Got Any Wood?

A lot of the time in any sort of competitive event, people often will say, “It's only a game” and “You should just be having fun”, but that's when I tell them that winning is part of the fun. In a lot of games, sitting in first place is actually pretty detrimental to your cause. Unless you're running a race, partaking in some sort of team sport, or a one-on-one, all sitting in first does is give everyone else a target to mess around with. The best wins are the come-from-behind ones; but if you play it right, it only looks like you were behind the whole time.



My original thought for this came from The Settlers of Catan, but in all honesty it works for a lot of games. A few friends and I play this board game from time to time and it's always tons of fun. Catan is a pretty simple game: Everyone starts off with 2 settlements, and you must collect resources and expand your territory. Numerous objects gives a player points—such as building settlements and cities, having the largest army, even building the longest road— and the first player to reach 10 points is the winner.

The board is this sort of hexagonal mass of randomness every game. At the start, you mix up the region tiles and then just start placing them, which is cool because each game you play is different yet always the same. Each region is 1 of 5 types: Forest, Mountain, River bank, Plain, or Field. These are all linked to the resource cards: Wood, Iron, Brick, Sheep, and Wheat respectively. Each region has a number associated with it, and when a player rolls that number with the dice everyone collects that resource.



Now the easiest, and least stressful way, to win this game is by always sitting in second, and trying to get all the other players to target the leader while you sit there like a jerk. The main way you mess with people in Catan is by denying them resources and the way you do this is two-fold: You can refuse to trade with them and/or use the thief to block their regions.

The thief is this little piece on the board that blocks the production of resources for the region he is sitting on. Whenever someone rolls a 7, they are able to move the thief around to wherever they see fit. Everyone tries to cut deals when this happens, and for the most part, whoever has this little guy glued to their area for most of the game is not in a good position to win. Easily the worst part about this game though is having the ability to just hand someone else the game. Usually it happens when you don't want to see this one guy win, and you trade all your cards to another player in hopes that they can build up enough points in one turn to usurp the leader. It's a bush league move and I hate when it happens, but if you aren't a part of it, I will admit it's pretty funny.

Catan is as much about strategy as it is about luck. You can have the best places for your settlements and still lose if you aren't rolling the right numbers to collect resources. Luck is probably the best and worst part about any board game—you just can't control it but then again, you have to be good to be lucky.