Caltrops - Reviews





	[quote name="Choson"][quote name="FABIO"]<b>Settlers of Katan</b> Problems include brick usually being a major stopgap every game. Everything drags to a halt as everyone waits for someone to roll more brick. A bigger problem is the road system works like Tron light cycles; you can't build through existing ones. Some players get cut off by others and at that point they're fucked because they can't expand, yet you HAVE to keep playing because the game's all about players bartering. You're never going to win, but you still have <i>some</i> resources to barter with. If you hit this point then playing on is the most pointless and boring thing imaginable. Whenever it happened to me I would just give away all my resources for free to whomever was in the lead just so the game would end faster. That tactic got labelled as "cheap" and going against the spirit of the game. I defended it by claiming that the GAME went against the spirit of the game by not being fun. The dispute was resolved with me playing videogames instead of Settler of Katan. [/quote] I think it's "Catan", but whatever. I'm not a big boardgame fan, but some of my friends are and so I've played this enough times to know that it's not as bad as you say, at least with the people I played it with. As far as I recall, each game does have a scarce material, but it changes depending on the placement of the numbers/resource quantity on each hex that dictated how much of each resource you got on a die roll (maybe these guys didn't realize you had to randomize that?). I seem to recall very few games where someone was trapped to the point that the game was unwinnable -- usually they'd just change strategy and work towards largest army or getting enough of those points from special cards and building fortresses or whatever on the areas they did have, and occasionally they'd win. One thing that was pretty cool about it was the way you could hide how close you were to winning with those point cards, so that at the last moment, while everyone was busy maxing out their fortresses or building longest road, you'd bust out your point cards that people'd conveniently forget about and win the game. I rarely used this tactic, but the experienced player in the group I played with used this to good effect. I definitely prefer this game to Risk, though, which is the other game these folks love and which bores the shit out of me. More dice-rolling please! Instant conclusion I just reached: the more dice involved in a game, the shittier it actually is. The corollary to that is that D&D is the suckiest game ever invented, which I'm not disagreeing with at all.[/quote]