Catan

[epi_lj]

Okay, so most board gamers have some kind of opinion on the Catan franchise. It's the game that seems to set some people into an addictive fire from which they never emerge and which other people look upon with great disdain

Comments

[kimmekepunk]

I really like playing Catan, but not the base game, I prefer Cities and knights

[epi_lj]

The "placing two settlements in a row" thing did seem to be a big advantage, because they're the only player who can completely coordinate their two placements, with no possible interference from the other players. Then again, that advantage might be compensation for the disadvantage of having to pick placements after most or all of the good spots were taken.

[anyeone]

I haven't played C&K though I have played pretty much all the other Catan games and luck definitely has a factor in all of them. The one that luck hurts the most of the others is Starfarers - there is one event card that sends the player to the other side of the map, giving them a huge advantage over players who have to fly there.

And of course if your die rolls are statistically bad, you can have a crappy game also. That said, I've never not enjoyed a Catan game due to having bad luck.

Another series where luck ends up being a big issue is the crayon rails/Empire Builder games. The last two games I have played of one of these, an event card caused the leader to lose a turn (or a load) right near the end and allowed another player to squeak ahead. Again, that doesn't necessarily make me enjoy the game less, but it does make me the victory is somewhat less meaningful. Luckily, it isn't about the victory for me :)

[epi_lj]

I've seen some very good alternate rulesets for the crayon rails games. Most of them as part of their base conditions throw out all the events other than taxation. Another one that can really help is the "everyone locks loads from an open market" style of play. (I can dig up links to that ruleset if you want.) There's still luck in it, but it mitigates it a bit (while also rendering them more directly competitive).

I agree that it's not always about victory, which is the best approach. :) I'm actually far less likely to worry about luck if I lose. But I always feel a little bad if I win because I got really lucky where another player who I think was playing much better than I was lost because of unfortunate die rolls.

[anyeone]

I prefer the open market card drafting rules too, although I had forgotten to print them out to bring with me the other night :) Definitely will do that next time because it does reduce the "multi-player solitaire" aspects of the game.

[aseop_]

I've played Catan a lot, and it is a very popular intro game with people new to eurogames. Easy to learn, with lots of strategy, and yet a decent amount of luck to keep things exciting. I like how the probabilities make you think, even if the random dice only produce a general bell curve, with some outlying numbers

[dougo]

Some games will be decided by luck, but in my experience most games are about good trading and good purchasing decisions. Putting cities around a few hexes is a strong strategy (probably not as much of a long shot as you think), but it's susceptible to being blocked by the robber.

[epi_lj]

The thing I found with the Robber is that as long as your big cash crop was wheat, it was more of an annoyance than a real blocker. Every time someone "robbered" me, I just ejected the robber on the following turn with a knight. (I imagine this is particular to the C&K expansion.) At first I'd toss it back at the person who hit me with it, but that ended up being a spiral of "I'll get you and your little dog too!" vengeance, so then I just tossed it back in the desert. We only rolled one seven the entire game, so it was a non-issue at that point.

[reediewes]

Whenever my family plays with the robber we end up using it for extortion: "I'll put it on this undeveloped hex over here if you each give me a sheep."

[ravenblack]

I haven't played Cities and Knights, but my opinion of the base game is that it can boil down to luck, but more often it boils down to a thing that annoys me much more - kingmaker and/or ruiner conclusions. You can play the odds all you like, you can make good trading decisions all you like, but at some point in the game someone will be ahead and will enter the boycott zone - you are winning too much, nobody will trade with you, and everyone will do what they can to slow you down. So no matter how well you play, you will pretty much never be able to get a landslide victory, and, in the end, it will boil down to luck, not because the whole game boils down to luck but because the last couple of points must go to the person who gets the lucky dice at the end of the game, when nobody is willing to trade to anyone else. Which means all the game up to that point retroactively feels pretty pointless

[epi_lj]

That was actually where I felt like it turned to just luck -- at some point everyone decided that they would simply not trade with me at all and everybody was playing against just me, but that was also the point where I just kept generating four wheat every single production roll, which was giving me enough that I could convert my cards into anything I wanted without needing anyone's help. That seemed a little ridiculous to me.