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| No dungeon masters needed here! Just two dice and a few friends. |
Last night Joy and I joined with some friends for pizza and board games. We brought over our copy of Monopoly Express and Settlers of Catan with all it’s expansions (or at least the ones we own). It was supposed to be 3 couples, but one of the wives couldn’t make it so we made due with 5 players. We decided to start with Settlers of Catan and used the 5-6 player Seafarers expansion. We had played with this expansion before and it’s a lot of fun. You get to build ships and sail out from the main island of Catan and discover new land and new resources. There’s a new terrain hex that produces gold, which you can trade for any resource you want. There’s also a pirate ship on the high seas that can prevent your ships from moving and if placed near you, can steal one of your resources just like the robber.
We had never played with any of the 5-6 player expansion packs and the set-up took a little longer than normal. We finally got things figured out and the game got under way. We didn’t utilize the Special Building Phase that allows players to build between turns and we quickly found out why it was included in the 5-6 player packs. With more players, you have more chance to earn resources before it’s your turn to build and additionally, there’s more chances for someone to roll a 7 before you get to use your resources to build. Several times, a few players busted out when the robber came knocking. We quickly adopted the new building phase for round 2 and the game both went faster and was more exciting. It ended up closer at the end, with most of the players 1-3 points away from winning. I have also never seen so many roads that were so long! Joy was a road building queen, quickly demonstrating her civil engineering skills by cutting the island in half both games and earning the “Longest Road” points.
By the time we had finished the 2nd game, it was just after midnight, so we said our thank-yous and good-byes and high-tailed it home for some sleep. We wanted to try and get up early to see my sister, Heather, run in her first 5K. By the time we got up, around, and over there, she had already finished. We thought that was pretty quick, but we had no idea just how quick. According to the official time, she placed 2nd in her age class! Not bad for someone’s first cross-country! I’m very proud of her and knowing how competitive she can be, I have no doubt she’ll continue to place pretty high.
Finally, speaking of open seas and Seafarers, we bought a fountain for our own private “sea”, our pool, this morning. With the heat like it is right now, the temp of our pool has been hovering around 90º and when you jump in to swim, it feels like you’re swimming in bath water! So the guy at the pool center suggested running a fountain at night and said it would cool the water off by 4-6º. What’s the fun in having a swimming pool if it’s not much cooler than outdoors?!? Can’t wait to see it work.