I've
already posted about, and counted, the standard game of
Settlers of Catan. We do have two copies, however, and we use them in tandem to play
Double Catan. I mentioned in my earlier post on
Settlers of Catan, that though this game is a modern classic that generally plays really well it has what seems to me one major flaw, and that is that a player can get absolutely stuck - unable to get resources, unable to get other people to trade with them - and then that person just sits there for 60 to 90 minutes frustrated and bored to death. That's not to say that that happens often, but it happened enough that I was kind of turned off to the game for a while. I find that
Double Catan gets around that possibility by and large.
In Double Catan you set up two boards and have two to four players per board. Each player has a counterpart at the other board. When any player rolls 2 or 12, that player and his counterpart switch places. This keeps things pretty lively, as you then have to survey a new set-up and try to move forward from where your counterpart was developing, as you also leave your work to your counterpart on your previous board. It's actually strangely addicting. We played this four or five years ago at a family reunion, and my dad who is neither a gamer nor a night owl stayed up until past midnight playing multiple rounds of this. If I remember correctly, we played 5 games back-to-back. We just could not stop.
This is the first time we've used this game room since Ocean has been to our house, so she and Jacob took some time to check out the tapestry that our artist friend Tom painted for us. It's with good reason that they have a magnifying glass as they do so. For example, in the photo below my husband and I are painted standing on the dock of the cottage across the river. Tom painted our facial features using a single-hair brush! The figures in the foreground are our 3 sons and our daughter-in-law Brianna.
OK, back to the game. The picture below is of our original set, which I like far better than the newer version.
Below is the newer version, which just seems harder on the eyes to me. The hexes above seem a bit clearer, especially the brick hexes, and I like that the ocean tiles are separate hexes and don't lock together like puzzle pieces.
David and Caleb were counterparts, and they were playing blue. Jacob and Ocean played as one, and I was their counterpart, and we played white. Here we are laying out our initial two settlements and our first two roads.
You can see below that both teams have rolled either a 2 or a 12, as Jacob, Ocean and Caleb are now at the old copy of the game, and David and I are at the new copy.
I was really hoping David would roll a 7 so he would have to discard half his humongous hand! But he didn't.
It was frustrating playing this board. I had much better position on the other. When Ocean and Jacob were here, they were able to build a settlement between two segments of Caleb's road. There was a huge fight going on for the wheat port (just off the bottom of the picture), and Caleb still made it there first. Not only that, but the robber is on my brick source, and brick always seems to be hard to get!
David and Caleb did pull off the win, so congrats to them! Below I've just included some pictures of resource cards, the building cost reference card, and the victory point cards. The picture at the bottom of this post is of some of the development cards. It really is a good game - a modern classic. I sure like this twist on it, though!
Comments
Post a Comment