wood for snore

ok - so catan was, back in the day, the sickness. cheap ores, slim blonde wheats, brick houses, aquedorking, banking when you got bored; you name it this game had it. however for the past 6 months or more i've been high on Carc. my iPhone4 is nothing but an odd-shaped, futuristic Carc pipe. to paraphrase the facebook movie tagline: you don't get to 500 games without making a few enemies.
so yeah - unless something drastically changes with this, like say a visit from Klaus Teuber, the Teubmeister, man of Teubstynnia or i see an actual barbarian ship in elliot bay, i don't know if the hearth fires of catan will be rekindled. the embers will likely glow for a long time to come, however.
_bleu

21 man-tan

So I was having lunch with a fellow Orange today, and we got to thinking about the feasibility of playing a full on, double board, 12 player version of Seafaring Knight Cities Catan.

And the more we thought about it, the more we loved the idea. Sure it would take FOREVER, and the rules we be a little complex, but it would be so awesome to try it. Has it ever been done before?! Did Klaus ever dream it might be be attempted?! Are we insane?! Do we care?! Am I orange?!

Who's man enough to stand against me, eh?

Going to bed now, to dream about 25 point victory and domination over the dominion.

- O.

mussolini and il reverso

i must have won again because i'm posting. it was a 3-man-tan. but here's the thing: in recent games i've made known my tactic of affecting the outcome of the game when it's clear i'm not going to win. it has been dubbed mussolini because a relative loser is forging an alliance with a powerful evil entity in hopes of riding on his/her coat tails to victory or in this case at least taking some of the credit. i didn't work for mussolini but it does work for me much to the chagrin, mockery and hatred of fellow settlers. however, with enough proof of the mussolini concept i hope to be able to use it as a means of leverage in future games. we'll see how that works.

anywizzle, in our last game i had 10 points and the other 2 players were looking pretty good. with a little method acting i convinced red to trade with me under the pretense of needing to build a barb defense which would have been point neutral and given red the other 1/2 of the metropolis he sought. 2 cloth for 2 wood -> br/wd/shp + 2 wood + merch on wood (1VP) = settlement (1VP) and chit for discovery (1VP) = 3 veep whammy which i dubbed reverso mussolini or 'il reverso' or 'il douche' since red unwittingly formed an alliance with me enabling me to chit out the needed veeps for the vic. in retrospect it wasn't really that much of an alliance but i like making words up even more than i like taunting red.

here's the overall thing: there needs to be some real incentive for catan players to continue to settle and veep up even when it's obvious that they are building roads to nowhere. mussolini is for bastards like me who like to manipulate the off board politics of the game when possible. how about some more acceptable addtions to the game that would encourage vigorous development by everyone? what would they be?

10/16/09 - Steve

Steve - 13 (HM,LR)
Rest - Close but no cigar
Mary House
Rainy as shit
Backyard is a Jungle of drips

Update: Unanimous for Rico

Update 2: Steve wants it to be known that he had the longest road (LR) and harbor master (HM); noted above as well

open source catan

after a day of 90+ degree heat, shimmering heat waves rising from long-dead grass at lakewood dgc we pulled into zayda buddies for refueling. stroh's, schlitz (both in new cans despite our 23 year old server's (obviously wisened) rebuttal) and some pizza were had. some were schlitz-faced afterwards. the white knight, sans tie, joined us and a quad-man-tan was called and confirmed. off to the red baron's condosienda.

i set the board up in an obviously contrived manner with 4 triple commodity hexes. then sort of undid that by giving each 2 strong numbers and a weak number. 2 golds were only 1 sea away from each other, a 4 and a 6: ripe for development.

i took the only good brick spot and thought i was pretty keen when i combined that with a full set of complementary hexes. it was only after the first roll that i realized that all my numbers were dupes. schlitz!

after the break i decided that green was pretty much a lock for victory given his central placement and capitalization of the 6 gold. in a stroh-ke of comedic genius i laid all of my cards face up on the table and declared the birth of 'open source catan'. there were several after-jokes and silly analogs to be drawn and we pretty much nailed all the good ones. totally unrelated but equally funny red beard pulled a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer to pass around. each of us got to wear the crown of mini green balls for a while to cool out and sober up to the fact that it was obviously over.

