Wargame Night 02-11

On February 12th, Wayne, Tim, Bob and myself got together for a game of Settlers: Cities and Knights. The colors were assigned as follows:

White - Tim

Orange - Bob

Red - Bruce

Blue - Wayne

The last time we played this game Bob was still smarting from the barbarians in which he had lost his city to fire, rape and pillage. He also lost the game as well but he did get the honored title of "Defender of Cataan" which is still to this day solely his own.

In this game, Wayne was introduced to Settlers and as always was able to pick up the rules rather quickly and put on a good showing for a novice.

Unfortunately, Wayne was getting picked on by me and Tim when we sent the robber to thieve his supplies of goods. Which is why it's always good to have a few knights on hand to chase the thief away.

Both Tim and I started out strong and were able to maintain a sizable lead from Bob and Wayne. As time went on Bob became more desperate.

Bob was locked out from better positions on the board and after suffering another city being pillaged by the barbarians tried a "non-city" strategy of simply building only humble hamlets and building the longest road. He also kept to a coastal development policy by only building along the outer edge of the board. Quite funny really and after several rounds reluctantly came to the conclusion that he couldn't win the game by this method. As you may not know, cities are worth 2 points, metropolis' 2 points and settlements are worth a mere 1 point. In order to win the game, you must build enough cities and settlements to equal 13 points. The longest road gets you 2 points as well. However, you are limited to just 5 settlements and if you do the math then you would be hard pressed to get to 13 points on just a settlement strategy. Seems obvious now but when times are bad then you'll do crazy things you wouldn't think you are capable of doing during better times. Or something like that!

As the game came to a close both Tim and I were well positioned but only one of us could win. Wayne had hired a merchant (worth 1 victory point) and assigned him to one of his cities. As it stood, I was at 12 pts and only needed to move Waynes merchant to one of my cities and get one victory point for the merchant to win the game. However, Tim with the luck of the Irish, at the last minute was able to take Wayne's merchant before I could and won the game with most cities, metropolos', and victory cards. The final score was Tim (13pts), Bruce(12pts), Bob(6pts) and Wayne(6pts).