Important Things Learned At Sunday's Settlers Of Catan Tournament

[rdansky]

• There are numerous differences between playing with live human beings sitting at the table with you and with AI on the XBox version of the game. For example, live people will react very differently than AI to you jumping up and suddenly shouting "Fuck you, sheep in your face!" 
• Also, none of the actual human beings you're playing with are likely to be Abraham Lincoln.
• If your play style involves trying to cut your opponents' hearts out and eat them raw and you end up at a table full of people who play based on principles of sharing and equal distribution, you're probably not going to do very well.
• If your play style involves principles of sharing and equal distribution and you're at a table full of ravenous heart-eaters, you're probably not going to do very well.
• If you're used to playing against people who survey the board, place their units and then drop out of the game to be replaced by simulated Abraham Lincoln, you're probably not going to do very well.
• If you buy fried cheese for your wife during a Catan tournament and walk it over from the pizza place next door, you will be regarded as the best husband in the place.
• 4th Edition Catan "harbor" pieces that edge the board don't actually quite fit together. This, presumably, is the setup for an expansion called "Seafloor Spreading of Catan", "Midocean Rift of Catan" or "Deep Sea Vent With Scarlet Tubeworms And Hairy Albino Lobsters of Catan". 
• The dice hate you. Yes, you.
• Juvenile sheep jokes are funny for about the first ten minutes of a six-plus hour tournament. Then they get embarrassing. Then they get tedious. Then, around hour five and a half, they get funny again.
• The more intricate your little stacked sculpture of road, settlement and city pieces is, the less likely you are to win the game. 
• This is why I notched a grand total of five points in the game where I also created "Catanhenge".
• There is no greater schism in the world today than that between the people who put the robber on top of the little cardboard circle with the number on it, and those who put the robber next to the little cardboard circle with the number on it.
• The dice hate me, too.