Catan
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.
Some time ago, we picked up the base "Settlers of Catan," game. We started playing it with a couple of friends, once -- just a spin through of a few turns to learn the rules. I decided then that I didn't like it, and we shelved it. I haven't played it since. Yes, it was a snap judgment based on too little gameplay when I hadn't gotten a feel for the mechanics, but there you have it.
This Sunday we had a games day and my friend j0hnnyb brought over his Cities and Knights of Catan set. kydi was also playing, and I know she's a huge fan of the franchise, so I figured that I should set aside my issue to run through it. We played it, I actually won (much to my surprise), but I still didn't think it was fantastic. However, I didn't strongly dislike it the way I did the first time. As trivial as it sounds, a big part of it may have been the frame for holding the map pieces in place that came with Cities and Knights. I do recall being really peeved with the way the board distorted and required re-pushing-together every time someone touched it the first time around.
However, I'm looking for an opinion on something. My impression, and bear in mind that this is based on one play through (although I had the same impression during the few rounds played previously) is that the game is astoundingly luck-based. Now, I'm often playing games that have no luck element whatsoever, which skews that a bit (although we did play Arkham Horror after, which I love but which has a ridiculous amount of die rolling and card drawing -- perhaps it doesn't bother me in that game because the game doesn't purport to be a strategy game on any level). In particular, I played a couple of long shots -- I put all four of my cities on touching points of just a few tiles such that if any of those tiles were rolled I got four cards out of it -- and I won mostly because in the last third of the game, those long shots paid out for me ridiculously frequently. If you looked at the statistical markers, other people had played a far more sensible strategy, but I just happened to get really lucky and pulled ahead by a huge margin because of it. There were a few other luck-based things which worked strongly in my favour (drawing the "re-active all your knights for free" card immediately after the pirates arriving an deactivating everyone's knights ... twice, drawing the "displace someone's knight free" card right after someone placing a knight to block me on a segment where they had nowhere to back off to, drawing the "build a city for super cheap" right after all the other players had stolen the extra cards I needed to build a city I really needed at that point in time).
Overall, I'm not a hardcore "luck ruins any game" person, and I do know people like that. However, it felt like a cheap victory to me, and it really did feel like luck was a far larger factor in the game than anybody's strategic efforts. Is that usually the case? Two of the four players were new to the game, so we didn't have a well-developed strategy, but the other two players had been quite long-time players.
Some time ago, we picked up the base "Settlers of Catan," game. We started playing it with a couple of friends, once -- just a spin through of a few turns to learn the rules. I decided then that I didn't like it, and we shelved it. I haven't played it since. Yes, it was a snap judgment based on too little gameplay when I hadn't gotten a feel for the mechanics, but there you have it.
This Sunday we had a games day and my friend j0hnnyb brought over his Cities and Knights of Catan set. kydi was also playing, and I know she's a huge fan of the franchise, so I figured that I should set aside my issue to run through it. We played it, I actually won (much to my surprise), but I still didn't think it was fantastic. However, I didn't strongly dislike it the way I did the first time. As trivial as it sounds, a big part of it may have been the frame for holding the map pieces in place that came with Cities and Knights. I do recall being really peeved with the way the board distorted and required re-pushing-together every time someone touched it the first time around.
However, I'm looking for an opinion on something. My impression, and bear in mind that this is based on one play through (although I had the same impression during the few rounds played previously) is that the game is astoundingly luck-based. Now, I'm often playing games that have no luck element whatsoever, which skews that a bit (although we did play Arkham Horror after, which I love but which has a ridiculous amount of die rolling and card drawing -- perhaps it doesn't bother me in that game because the game doesn't purport to be a strategy game on any level). In particular, I played a couple of long shots -- I put all four of my cities on touching points of just a few tiles such that if any of those tiles were rolled I got four cards out of it -- and I won mostly because in the last third of the game, those long shots paid out for me ridiculously frequently. If you looked at the statistical markers, other people had played a far more sensible strategy, but I just happened to get really lucky and pulled ahead by a huge margin because of it. There were a few other luck-based things which worked strongly in my favour (drawing the "re-active all your knights for free" card immediately after the pirates arriving an deactivating everyone's knights ... twice, drawing the "displace someone's knight free" card right after someone placing a knight to block me on a segment where they had nowhere to back off to, drawing the "build a city for super cheap" right after all the other players had stolen the extra cards I needed to build a city I really needed at that point in time).
Overall, I'm not a hardcore "luck ruins any game" person, and I do know people like that. However, it felt like a cheap victory to me, and it really did feel like luck was a far larger factor in the game than anybody's strategic efforts. Is that usually the case? Two of the four players were new to the game, so we didn't have a well-developed strategy, but the other two players had been quite long-time players.