The Weasel guide to Settlers of Catan, part three - the second half of the game, and some dirty, dirty tricks
In which I describe the late game of Settlers, some winning tactics and a few nasty tricks.
In the last installment, I covered the set up and starting game; how to get a good start and avoid throwing it away. In this final episode, we’ll look at how to get into a winning position in the middle game, and maneuver for the win in the final game.
The middle game
The critical question for most people is whether it’s safe to trade with a particular person. Obviously, you don’t want to trade with them and have them get a city out of it, while you get a timber to build a road. There are a few tactics you can employ to minimise the chance of this happening.
- Trade with as many players as possible. If you do a one-for-one trade with the other three players, you’re ahead by three for their one.
- Pay attention to what cards the other players are drawing. If they’ve drawn three ore and a grain in the past few rounds, it’s a pretty good bet what they’re going to need, and what they’ll get out of a trade with you. It’s up to you to try and get as much out of a trade with them as possible. Naturally it won’t always be this straightforward, but you can often tell roughly what someone’s going to do.
- Don’t trade cards that you need, or that are valuable. If you’re worried about someone gaining the lead, don’t trade them particular cards. Critical resources typically work better, ie ore and clay. Don’t let on that you have one of these cards either. If it’s that critical, most players will put the robber baron on you and steal the resource anyway. A simple “No, I don’t have any ore.” will leave them guessing as to whether that’s the case. Don’t be tempted to put a “for trade” on the end of it, since it’ll be interpreted as “Yes, I do have ore. Scads of it in fact, but I’m not going to trade it with a filthy weasel like you.” and then hit you with the baron anyway.
- Be patient. If you can help it, don’t trade for cards that you may get anyway in a couple of rolls. It hurts you a little, but hurts your opponent a lot more.
- Make them pay through the nose. Trade three-for-two, two-for-one or even three-for-one if you can get it. If you’re going to give them a city, they should at least make it worth your while.
- Make them burn their cards. Quite a few weasels will be able to build something by trading in three-for-one at a port, but will try and trade anyway, in order to save those few extra cards. Maybe they can build a city and a settlement if you trade with them for what they need. A good giveaway for this is someone who trades right off the bat, but who has a fistful of cards. Make them trade three-for-one, unless they’re going to give you a settlement too.
Ore and grain are good
The key resources that you’ll be looking for from here on in are ore and grain. Building cities is paramount if you want to get to ten points. If you don’t have a city, you’ll need five settlements, the longest road, largest army and a victory point card. That’s difficult, especially with all of the other players trying to stop you. With a couple of cities, you can focus on either building more settlements, the longest road, largest army or those extra couple of victory points.
As with clay, ore is usually the limiting factor, so if it comes down to a choice between ore or grain, choose ore. Grain will normally have a surplus.
Figure out the other players’ strategies
If you want to thwart someone, you first have to figure out what they’re up to. There’s no point in rushing to cut off a player’s access to brick if they’re a dwarf. Well, most dwarves would sell their grandmothers for a brick, but you get the idea. If you know where someone’s going to play, then you can block them, make them pay through the nose for the right resources, hit them with the baron, and so on.
Count other players’ points
Don’t let that dwarf sneak up on you. Pay careful attention to other players’ points. Once you’ve done that, figure out how they’re going to get to ten points and win. Then you can stop them. Often this goes hand-in-hand with the previous point about figuring out their strategy. Also pay close attention to their potential points too. If someone’s on eight, but has a few development cards in hand, they’ve likely got largest army sewn up, and you should go all-out trying to stop them.
The End Game
This is where it all comes down to the wire. If you’re in a close game, there’ll usually be at least one or two other players within reach of the finish, and it’s just a case of who can claw themselves across the line first.
Battening down the hatches
One of the best tools in determining the winner is the robber baron/knight card. It both reduces a player’s hand, and cuts off his supply of critical resource cards. If a couple of players get in on the action, they can switch back and forth, stealing cards from the leader, and dragging him down to their level.
Don’t let this happen to you! Keep back a knight (or even better, two or three), and steal cards back from them. They’ll still have an effect, but you won’t lose as many cards, and if you can deplete their knights before yours, you can often scrape through for the win.
Damn the torpedoes! Full steam ahead!
Before you start building up your knight supply though, assess the opponent’s knight production. Is it higher than yours? You might want to get an extra one, just in case. If it isn’t though, try and gauge how many knights they can produce. Assume that the baron gets put on your key resource, and that they can produce one (or two) knights per turn, as well as rolling a seven once per turn, to be safe. Now, given that, are you still drawing ahead? If so, there’s nothing that they can do to stop you. Instead of your knight cards becoming assets, they’re now hindrances. The resources that you put into three cards could have built a city, and you would still have had a grain and some sheep left over. It’s also safer and easier to build a city than three cards.
Target minimisation
This one’s easy. Don’t make yourself a target if at all possible. Got a stone? And everybody knows you have a stone? Trade it away, or spend it on something like a development card. Just got to eight points? Well, if you’re sensible, you’ll have done it with your last resource card. If you don’t have anythign to steal, some players will look elsewhere, or will put the baron on you, but so that they steal from another player. That increases your chance of starting a feud between them, which means that the baron might not go on you next time.
