Settlers in Toys R Us

Michael Barnes wrote:
"SETTLERS is one of the best games ever published ... It's a great design, the game is one of the most fun out there, and with CITIES AND KNIGHTS it's even better."
I strongly disagree, having played it three times, first plain, second with Seafarers, and third with Cities & Knights; all four players were at different skill levels. Playing the first game I thought Settlers was pretty pedestrian. In the second game the second best player chooses to play for second place. The result is to slowly but surely increase the gap between each players score/position. You can argue that it's a flaw with the players rather than the game, but it is something that murders fun. The third game was a repeat of the second, except that it took OVER FOUR FUCKING HOURS!!! Even the guy who was really, really keen to learn to play Settlers better, was literally banging his head against the table in frustration at one point and pleading for the game to end. And that's why I think it's a poor game and one that I'll never play again.

Back when I was living in Chicago I had a few buddies that I'd play a game of Risk with every so often. Well one day one of the guys was telling me about a great game they were playing called Settlers. Though I never got a game in with these guys, I know they were playing two-player quite a bit.

Also from what I know of the guys I'm pretty sure that they were playing it pretty non-strategically. Some gamers tend to forget that the majority of the population looks at games differently. They look at it as a set of rules and a medium which to pass the time. And as a recent article pointed out, a game can be out for almost 100 years and still the general population does not have some of the semi-advanced strategies (like house-control) worked into the general consciousness.

If you take a game like Settlers and remove optimal placement of buildings and roads in relation to resources or working the trades to your advantage instead of mutual advantage, then I could see how the game is a good way to pass the time and get together and socialize. The rules are simple enough and much like the theme in Monopoly people understand the concept starting a civilization and expanding them out in a new land.

What Settlers does provide which typical mass-marketed games really don’t as often, is that "Ah-HA!" moment where people who don't do a lot of deep thinking about boardgames will be looking at a board for their turn and suddenly something will "click" in their head as they realize one of the strategies that may be more apparent to gamers and "Ah-HA!" moments are pretty powerful and satisfying.

LvT

It may be a bit bland, but at least the cover does stand out in a way.

If you ever traverse the aisles of Toys R Us on the boargame section, all you see are mostly colorful cartoon characters staring out at you, usually licensed from some movie or game. If it isn't that, it's some game promising ZANY~! fun with people pantomiming shock and laughter because the game made them say "Fart" or something like that.



"WHO PULLED ED'S FINGER: THE HILARIOUS GAME ABOUT FARTING!"

"WHO PULLED ED'S FINGER: THE HILARIOUS GAME ABOUT FARTING!"

How vulgar and pedestrian. I am so glad we have F:AT the home of gaming's intellectuals

That is true, SETTLERS does look boring as shit. I remember when I bought it the first time (having bought three more times in 13 years) it was the 1st edition Mayfair one. And it looked HORRIBLE. In fact, I thought "why am I buying this"? I didn't know if my friends would play it, but I had heard such good things about it and we really, really needed something other than MAGIC. It totally clicked with them, and we were playing 2-3 games every sunday.

There is strategy, but if you can't deal with the random (but at least somewhat statistically predictable) resource distribution or the extensive trading...then yeah, I see why some folks don't get it. As easy as it is to play, there area lot of finer points that emerge when you play with seasoned players, particularly when you're using SEAFARERS and CITIES AND KNIGHTS (I like to play with the whole thing).

It's funny to hear people say that it's "dated" or that it isn't on par with today's games...that smacks of the "Cult of the New" to me!

