The Four Islands

Hello, Me again, and last night at 8:00 PM, I started a new game of The Settlers of Catan.  This was the Four Islands scenario of Seafarers, nothing special except for that.  We used the variable set-up.  I should introduce the players that usually play, shouldn't I?

I can't guarantee that they're the only players, but here they are:

There are my parents (mother and father, of course).

My sister also plays from time to time, and sometimes, my friends, Matthew and Nathan play.

Anyway, this was a four-player game with my parents and sister.  I was white, my sister was red, my father was orange, and my mother was blue.  That is, those are the colors of pieces they used.  We weren't painted red, orange, white, and blue!

Here was the board after set-up:

I was first to build a settlement, and also first to settle on a new island.  I blocked my mother's first settlement on a new island:

And got a grain port.  All this time, my father and sister were having a battle over the longest road.  I did not have a 4 or a 10 to get resources from, unfortunately, and 4 was getting rolled a lot.  That must have been my downfall.  Everything else, though, other than 2 and 12 (and, of course, 7), I got resources for!  My sister managed to win with a settlement, a city, and two settlements on new islands:

She really surprised me!  I wasn't expecting the sudden competition!

Ah, well, there are worse things!

You might notice I haven't talked about Traders and Barbarians.  It's basically a jumble of slight rule changes and scenarios that can be played.  I don't have it, but I know about it.  That's why I haven't blabbered on about it yet.

The Cities and the Knights

Ooooooookay, you want to know about the Cities and Knights expansions?  Here you go:

So many things, where to start?  Ah, yes, for the set-up phase, when you're first setting up, when you build your second settlement, you put down a city instead.  Therefore, you start with 3 victory points instead of the usual 2!

Instead of a building cost card to tell you what resources you need to do things, you have a new development flip chart.  Now what is a development flip chart, you may ask?  You can flip it with commodities (more on that later).  On your turn, there's a third die to roll.  If the barbarian ship is rolled, move the barbarian ship on the barbarian tile one space forward.  When they reach catan (every seven barbarian rolls), good or bad things happen, depending on the knights.  More on that later, too.

If it comes up yellow, green, or blue, you look at the corresponding flippity-flippity thing on your development flip chart, and compare the red die numbers shown there with the one on the red die.  If they match, you draw a progress card of the same color as the one on the third die!  (Progress cards replace development cards in this game.  No development cards.  (Sorry!)  All of this is done before you receive resources.

Now, receiving resources.  For a settlement, it's done the same way as in regular Settlers.  However, it's done differently for cities.  Well, it's done the same for fields (grain) and hills (brick).  For the other three, forest (lumber), pasture (wool), and mountains (ore), you get one resource produced by that hex and one commodity: paper, cloth, and coin, respectively.  You use them to flip the development flip chart.  Yes, I'm about to get to those, so hang on.  If you're playing Seafarers in addition to Cities and Knights, you cannot receive commodity cards for gold field hexes.

There are new things you can build.  You can build a city wall for two brick, putting one of the squares underneath one of your cities and increasing lethal capacity by 2 cards.  (Lethal capacity is the maximum number of cards you can have for a 7 without having to discard any.  Yes, I made up the term.)  They help protect you against the barbarians, which I'll get to later.  Postponing a bunch of things.

You can also build knights, which have actions that I'll get to.  I'm doing this in the same order as the rulebook, by the way, so that's why I'm getting to things later.  You put them in places just like settlements, though they don't have to not be adjacent to anything.  You can have two knights right next to each other, or a knight and a settlement.  Building or promoting a knight takes a wool and an ore.  If you promote a knight, you replace it with the kind of knight with one more ring around it.  The two-ring one can't be promoted to a three-ring one unless you've flipped enough coin (YES, I'M ABOUT TO GET TO THAT, JUST HANG ON!), and knights with three rings cannot be promoted.  You wonder why knights get promoted?  You'll have to wait to hear about their actions and the barbarian army.  Activating them so they can do things costs a grain.  Flip them to the colored side.

Okay, the flippity-flipping.  They look just like resources from the back, and all rules applying to resources also apply to commodities.  For instance, the robber can steal them (though the stealer still must blind-draw, they cannot ask specifically for a resource or a commodity), and you can trade them and for them exactly like resources.  However, if something, such as a progress card, says "resource", then it means resource, not commodity, and if it says "commodity", it means commodity, not resource.

So flipping.  In each color of your development flip chart, there are some commodities that you can build something with.  You pay the commodities, and then flip that section of the flip chart down.  Now you have revealed another section, which lets you get progress cards for more rolls and requires one more commodity to flip.  Once you've gotten to the part where you pay three commodities, you get a special ability.  For coin, you can upgrade knights with two rings to knights with three rings.  For cloth, you can trade any two commodities for any one resource or commodity.  It basically gives you all three commodity harbors (not that there are any commodity harbors).  And for paper (This one I highly recommend focusing on unless you collect resources for almost every roll already), if, when the dice are rolled, a 7 wasn't rolled, and you normally wouldn't collect resources or commodities for the roll, you may take any one RESOURCE of your choice!  Great!

