More board games

I mentioned how we played quite a few board games during July. Mostly Settlers of Catan.

We played more board games when friends came out from the UK at the end of the summer. Again, it was mostly Settlers of Catan, with a few rounds of Carcassonne as well. We enjoyed the games so much playing with friends Jörn and Sheila that we decided we needed our own sets, and ordered them from Amazon in the UK, couriered out to Cyprus by our friends. So naturally we had to teach them how to play.

This board game theme has continued into the Autumn. Now that we have our own versions of the games, Richard and I can play alone sometimes. The games aren't as good as playing with more than two people, but they're still a good way to unwind.

I've developed an unfortunate trend of winning too many games of Settlers, so Richard likes to play Carcassonne too, which he wins more often. It's harder to develop strategies for that, particularly when only two are playing. In the game we played a couple of weeks ago, we particularly liked the layout by the end, which somehow managed to have all the inner gaps filled in tidily:

On Wednesday this week, we played again. This time I actually won (by one point!) and the end layout of the tiles wasn't quite so tidy:

It was quite a long game, so I was a bit tired by the time we started our round of two-person Settlers (something which needs slightly adjusted rules; we've developed our own house rules for it based on several options I found online). I managed to win by having both the largest army and, slightly to my surprise, the longest street:

Our other local friends, Joan and Mark (when I say 'local', I mean 'within easy walking distance') also like to play some board games. We've played a lot of Scrabble with them, and also some Rummikub. But last night we took Settlers of Catan with them, and started to teach them that. As we'd already played a couple of rounds of Rummikub, we didn't start until 9pm, and since it goes slowly when explaining the game - which has a lot of complexities - we were nowhere near finished by 10.15pm, by which time two of us were starting to get a little tired.

So we decided to end at 10.30, rather than play to 12 or even 10 points.

I don't think Joan wanted her photo taken:

- and it was a very interesting game, at the end. Nobody was obviously winning, and by the time we stopped (at the end of a round) we were a little surprised to work out that it was a draw. Not just between two people: all four of us had exactly seven points each. An ideal ending to an enjoyable evening.