Sunday, September 03, 2006

Of Cities and Knights

Today be our first visit to Settler's Cafe at Damansara Jaya. We've been hearing about it from 'Nic and Kamal but somehow the timing has been such where we weren't free to follow. Now into its fifth month, Steven and I dropped by to have a look at the place.

Settler's Cafe is basically a cafe that allows you to 'rent' a table and try out their games in their games list. And they have food. As we were finishing our game the smell of food was killing me already.

The store setup was rather comfy, with some 8-10 tables wooden tables and the walls lined up with assorted board games. A group was already in the midst of playing Power Grid (good game) and we could see that this was a place for L5R supporters. MtG people, please take your business elsewhere.

Since Steven hadn't had the luxury of playing many boardgames, we were wondering what to play. Having Gary as our host, we somehow opted to start with Puerto Rico, but with the arrival of Kamal we'd decided to do Settlers of Catan plus the expansion, Cities and Knights of Catan instead as Steven and Kamal has played the original Settlers before.

Ooo lookit the original board tiles. Very Van Goth. Instead of following actual board setup we decided to have the numbers (white circles in the middle of each tile) distributed randomly.

The setup basically is the same as Settlers with the addition of an ocean hex that shows the progress of the dreaded barbarian ship. There are other additions as well, pushing the gameplay time an extra half-hour or more. Cities and Knights gives a very good impression as an expansion set for Settlers than the expansion for 5-6 players. We started about 5pm and ended at 8.15pm, but given that we'd to pick up the new rules plus clarify on old ones it probably wasn't too long.

"Summon the Krake-I mean Pirate Sheep...I mean Black Boat!" BOOM! ...in seven or more turns.

We definitely am looking to get the original plus Cities and Knights expansion of Settlers sometime. Thing is, now that we've a taste of the expansion it's definitely more fun that just the original. Like Steven says, "Once you played Frozen Throne you don't want to play back Warcraft III." The Travel Box set I currently own can't do the expansion plus is slightly limited in board setup variability. Only one slight gripe about the C&K expansion tho', it's still for only 3-4 players!

Eyes set out so far on: Settlers and Cities and Knights, and prolly Shadow over Camelot.

2 comments:

Aik Yong said...

No worries mate, Cities and Knights have the 5-6 player expansion as well. So your shopping list look like:

1. Settlers of Catan
2. Settlers of Catan 5-6 player exp
3. Cities and Knights exp
4. Cities and Knights 5-6 player exp exp

For completeness sake, you can also get
5. Seafarers of Catan exp
6. Seafarers of Catan 5-6 player exp

You know who to contact for your cheap discounted boardgames ;P

Also, if you don't know, Gary is the owner of the cafe. He's the KL branch owner. And when did you go??? Invite me next time!!??

Janvier said...

Yep found out Gary be the MD for the DJ Branch. Has a tendency to show anguish with a screwed-up look on his face and a finger tracing a tear down his eye.

No no may not look to getting Settlers of Catan 5-6 player exp. The mechanics don't seem to appeal to me.

Tempted by Power Grid as well.

Got a last-minute call on Sunday afternoon to go mah...plus the initial plan was to go about 4-6pm. Didn't realise it could end up until 8pm, else would have called you along.