Day 2 - Settlers of Catan Variations

Today was focused on Settlers of Catan and several variations made by players to the core game. My group played a regular game first just as a refresher for the basics of the game. While playing the basic game it was evident that early actions of the first few turns can set the mood or tone of the rest of the game. If you spend a lot of early game sabotaging other players then it quickly becomes a hostile environment in which players are unwilling to trade resources with each other, routes are built solely for the purpose of cutting off other players' progress, and everyone playing becomes far less accommodating when it comes to bending rules or instituting house rules. It also causes people to be more vindictive when it comes to placing the robber, operating more along feelings than strategy. 

The second game we played we used a variation involving two teams. Each team consisted of two players who were sitting on opposite sides of the table. They weren't allowed to verbally strategize with each other, they had to try and figure out each others tactics so they could either aide each other or try to not impeded each other's progress. You are also unable to trade with anyone other than your teammate and you must do a one for one blind trade and hope you successfully guess what the other player needs. We decided to tweak this variation even further so that you had to trade with your partner every turn. We also eliminated the robber and made it so that every time a seven was rolled everyone got to pick one resource of their choice to balance out the fact that trading was limited. Thus all knight cards allowed players to do was steal one resource card from another player. We actually had a lot of fun with the second game but we didn't have enough time to finish it. I may try to start that up again with some of my friends. 

Overall we discovered that the best strategies for team based variations of the game is to compliment each other on both numbers and resources. Try to settle near resources and numbers that your teammate doesn't have access to so that your team collectively is constantly gaining resources every turn. For single player variations it's a good strategy to try and pair up resources like wood and brick or wheat and ore by settling on two resources with the same number. For example every time a four is rolled you may receive both a wood and a brick so that you can power build roads. Ideally this strategy could work in team scenarios but it depends on the placement of the board and the order in which settlements are placed early game. 

Next class will be a guest panel with Greg Bush and Phil Chase. If I get to ask them a question I'll probably ask where does one start when making a game? Do you start with a theme (e.g. zombie apocalypse, frontier settlers, etc.) or with a template (e.g. deck builder, team/cooperative, party game, puzzle, etc.)?