How can the other players win?
See that obnoxious player on the other side of the board? Yeah, the one with five settlements and longest road? He’s got a development card that he hasn’t used yet, so it’s probably a victory point card. All he needs is a city or two, perhaps the largest army, and he’s won. Want to stop him from winning? Of course you want to stop him from winning - that’s why you need to nobble his ore hex. It’s the only one he’s got, and you’re pretty sure he doesn’t have any stone in his hand. Without any ore, he can’t build cities, and he can’t buy cards to get that damn knight off his one key resource.
Without figuring out what the other players need to do to win, you can’t hold them back long enough to win yourself. Knowing what they need, and what they’re likely to do, is a key element of winning, at all stages of the game.
Weasel tactics
Here are some miscellaneous nasty tricks which you won’t find in the rule book. They won’t necessarily make the difference between winning and losing, but they can make your game a hell of a lot easier if used at the right time.
Build two roads to claim your settlement
Racing for a settlement spot? I know the feeling - you’ve got two clay, two wood and a couple of sheep. All you need is a grain and you’re there, but no bugger will trade with you. Either they don’t have any, or they enjoy watching you grovel or perhaps they’d like that settlement spot instead. Teach them a lesson by building two roads instead, and block them out. If they can’t drive a road up to it, then they can’t build a settlement there. Mwahaha!
Don’t fan out your cards
Nobody wants to look like they’re winning. Nobody who wants to win does, anyway. And nothing says “I’m going to cane the lot of you” like a massive fistful of cards. That’s right, fan them all out, all twelve of them, and wave them around like you just don’t care. Now see who’ll trade with you? That’s right - nobody. If you keep your cards in a nice tight fan, chances are better that they won’t realise just how much stone you have until they trade you a grain, and you cash in your two cities.
Always shuffle your cards
Not that I’d advocate this, since a lot of people consider it tantamount to cheating, but if you watch carefully, you can often spot patterns in the way that your opponents order their cards in their hand. They might put the most recent cards on the left or right, they might put the good cards on the left, and the useless ones on the right. To make life harder for these pilfering simpletons, just shuffle your cards before you allow them to pick one.
If you want to teach them a lesson, make sure that they see where you put your good card (the one that they want) and then swap it for another one (eg. a sheep) when their attention is elsewhere.
The corollary is to never take a card if someone tries to give you one. Often you’ll hear a line like “Oh, don’t worry, they’re all the same” and then give you a card from their hand. This is annoying for two reasons. Firstly, the only way to call them on this is to pretty much imply that they’re a cheat. The second is that it gives away what’s in their hand. Most of the time it’s reasonably obvious, but it’s still annoying. Just take one of their other cards (perhaps the one on the bottom of their pile?) or ask them to shuffle their hand. If you do it all the time as a policy, it’s harder for them to get upset.
Don’t count pretend points
If you’re on five points, your longest road doesn’t count for anything. Sure, it’s an extra two points, but big deal. What else does it get you? Nothing - a big, fat zero. Anyone who’s on a real five points has two extra settlements or a city, and can take it away from you whenever they like. Unless they’re a dwarf, in which case they’re probably more worried about winning the game than your tiny little longest road.
Use chaos factors to your advantage
Most players have a particular style of play. Under most circumstances, you can pick the way they play, and to a certain extent predict their intentions. A true weasel will exploit the weaknesses in their style to his own advantage. Here are some of the more common styles.
- The porcupine will build strongly defensive structures, and try to keep to themselves during the game. They have a strong tendency towards dwarfdom, and won’t play knight cards unless the robber is on one of their hexes. If you’re playing with a porcupine, you can generally leave them alone, safe in the knowledge that unless you’re clearly winning and they happen to roll a seven, they won’t be putting the baron on you any time soon.
- The grudge player will single out players who have slighted them, and punish them for their impudence. In extreme cases, they’ll even ignore the leader and instead attack whoever has annoyed them. The best way to deal with a grudge player is to try and incite one of the other players to attack them, and then stand well back, or else “assist” the grudge player in smiting the evildoer. If you can manage it, extra entertainment value can be had by nuking them into the stone age so that they can’t get you back, then watching them turn an interesting shade of purple. Be careful in later games though, as the grudge player has a loooong memory.
- Number munchkins love having bigger and better numbers. If you have a settlement on a six, and they only have a five, watch out! They’ll be gunning for you, since “you’re winning”. You can often trick them into skewing their distribution of resources by goading them into taking a better number, but of a resource that they don’t need, or already have a lot of. “You can always trade it in at your port…”
- Trade munchkins will trade with anyone and everyone, even for stuff that they don’t currently need, but “might do in future”. While some pre-emptive trading can be a good thing, this player takes it to extremes, wheeling and dealing with abandon, and often getting nothing for their troubles. Once you’ve picked someone as a trade munchkin, you’ll want to be trading with them whenever you can. First in, best dressed is usually the rule with trading, so try and predict what they’ll be offering, and if you need it, be ready to jump in as soon as they open their mouth.
