Harrowed Halls

This week we played Settlers of America: Trails to Rails from the Catan series of games. This is one of my favorite Catan games. The reason? You can do something almost every turn.

I’m adopting the following text from BoardGameGeek because it does such a great job of capturing the flavor of the game. “Settlers of America: Trails to Rails utilizes the familiar Catan hex-tile grid to present a map of the United States. Players collect and trade resources, in order to purchase, migrate and build settlements, forge railroads and acquire locomotives. Railroads are used to distribute goods to the interconnected cities. As westward locations are settled, old sources of resources deplete. The addition of gold adds to the depth of play and increases options for the players.”

Playing time for Settlers of America is two hours. Our game took about three hours. We could all point fingers at the culprits (Ben, Owen, Mike) but that would be childish. We had a pretty close game the entire time. Looking at the board at any particular time you might think differently, but so much can change after a single turn. It’s not unusual for someone to go from dead-last to being a contender for the lead after their turn is over.

The game was winding down and Ben was setting himself up to deliver some more goods on his next go. Owen snuck in and stole those deliveries from him. Ben was speechless. (That’s only a saying. Ben probably talked up storm about how unfair Owen’s move was, but those words will be lost to history since I’m writing the account of it.) Now that move by Owen might not seem like a big deal, but we all think this was the one move that enabled Mike to win over Ben.

As the game ended, I was able to sneak into second place only because I had a stellar turn just before Mike’s game winning turn. Had Mike not delivered his last goods to win the game, Ben would of. That’s how close the game was. As it was Mike won. I came in second. Ben and Owen tied for third place, with Ben being last. (Yes, that last sentence was intentional.)

Chaos Steve