Traders and Barbarians. . .

Zach and I both really enjoy playing Settlers of Catan.  We've played all sorts of combinations- Cities and Knights, Seafarers. . . we've even mixed Catan with LOTR Risk.  Zach's really good at coming up with interesting combinations and he can usually talk me into playing.  The only problem is that Settlers takes a long time to set up and usually several hours to play.  This generally means that the game continues over several days because it's pretty rare for me to have a long stretch of uninterrupted time.  All that to say, my new favorite Settlers game is Traders and Barbarians.  It sets up quickly (if you use the standard board and 2-3 people are playing) and the points add up fast so it's over in about an hour.  Just like other Settlers games, there are many different combinations and configurations and Zach usually likes to really mix it up but this week we've played a couple of pretty simple games.  The first two pictures here are from the game we played last night- the Barbarian version (I'm red- the longest road!!) and the last picture is the Traders version.  We even convinced Rob to play the Barbarian version last night even though he would much rather play the basic Settlers of Catan without any bells and whistles.  He even seemed to be having fun.  Until I won.  :)