- Trade fascists are the opposite breed, and will try and use their trading acumen to affect the game, often to the exclusion of all else. They can be a similar breed to the grudge player - a single slight or dodgy trade can put you on their trade embargo blacklist, sometimes for the entire game. The easiest way to deal with them is not necessarily to stay on their good side at all costs, but to try and get everyone else on the blacklist, either by goading them into attacking the trade fascist, by getting them to trade with the person that the trade fascist thinks is winning, or by trading with another player in a manner that they think is “stupid”.
How to get people to trade cards with you when you’re winning
This one is very Machiavellian, and typically only arch-weasels can pull it off. Let’s set the scene. You’re winning by a long stretch, and pretty much everyone is trailing in your wake as you steam for the lead. Pay attention to how the second and third players are treating the person in fourth place. If it looks like they’ve been completely stalled for several turns, offer to trade with them. Most players will automatically refuse to trade with the leading player, but hey, if they’re not going to win anyway, and they’re getting it in the shorts from people who are meant to be friendly, they may be quite happy to join you on the “dark side”, especially when you’re particularly relentless, drawing cards left, right and center. Sometimes they may join you just out of spite. You gain a friend, they get less frustrated, and everyone goes happy. Except for the players in second and third place, but then they’re trying to stop you from winning, aren’t they?
This works particularly well in tournaments where a player’s standing is based on how many points they score. There’s a significant temptation to score an extra point or two, especially when “you’re going to win anyway”.
The tiebreaker - who’s winning, or who’s the better player?
Hmm, decisions, decisions. Player X is on eight points, and player Y is on seven. Who should you hit with the baron? If player Y has won the last two games in a row, stick it on them. Even at a point behind, they’re still more likely to win.
The truth is negotiable
That’s right - you can even argue about how many points you have.
“Sure, I’ve got seven points, but two of those are in longest road, so they don’t really count. I could get that taken off me at any time. I’m not really that powerful. Look at Boris over there. He’s got five points, and he hasn’t played that development card for a while, so it’s probably a victory point card. So he has six points, but I only have five real ones…”
Sometimes this will work, or at least convince them to spread some of the pain Boris’ way. Sometimes though, when you really are winning, there’s no getting out of it, and it’ll only make the other players want to hurt you more. In those cases, it’s best just to take it and smile.
Don’t boast when you’re winning
Notwithstanding the etiquette side of things, boasting when you’re winning is an easy way to get the other players to see just how far ahead you really are, and makes it much more likely that they’ll gang up on you. If your resources get rolled, try not to draw attention to it - just take your mumblemumble stone and hope nobody notices. If it’s a resource that’s in short supply or that you need to win, and you’ve been waving them around for the past couple of turns, don’t be surprised when you get hit with the baron.
Don’t whine when you’re losing
Trade is a two way street. For people to trade with you, they have to expect that you have something that they want. If you’ve been repeating the “Boohoo I don’t have any good cards” mantra, how likely is it that they’re even going to ask? To dig yourself out of the hole you’re in, you’re going to need either phenomenal luck, or a good trading partner. Guess which one is more likely?
The leader is a lightning rod for pain
Normally, the best position to be in is a close second. That way, you have the diversionary tactic of pointing at the leader whenever anyone tries to hurt you. In a four player game where the scores are 5-5-7-8, the player on 7 points should really get a little bit of pain too, if only to bring them back into line, but most people only see the winner. Of course, sometimes you’re winning so heinously that you can go it alone, damn the torpedoes, bring on the baron, etc. etc. But for those times when you can’t, it’s good to have a little help.
Beware the first turn road nazi!
With this trick, place your second settlement on a timber/clay intersection so that you start the game with the resources to build a road. Now you can automatically win a ‘road race’ with someone else that has a road right next to yours. If you can get in before they’ve had a chance to build their road - usually on the very first turn - their road is wasted. Bwah ha ha!
How to make people really hate you
Don’t try this unless you really need a particular resource. You’ll make enemies for life.
Monopoly and knight cards are great, but to use them to their full extent, you need to find out what other people have in their hand. Ask them. Offer to trade whatever you think will get them enthusiastic - a couple of grain for an ore (if you want ore). Once you know that they have ore, hit them with the monopoly card, or put the knight on them and try to draw it.
If that’s not evil enough for you, and you’d instead prefer to annoy people so much that they’ll likely drag you outside afterwards and beat you senseless, try trading a large amount of one resource that everyone wants desperately. Tell them that you’re not in a position to win (perhaps after hemming and hawing for a while to make it convincing) and that you’re spreading the resources around to make it harder for the robber baron - anything that’ll get them to trade. Once you’ve exhausted your supply of ore, or your opponents patience, simply use your trusty monopoly card to get it all back again.
For bonus points, try to continue trading afterwards.
Conclusion
There you have it - how to conclusively win at Settlers, every time, without fail. Well, maybe not quite that good, but at least you won’t get taken for a ride by most players out there, and hopefully you’ll be able to win a few games. Settlers is a fun game, and while there is some element of luck, for the rest of it it’s all skill.
If there are any other nasty tricks that you know of, feel free to let me know in the comments below.
Thanks,
Anthony