i was on cruise control headed towards third place. but then, a duct! and a knobber on green's gold belt and lo, 8's started piling up like fat on a hog and so did the progress cards. paper metropolis - bam! oh, what? i have 2 DoCVPs from early on?! that's 10 veeps - schlitz malt giggles - stay cool, where are the peas?!?!1!

open source catan servers went offline due to lack of donations. cards came back up into hand. one more round was all i needed because i had the merch, the diplodorcus and chode building, read: 3 points.

snottily, i declared i didn't even need to roll to win - it was all academic with mac mcgarry. cards dropped, jaws were agape, arms akimbo, hope left the building to self-immolate. later bizznipps i gotta go to a tubbie! not bad for a monday night.

_blue

Rare Sightings

As the rain clouds settled over my tiny bodega I tried to focus on the task at hand: distraction. A miss-played dreary Sunday evening can lead to soul-sucking self-reflection; often centering around that immortal question, "Why the hell must I labor in the salt mines of modern industry tomorrow morning?” A well-played Sunday is like gorging on a box of distraction chocolates.

My distraction selection was decent last night; retro-card gaming with Sir White and a stiff Ceaser to help defocus events just enough. Things were going well; but then took a turn for the better. Ms. Orange sent a telegram inquiring about the possibility of a civil game of evening Catan. After brief negotiations we Sir White, Ms. Orange and myself hashed out our terms and decided to meet up in the outdoor bungalow annex post haste.

Minutes later I was standing in the kitchen with Ms. Orange when I noticed the most bizarre sight out the back window. Unless my eyes had fully unfocused I was observing something that had never before been documented in the history of Catan. Sir White was setting up the game, un-prodded, by himself! Frankly I didn't even know he knew the game required setting up. I had thought that he considered each game an "immaculate" conception; popping into the world with no work involved. None-the-less, there he was, pondering the meaning of each piece and slowly constructing them into a respectable Catan board.

I know many of our readers will assume this sighting to be a hoax, a sham or just the ravings of a Ceaser-addled drug addict. However I submit upon the as-of-yet-not-needed grave of Klaus Tuber himself that this event did unfold. Knowing my word isn't an international currency I also took the precaution of using my photographic recording device to capture the moment:

The rest of the evening played out to my advantage as though Catan owed me a favor and was eager to repay it. Solid swing placement landed me a treasure trove of production; settlement on gold, wheat and brick, and the trifecta development city (all three commodities lapping at the shores of my city). On a hunch I for-went the need for a 6 and was rewarded with an 8 friendly night. I had not one, but two victory points handed to me via development cards. Add some quick city/settlement building and a coffin-nail harbormaster and the game was mine!

So to all of you, my faithful readers, let this be a lesson that even the most out-landish and impossible, can in fact, be possible. Reach for the stars and roll big.

-Mr. Green, Esquire

so...yeah

i'm not one to brag... well actually i am... and this is a really good time to do so. i posted some recent major victories - two in a row in fact. the 'in a row' part isn't really that big a deal. it was the manner in which things happened. in the game 2 weeks ago _red_ had 12/13 points and whiffed on the vic. the rest of us schmopeds had 8 at most. clearly the game was stained _red_. round the horn come the cup o' bones and yours truly builds a city and trades a bunch of junk for coins and metropolizes said city for 3 points (we built this city on rocks and rolls of coins playing in the background), oh woops the city is on a harbor so i'll be taking the harborbastard card as well, ahoy matey that be 5 pts for the vic. no one in the history of catan had ever done that previously that day. i immediately submitted fluids for testing which was not looked upon kindly by the other players.
this past weekend saw a similar feat of harborbastardliness for the sneak from behind vic which shouldn't have happened. i started off with crappy number diversity 4,5,6,9 only but all resources. development was pretty lackluster throughout but wham bam a city on a port later and i was cruising my skiff at 14 knots to the island of victoria.

