It only took us seven years

A few days ago I realized that we have been playing Settlers of Catan for almost seven years. For the most part, we have been playing relatively by the book games (though with a few minor variants). Finally, last night, we really mixed things up, at least in terms of board layout.

Last night Peter came over for dinner and to play a few games of Settlers. As all of us (including Rebecca) were here along with Peter it meant that we had 7 potential Settlers players. For the first game the problem was solved by my mother bowing out (she had something she needed to do).

By the time we were ready to play the second game she had returned. We decided to solve our problem by adding a few hexes and making a modified, larger board. The board we ended up with can be seen here.



As those of you who are familiar with Settlers can see, we added a few gold hexes to the middle, as well as a few ocean and desert hexes. The idea was to make something somewhat tempting, but that would require a relatively substantial commitment to reach.

Not surprisingly, the board wasn't a particular success. The main portion of the island, the area that ringed the gold, desert, and ocean hexes, was a little too thin to be fun.

For the third game of the night, a five player game, we decided to go with a triangle shaped board with a desert in the centre and gold at the corners. Peter, though he regretted it immediately, suggested that we place a desert in the middle (it turned into a mountain).




For the most part, I think that this shape was generally considered acceptable. It was certainly better than our first modified board of the night.

The other modification was that we played with last night was the "Super-Friendly Robber" rule, a modification of the "Friendly Robber" rule. In this instance the robber doubles production on hex on which it is located. Furthermore, when the robber is removed from a hex those with cities or settlements adjacent to the hex get a card of their choosing (as compensation for the loss of the robber). The goal of this rule modification is to up production, and the speed of the game. Though I am not sure that this was well received universally, I do think that it is a generally good rule modification that improves game play. For those of you that are curious, sevens still mean discarding half of your if you have more than seven. My recollection is that we decided that the person who rolled the seven would not get to steal from another player.

Now that we have broken a few of our own traditions I think we might be a little more inclined to mess with the board and rules during the rest of our visit home (and then a little more once we return to Halifax).