Ah, the metropoli!  The next time you flip, assuming no one has gotten it yet, you get a metropolis of the color you just flipped.  There's one metropolis of each color, so don't panic if someone has already gotten a metropolis of a different color.  Well, all of the metropoli are yellow, but they each have a corresponding colored token that's colored the color of the metropolis.  You put the metropolis on one of your cities, and the colored token goes on your development flip chart.  The metropolis is immune to the barbarian army, and is worth 2 extra victory points, in addition to the 2 provided by its city.  However, if someone gets the last flip on their development flip chart before you do, they get your metropolis.  Yes, the barbarians can destroy cities.  YES, I'm getting to that!  Just wait until I've talked about what knights can do!

So, progress cards.  Unlike development cards, you can play any number of them on your turn, and on the turn you get them.  With the exception of the green alchemist card, they are played on your turn after you roll the die.  You might want to consider playing your cards if anyone has blue cards, as the blue spy card lets you look at an opponent's hand of progress cards and steal two.  You CANNOT trade progress cards or steal them with the robber.  If you draw a fifth progress card after you have four, you discard one.  If you draw a victory point card, you must play it immediately.  Some game-changing progress card include the green alchemist, which lets you decide what the dice will roll on your turn, the green inventor, which lets you swap any two number tokens on the board besides 6, 8, 2, and 12, the blue deserter, which lets you steal an opponent's knight, the blue saboteur, which forces everyone tied with you or ahead to discard half their cards, the blur spy, which lets you steal an opponent's progress card, and the yellow master merchant, which lets you steal any two resource or commodity cards from any player with more victory points than you.

So what can knights do?  You can deactivate them to perform one of three actions, though you cannot do this the turn you activate them.  You can move it to another spot along the road it's on (or trade route, in Seafarers).  If you have a road to an opponent's knight of inferior (lower, not the same) power to yours, you can force it to move to a spot along your opponent's road (or trade route) adjacent to the one it's on, and move your knight to where it used to be.  Finally, you can chase away the robber (or pirate, if you're playing Seafarers) to another hex of your choice and steal like normal.

There is one other thing that knights can do.  They can defend Catan from the barbarian army.  When the barbarians reach catan, count the number of cities on board.  (A city with a metropolis still counts as one.)  That number is the strength of the barbarians.  Now add up the rings of the knights on board.  That is, a one-ring adds one to the total, a two-ring adds two, and so on.  This number is the defenders' strength.  If the barbarians are stronger, whoever contributed the least to the defenders' strength loses a city or city wall, or whoever tied for contributing the least.  If the defenders are stronger or equally strong, whoever contributed the most gets a Defender of Catan victory point card.  If more than one person ties, everyone who ties draws a progress card.  Either way, the barbarians go back and all knights are deactivated.  If the barbarians pillage your last city, you cannot flip your development flip chart until you have a city.

Ah, yes, the merchant.  One of the yellow progress cards lets you move the merchant.  He basically gives you the 2:1 port of your choice, as long as you can get that resource and no one steals it with another merchant card.  He's also worth a victory point.

This game is played to thirteen victory points.

Whew, that was a lot.  A LOT!

The Seafarers of Catan

Hello, Me again.

Now I want to talk about the Seafarers expansion for The Settlers of Catan.

As before, normally, a random setup is used.  There are preconstructed scenarios that you can use, however.

Here are the differences:

You can build a ship (a wool and a lumber) like a road, but it goes across water.  On a shipping route, you can move a ship that has nothing attached to one end to anywhere along that shipping route.  You can do this once per turn.

Depending on the scenario, you can get different amounts of victory points for settling on new islands that you haven't settled on before.  For instance, in the "heading for new shores" scenario, you can get two victory points for each new island you settle on.

All rules that apply for roads also apply for ships.

There is a new gold field hex that will produce any resource.  If you receive multiple resources for one gold field, they do not have to be the same resource.

And then, there is the dreaded pirate.  The pirate acts just like the robber, but he goes onto sea hexes, and instead of blocking resource production for a hex, blocks ship production on that hex.  You cannot move ships onto that hex, you cannot move ships off of that hex, and you cannot build ships on that hex.

The specific scenarios have too much variability to describe, so I'll let you look at the rulebooks to see all of the scenarios!

Yes, the Seafarers expansion is fun, as all of them are.

Intro

Hello, my name is Me, and I should warn you that I love this game (which is called The Settlers of Catan)! It consists of a core game with several expansions.  Yes, I would highly recommend it.

I'll describe each game progressively, though not all in the same post.  Here's the first.

The Settlers of Catan, the core game, is essentially a game of collecting the resources of lumber, wool, grain, brick, and ore to expand your empire.  You need to build roads (a brick and a lumber) to get to spots to build settlements (a brick, a lumber, a wool, and a grain), which will provide you with more resources.  Development cards (a wool, a grain, and an ore) let you do things such as build two roads, or steal all of a particular resource in circulation.  Settlements can be upgraded into cities, which produce twice the resources they normally would.

You can also build settlements on ports so you can trade resources with the bank.

Settlements are worth one victory point each, while cities are worth two.  The first person to get to ten wins!

I should warn you about the robber.  It can block your production of one resource, but can be chased away by knight cards, which also increase the size of your army.

The person with the longest road gets two extra victory points, while the person with the largest army also gets two victory points.

The setup of the board will always be different, though the shape and size are the same.  You never know what to expect in this game (though wool usually seems to be common for some reason)!