Danny ChaiWe played Settlers this evening with the Mighty Hurs. I won, and Ben actually applauded my strategy, which was flattering.
But anyway, as with all groups, they play slightly different and I have questions about this. For example, some people allow futures trading. Meaning, give a resource for a promise of a future resource.
I’m against this; I think it violates the spirit of the game. In the rules, I believe it states somewhere that you can give away cards for free if it’s advantageous to do so, like if you have too many cards in your hand. To me, futures trading kind of dampens this principle of being situationally screwed and forced to give stuff away.
Philosophically, I dunno, I just believe that trading should reflect what everyone has and doesn’t have at that moment in time. I like that situational element. It makes it less predictable and more fun. Futures trading dampens that, and to me, that’s less fun.
I’ve also seen several groups play with robber bribing. Giving cards to prevent the robber being placed somewhere, or giving cards to entice someone to play a soldier. I’m against this also. None of these are explicitly against the rules, but I feel like their against the spirit of the rules, or the framer’s intent. But that’s just me.
Another thing. Girls playing games are strange to me. Near the end of the game, Ben was actively getting everyone to gang up on me, and Linnea felt all bad about it. I’m against this. The feeling bad part. People *should* gang up on the whoever’s in the lead. I’m against just letting anyone win without doing something about it, even if it’s me. To me, winning isn’t as sweet if you know that people weren’t really trying their fullest to stop you. But girls have this hangup about trying to take someone down. I dunno, that’s weird to me. Maybe it’s because women take more things personally whereas men distinguish between game competition and real life? Except for Ray Allen and Bruce Bowen.