The other night a friend invited me over to play Settlers of Catan, a game recently heralded by the Wall Street Journal as the new golf of Silicon Valley.
The game started out simply enough - place some settlements, roll some die, get some resources, build some roads, etc. etc. - but by the end it was a cut-throat race to the last "victory point" and key goals were as varied as the ways Google sucks. The stages of play are ingenious. At the start of the game everyone was hot and bothered to expand with roads. In the middle of the game there was a widespread sheep shortage, so much so that whenever someone rolled a 3 "Sheep!" was called and a hearty swig of beer was enjoyed by all. By the end of the game only one player could even hope to expand his road system (and 20 sheep wouldn't fetch 1 resource in any market) and we were all working on different strategies to get that one last victory point.
I won't continue to praise how well thought out Catan is because there are num er ous sour ces +1 that do this already and I am too far behind the trend to claim foundership. All I will say is that it will soon have a place on my shelf for any friends who are looking for an hour or so of mind stretch and a good time. I'm thinking of going with the more God fearing, Settlers of Canaan, version.
As an aside and nod, the game was invented by a German dentist, Klaus_Teuber who also invented a slew of other award winning german-style board games.
