Review: Settlers of Catan

Friday night saw the arrival of rainclouds and guests. Mike’s Mom and sister arrived at the house as Samantha is in town looking for wedding dresses over the next few days. While one may think this is an exciting venture, Sam has referred to it as “somewhat discouraging”. Let’s send her some good luck vibes for the remainder of the week!

I headed to the bus station Friday night to pick up Philipp who was coming in from Montreal. Unfortunately for me, his cellphone was broken so he didn’t get the message that I was going to be there waiting for him and he ended up getting off at the University of Ottawa and taking a bus to Carrie’s place. Doh! I saw some interesting characters around the bus station for that hour, along with a girl who needed to get to Toronto after her boyfriend kicked her out that morning. I don’t know if any of that was true, but I gave her 5 bucks. However, in hindsight, I should have recommended she look at a ride board at the University as you can usually find people going to Toronto for $20 (instead of whatever a bus ride costs).

After having some excellent low cholesterol spaghetti and having Carrie’s mom jump on the opportunity to tell me how to lower my cholesterol (although, I must admit I disappointed her after telling her what I eat every day!), we settled in to play some Settlers of Catan (or Seafarers of Catan…which is a different version).

Now, years ago, Carrie’s family tried to teach me this game and I didn’t grasp it and it left a sour taste in my mouth and I never wanted anything to do with it again.

Years later, here I am wanting to give it another chance. I had an excellent teacher with Ken explaining things along the way and I’m proud to say that I think I did pretty good for my first time out. Clearly, I need to think strategically in the future but whatever…it was a good game to play.

Oh! I should describe the game for those readers not ‘in the know’. Essentially, the board the players settle onto some land. So in order to build a settlement, you need to have a certain combination of cards – like one lamb card, one wood card, and one brick card. To accumulate cards, you have to be settled next to a piece of land and each piece of land has a number associated to it. Let’s say you are positioned between two pieces of land – one with lamb on it, and one with wood and the one with lamb has the number 6 on it. If any player rolls a six, you get a lamb card. So over time, you accumulate cards, which in turn, you may spend to build more settlements, or you can trade them with other players to get what you want. There’s other logistics to the game, but essentially every settlement is worth some points and the game goes up to a certain maximum.

Anything you have to put effort into ends up being a good thing in the end, much like Settlers of Catan.

I know there is a faithful following of this board game out there in Palmer’s World fan-land. Hopefully I can come play with you soon!