercise your imagination! Because I'll be damned if that looks like any sort of landmass that makes sense! |
To start the game, everyone determines turn order, once that
is done; players take turns placing their initial villages on the board,
starting with the first player. Villages are built on the intersections of
tiles, and players trying to maximize the number of resources they are getting
(or not, depending on the play style). The last player isn’t entirely snubbed
however, as they get the first placement of the second round, so placement
order goes 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 4th,
3rd, 2nd, 1st. So while player 1 gets the best
of the first picks, he also gets the last of the second pick.
Players build things with resources, of which there are
five: Ore, Brick, Wood, Sheep and Wheat. These resources are connected to tiles
which have numbers on them. Each turn the dice is rolled first thing, and whoever
has a settlement on the tile rolled gets the corresponding resource. Players
can trade resources with each other and players spend turns building roads,
villages and upgrading to cities to gain victory points, hoping to gather 10 to
win the game. There are also development cards that can help turn the tide or
create a quirky effect that changes up the game a bit. In either case, they are
unlikely to win the game for you (unless you have an elusive 1 VP card!).
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| These cards have ruined many a friendship, or at least caused the game to boil down to an argument of 'DON'T TRADE WITH THEM, THEY'VE GOT 8 VICTORY POINTS AND AN UNKNOWN DEVELOPMENT CARD, IT COULD BE ANYTHING! EVEN A VICTORY POINT, ESPECIALLY A VICTORY POINT! |
It isn’t just about stockpiling resources and grinding your
way to victory though. There is also a robber who comes to steal your resources
on a roll of 7. If you have too many resources you’ll have to discard half and
if he winds up on your turf the person who moves them also gets to steal one of
your resources! There are also ways to get a quick boost in points such as
having the longest road or the largest army (Where armies consist of knights
and knights are a type of development card).
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| In some editions this piece is black, which brings up uncomfortable undertones of racism. What is really the point though, is no matter what colour it is, this is the piece that is going to steal that one wheat you needed to build a city and win the game, and you will hate them for it. |
In either case, it’s a fun game and I encourage everyone out
there to give it a shot. I’m sure if you ask around you’ll find that someone
you know (or someone that they know)
will own a copy. It’s a great game even if you aren’t that enamoured with the
rest of the boarded crew.
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