One of the things that's really significant to me about SETTLERS is that it has a timelessness to it...it doesn't feel like a 1995 Eurogame design. If you look at the games of the mid to late 1990s (ELFENLAND, EL GRANDE,EUPHRAT & TIGRIS, MODERN ART, et. al.) _those_ games feel really dated because in the Eurogame design paradigm there has been introduced this whole mechanics du jour/title churn thing that shunts off mechanics and ideas as quickly as they emerge in favor of something new. SETTLERS doesn't do that, and the weird thing is that there are practically no games that look, feel, or play like SETTLERS so there's not a sense that games were designed around it. Compare that to PUERTO RICO- I could probably name 20 games off the top of my head that are designed around a PUERTO RICO framework. SETTLERS feels closer to ACQUIRE in its sense that it is an iconic, original design that transcends its context. That's a significant design to me, and that puts the game in the same league as COSMIC ENCOUNTER and CIVILIZATION.

Settlers is a fine game on it's own. I tried the Cities and Knights expansion but it only seemed to add time. It has trading, screwage, randomness, etc. All the elements of a good game.

Michael Barnes wrote:

There is strategy, but if you can't deal with the random (but at least somewhat statistically predictable) resource distribution or the extensive trading...then yeah, I see why some folks don't get it. As easy as it is to play, there area lot of finer points that emerge when you play with seasoned players, particularly when you're using SEAFARERS and CITIES AND KNIGHTS (I like to play with the whole thing).

I agree that there is strategy. Settlers is the only game that I have played 10 or more times and have never lost -- Settlers is one of the rare games that just makes complete sense to me in terms of strategy and gameplay. I have yet to play with either expansions, but if the other guy in our game group gets them, I definitely will try it out.

It's funny to hear people say that it's "dated" or that it isn't on par with today's games...that smacks of the "Cult of the New" to me!


That's a significant design to me, and that puts the game in the same league as COSMIC ENCOUNTER and CIVILIZATION.

I don't really know how dated that it is. I like many older games better (Acquire, Diplomacy, etc.); however, I like several newer games better too. I do believe that it was so groundbreaking because of the time it came. It was a relief to many of the CCG hangovers that people came and helped deflate the bloatedness of several the Ameritrash titles; in short, I think that it righted the gaming hobby ship in many ways.

However, I do not find the theme compelling. I don't think that the average kid in Toys R' Us is going to find the theme compelling and I doubt the average adult is going to grab it either. The box is terribly boring, the theme is boring, the wooden pieces are bland, and many editions hex art is bland. There is nothing there that is going to grab a player and say "Hey, Play Me".

I think this actually points up what is so incredible about the success of Settlers and how it's finally starting to break through in a bigger way over here in the US; it's been primarily from word-of-mouth, at least outside of Europe where there's more acceptance and love for the bland looking, boring sounding games.

I had been told about Settlers repeatedly by different people for years before I finally tried it two years ago. Here's how it generally went... "Settlers of Catan, huh?" (thinking to myself: weird name) "You build roads and trade brick and sheep, huh?" (sounds reeeeeally boring) "Sounds interesting... I'll have to try that some time." And of course, I'm glad I finally did, not just for that but for every other game I've played for the first time since. I understand it's not everyone's favorite, but I do think it hits a real sweet spot of being very accessible, very creative and different (as Michael says, there really haven't been any notable Settlers clones) and also involving some compelling gameplay and interaction.

And of course, I've been mentioning Settlers to other people who mostly play Risk and Scrabble, and they probably have the same reaction as I did (thinking, that sounds reeeeeeally boring), but eventually, they'll probably give it a shot and its fanbase will continue to grow.

I'm still not interested in trying Settlers. The theme bores me, and besides, I'm not interested in games focused on economic issues, because I already spend at least 40 hours a week doing accounting.

Man, my copy of Settlers is my senior year of college in a box. We played that game to death, and that was back in 2004. Up until that point, I had only ever played mainstream games, so it was a definite coup for me. Even after buying all these hobby games, it still probably has more plays than any of the others.

When my wife played it for the first time, she was more lukewarm. The weird thing is, she's actually something of a gamer. She probably wouldn't have any games in her house if it wasn't for me, but she had already been playing hobby games for a while when she first played it.

No doubt that the box looks horrible though. The previous edition was even worse. That's the one I have. We have made numerous jokes about the busty lady on the box for the 3rd Edition.