I'd Rather Settle

Last night, Matt and I finally got our first chance to play Cities & Knights - a beefed up version of our perennial favorite - Settlers of Catan. I LOVE Settlers and have been playing it now for over five years. I think it's the perfect mix of strategy and luck, and I get great pleasure in playing it. Naturally, I was hesitant to learn Cities & Knights. Everyone says, once you've played it, you can never go back to Settlers. Why would I want to give up Settlers? I've wondered. Well, we played last night, and at this point, I'd rather Settle.

Now, don't get me wrong, I had a good time (even though I didn't win)* But there were some aspects about the game that I thought were very frustrating. The most frustrating part was the fact that when you have a city built on a hex, you get one commodity card and one resource card, instead of two resource cards like you do in Settlers. This makes it much harder to collect lots of resource cards, i.e., making it hard to build. Production was incredibly slow for me even though I have a wonderful variety of resources and numbers on the board. If I was able to choose between getting a commodity card or a resource card, I think I would like it better. But such is not the case.

Of course, this was only my first time playing the game. As such, I am not prepared to swear it off this early in our relationship. But I will say that I am much more anxious to play Settlers again, rather than Cities & Knights. Clearly, a full conversion to this game is going to take some time.

*Gimme a break, I'm a rookie!