Traders and barbs expansion beach weekend

Before heading out for presidents (not valentines) day weekend. _blue bought traders and barbs expansion after hearing about it from a brown known as gbsr. We have been rocking it all weekend in tandem with axis &allies, a fave of white. We play our own variant mixing in the knights as added strength under the mounted knights. This allows for more powerful barb expulsion and for coin city developments to retain it's awesomeness. We were worried at first about the smith card in particular but since we are so awesome and we understand the mind of teuber we were able to figure out the most equitable way to make it all work. Were the collective members of the Pacific Beach Social Club not so awesome in who they are as people the weekend would have sucked in exponential proportion. As it was the weekend was unbelievably cool. Thank you mentor and spirit animal guide Klaus Teuber.

confession

i played puerto rico over the weekend and.... liked it.... a lot.
it's not going to unseat catan as the best board game ever but it is a nice warm up or cool down from said bbge.

_blue

catan novel

i'm sure we'll find red and/or white reading the catan novel whilst playing someday. unfortunately it hasn't been translated into english yet so that may be a while. wait down we have a brown* who has a degree in german? maybe we can get him on this as a side project...



*the occasional 6th player who must play brown since all other (awesomer) colors are spoken for.

another catan blog resource

http://catanhq.blogspot.com/

not really a blog so much as a compendium of catan related stuff. this site is way more bloggy!
their tag-line is just as ostentacious as ours: "The news and information headquarters for The Settlers of Catan."

catanhq's biggest fault is that it is primarily for the standard edition aka 'catan for babies'. i know there is a lot of 'back and forth' out there in the webosphere but to quote obama "let's be clear" if you are not playing seafarers then you aren't really playing. however if you want to go to international tourneys and whatnot then stick with the baby version since it's easier and quicker.

red's latest invite

Time flies when you are waiting for BLUE to place, and before you know it, it is Friday again, and time for Catan again.

Are you up to the challenge? Are we going to blow it up (like the Challenger)? Catan you dig it? Will you bring food and beer? Will I make pigs in a blanket? (miniature hot dogs wrapped in puff pastry).

I'm waiting…..

requisites for a catan group

there are a couple of things you need to have a hard-core, authentic, dyed-in-the-wool catan group and as of today we finally have the last element. i submit for your approval:

1) one member with extensive knowledge of all things pirate as well as settler history
2) one member who is from a country close to klaus teuber's
3) one member who possesses a large table made of wood, ore (marble ok)
4) one member who is able to fashion other auxiliary or replacement catan implements from wood or ore

...and as of today we have the fifth and final element:
5) one male member with a pony-tail

tonight's invite to concatanate

from the office of Red a very funny invite indeed

Carbon based life forms-

Have you achieved level 85 in WOW? Are your wood-working/tobacco-spitting/ and heckling-of-coeds-on-the-BG abilities unsurpassed in modern history?

If so, you may be ready to STEP UP TO THE BIG LEAGUES--placing small, color coded, guaranteed-to-choke-a-baby-sized pieces of glue and sawdust on pieces of cardboard for bragging rights, satisfaction of the urge to hunt, conquer and kill, and also something to do with your hands in between drinking beer

Catan, tonight, my place?

Red

Swing-spot

So another  win for White tonight, who was in the swing-spot off the roll.... seems like this is a strong position to place from and often ends up yielding the winner. Just my opinion.

 I am a little sorry we didn't play a second game using that identical board set up. I think it would definitely be an interesting experiment one of these days to do so.

As for Blue's victory last night, yeah yeah, I was owning you all in the second game that we fell asleep in... definitely taught me a lesson in number over commodity diversity.

-Orange*

3-d catan board

i really want to do this and i'm super thankful to scurvy jake the pirate for leading the way and then posting this - amazing! however, i already have a lot of hobbies and a girlfriend and whatnot so i'm not sure how i'm going to find the 50+ hours that a 3d catan board might take

http://bogomip.net/blog/make-your-own-3d-settlers-of-catan/

last night's victory

uh....let's be clear. my victory last night was much like obama's victory in that it took about 22 months to put together and was a relief for all involved not to mention something of a big win. i would say that i have a catandate from the catanese people - if that made any sense.

_blue