Settlers of Catan

Settlers of Catan taught me how to play Craps

/ Shane / 5 Comments

Last weekend, my brother taught me how to play craps. It turns out that craps is a fabulous game, and absolutely the best table game I’ve ever played at a casino. It seems *very* intimidating at first, but you can kind of ease into it by sticking to a pass line bet until you figure out the rules. You don’t need to understand all of the bets to play, and the majority of bets are very easy to understand.

But the best part about craps is the energy.

Usually, the worst part about playing in a casino is the other people. I love poker, but I feel like I am surrounded by hard-core card sharks, taking my money and laughing all the way to the bank about my rookie mistakes. Blackjack is even worse. You wouldn’t think so, but I’ve heard people complain for hours about how the idiot next to them hit on a 14 when the dealer was clearly showing a 6, causing them not to get the card they needed and making everything off by one so the dealer ended up not busting the way they should have…you get the point. But in craps, everybody is rooting for the same thing. You’re all playing together, and your bets don’t affect anybody else. When a shooter is hot, everybody is winning. Yelling encouragement, cheering, and high-fives are absolutely allowed (except with the dealer apparently. I tried to give her a high-five and she just looked at me with cold eyes and said, “I can’t touch you.”)

At the end of the day, it’s a casino game; you’re going to lose your money. But you might as well have some fun an excitement while you’re doing it.

Craps is a game that is essentially about probability of dice rolls. This is relatively straightforward: 7 is the most likely, followed by 6 and 8, followed by 5 and 9, etc. But you could tell that some of the old-timers really had a gut feel for what numbers were going to come up next. And then I realized, so did I. This was just a fancied-up version of Settlers of Catan.

In Settlers, a roll of a 7 moves the Robber, generally a bad thing, though maybe not as bad as a 7 out in craps. Other rolls earn you resources which you can use to buy things (otherwise known as money). It is therefore desirable to be located next to numbers that are most likely to be rolled because, probabilistically speaking, you will get more resources that way. You’ll notice in the picture above, 6 and 8 are highlighted red, and all other numbers have a set of dots underneath them, more dots indicating numbers that are more likely to come up, and less dots indicating less likely numbers.

Of course, just like in Settlers, you can sit all day on an 8 while everybody rolls 4’s like a boss. And a 7 is a little more painful when there’s actually money on the line. But still, if you’ve played a lot of Settlers, you’ve essentially played a lot of craps.

On the other hand, I lost all of my money. So, you know, take any advice from me on the subject with a little grain of salt. I’m actually better at Settlers of Catan than craps, so that should tell you everything you need to know. I guess the real question is, why aren’t we playing Settlers of Catan for money?

Geek and Sundry

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Can we first just take a minute to acknowledge how awesome it is that, in this day and age, someone can just go on the Internet and start their own television network? And I’m not talking about some kind of crappy home-movies, I’m talking about full production budgets with costumes real actors and witty writing. I’m talking about Geek & Sundry.

Geek & Sundry is the youtube channel of Internet royalty Felicia Day (if you know her from nowhere else, you should at least recognize her as Penny from Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog).

My introduction to Geek & Sundry actually came via one of the shows on the Geek & Sundry network, TableTop. I used to love a show called Celebrity Poker Showdown, in which celebrities played poker against each other while throwing out hilarious one liners. TableTop is like that, except instead of regular celebrities, they have geek celebrities, and instead of poker, they play geek board games. The show is hosted by none other than the king of the Internet himself, Wil Wheaton.

I anticipate watching TableTop to learn about awesome new games that I’ve never played before. However, I’m also excited to watch episodes where they play games that I know and love, such as Settlers of Catan:

However, once I was there on the Geek & Sundry network, I started to check out some of the other shows. I swear that someone has tried to get me to watch The Guild before, but I couldn’t find any reference in my email, so I guess it never really happened. However, The Guild is HILARIOUS and awesome, so someone should have recommended it to me if they didn’t. This show is as good as anything you’d find on traditional television, and a must-see if you are a gamer, or know a gamer, or even know what a mmorpg is. There are 6 seasons currently, but a whole season is about an hour long.

But I didn’t stop there! Geek & Sundry led me on to the fantasy and science fiction show Sword and Laser. They’re starting a book club, and they just so happen to have picked The Magicians by Lev Grossman as their first book. I just so happen to be about half way through The Magicians by Lev Grossman. Kismet. This is a book that I have heard tons about, and I’m very excited to read. And now I’m in a book club, which is a first for me.

There are other shows worth being excited about as well, such as Written by a Kid, which hasn’t premiered yet (fantastic premise, professional animators provide animations for stories told by kids).

Anyway, long story short, we have gotten to the point where there are a lot of non-traditional media streams out there, which leads to highly targeted, highly specialized sources that are apparently highly attuned to my own individual wavelength.

In other words, Geek and Sundry.

New Board Games

/ Shane / 7 Comments

For Christmas and my birthday, I received a few new board games, some of which I asked for, and some of which I had never heard of. By and large, these games were amazing, and have really brought on a renaissance of game playing in our house. So, in no particular order (other than the order I received them in):

Ticket to Ride (Europe)

This is probably the most universally liked of the new games. Basically, you draw destination cards, and you must build trains linking those destinations (although obviously it’s a little more complicated than that). Although you play with several people, you’re not competing directly with them per say, although sometimes people build on a route you’d like to build on. It makes you think, but just enough; it’s not nearly as thinking-intensive as, say, Acquire. This also works really well as a 2 person game, which is something Sara and I are always looking for. I don’t think anybody who has played this one doesn’t like it. The downside is that games can be long, especially with a lot of people.

Palazzo

In this game, each player tries to build the biggest, most beautiful Italian palace. What makes this game interesting is that the bricks for the buildings are usually auctioned off to the highest bidder. So you are directly competing with the other players, free market style. This game has been pretty popular as well. I personally prefer Ticket to Ride, but I think at least 2 people prefer Palazzo. The other nice thing is that games are always pretty short. Sometimes you just have time for a quick game, and if so, this one’s for you.

Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot

Okay, I loved this game, but some people have expressed a strong dislike for it (although, I should point out that those people did not actually play the game). Basically, the point of the game is to try to keep your bunnies alive, while killing all of your opponents bunnies with things like flame throwers, black holes, and flying razor spatulas. I once killed two bunnies by having a clumsy bunny of mine open a pack of razor sharp melba toast, sending them flying. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to purchase your magic carrots. This game is hilarious and silly and a lot of fun, though maybe confusing on the surface. This game is also better with more people playing. I’ll be looking for people to play this with.

The Settlers of Catan

This is the only game I haven’t had a chance to play yet, but it is the game I am most excited about. Unfortunately you cannot play it with only 2 players. I found some various rules online that can allow you to play with only 2, but we figured we shouldn’t do that for the first time we play. So I’m still waiting. I have, however, read through the rules, so I think I have an understanding of things. Basically you build towns in strategic areas to collect resources to build more things. That probably doesn’t make sense, but suffice it to say, it is a strategy game that I think will require a lot of thinking. I wanted to hold off on this blog post until I could play this one, but it doesn’t look like it is happening any time soon.

One side story, my mom saw this box and mistakenly thought it said, “Settlers of Satan”, which I think sounds like a WAAAAY more awesome game that I should totally make. The box cover could look almost the same, with a few subtle modifications (that scythe could look a little more grim-reaper-y, maybe give the guy with the ax some glowing red eyes…). So anyway, look for the Settlers of Satan, coming soon to a gaming store near you!