Old hat to you, maybe, but new to me!

We all got invited to new neighbor Steve Gibson's house (up the road a piece from where I live, within walking distance) to a family gaming night. The kids lept into the Gibson's lukewarmtub (as opposed to hot tub) and watched movies while the adults played games.

Steve was astounded that I had never played SETTLERS OF CATAN before. Well, what can I say? I'm sure somebody reading this is gasping out "Heresy!" at the moment. The thing is, I kind of missed out on the big "settlers craze" of the late 90s. It was just sort of there... and I always figured if I had a pressing need to play, someone out there had a game of it already.

We played the Mayfair version, just plain old vanilla Settlers (in deference to me) in the basic game setup.



There's been a gazillion things written about Settlers of Catan... I won't add to it (click on the bolded link if you've been living under a rock since 1994, otherwise take my word for it), except to say it's a combination of exploration/resource grabbing and trading game. I really, really like Settlers and can't believe (sure, now!) that I haven't played it before.

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The interesting newcomer game was PLUNDER! by Laughing Pan Games.
This is a newish (2004) card game by a new company... it's fairly expensive at 25.00 a pop, but you get some great card art and nice bits, all in a funky treasure chest card box. The mechanics are basic explore and plunder, build-the-world type stuff using cards as the "ocean" and "Ports" and "coastlines". Game rules are here.

We used a combination of Pirates of the Spanish Main card-ships and the regular game bits, like this guy on Boardgame Geek.







Summary:

Fun little game, with lots of potential. It got too late for us to finish-- it being 1:30 AM or so, but I'd like to try it again!