Harrowed Halls

One of the great things about playing games with the same guys every week is the banter around the table during the game. This week was no exception as we enjoyed a lot of joking around the table—mostly about how badly we were all playing. As you’ll see, Owen was the only exception. Oh, he joked all right, but his play was far from bad.

Ben had recently completed the final updates to the giant Settlers of Catan set he made, so we decided to play that this week. It looks really cool! We played two games on it. Owen dominated both games. He also started both games. I don’t think there is any significance there, but you never know. His starting position was the best on the board in both games. Usually our Settlers games are pretty close with several players being close to winning at the end of the game. This was certainly not the case this week as we all struggled to stay up with Owen. Ben is still on his wild win/lose gaming streak–meaning that if he doesn’t win the game, he usually ends up dead last. (He did tied for last place in the second game though, so maybe things are looking up for him.)

As always we had a great time.

Chaos Steve

Last night we played Settlers of Catan, but we played it on a one-of-a-kind super board made by our own Ben Hodgson. Although we certainly gave Ben a hard time about this or that during the game–as we always do—he really did a nice job on the game board pieces. And he’s already talking about future changes he can make to it to improve it.

At the start of our game Owen said something extremely clever (as he usually does.) Mike said for me to be sure to remember it for today’s write-up. Mike said to write it down so I wouldn’t forget it. Mike said he’d even provide the pen and paper to write it down. Well Mike said a lot of things and after a while all I heard were dolphin clicks. On the other hand, you should have heard what Owen said; it was great–very funny.

First I’ll tell you how the game ended. Ben won. And had he not won on his turn, Owen would have won. And had Owen not won on his turn, I would have won. And had I not won on my turn, Mike would have won. That shows you just how close the game was. Looking back over the game, Mike and Ben were rich in Resource Cards throughout the game. I though Mike was going to announce a win many times over, but apparently he had no luck picking up any Development Cards with victory points on them. And he picked up A LOT of Development Cards. Mike’s starting position caused him to be a little hemmed in too. Still, he did amazingly well. Owen suffered from some bad luck as far as Resource Cards were concerned. His hand continually waxed and waned. I was Resource Card poor. Where I should have been drowning in bricks to feed to my 2:1 port, it was not to be.

I’ll leave with a little Ben-wisdom. (Boy, you don’t see that often: “Ben” and “wisdom” used in the same sentence.)

“Wood is like gold dust.”
                –Ben Hodgson

 

By Chaos Steve