bazilisek: Actually, I feel the worst position is the one before the last. The really good hexes are already taken and unlike the last player, you do not have the chance to at least grab two of the remaining that make good sense together. The third one is picking up scraps in both of his turns.
Come to think of it, you've a good point there.
bazilisek: From my observations (and I've played this game a lot), if you don't get any or just very few cards in the first two rounds of dice rolls (something you can't influence in any way), you might as well give up, as you're never ever going to catch up to the other players. Most games I've seen have one or two players who lose the chance to win relatively early in the game, and for the rest of it are just sitting there, rolling the dice and praying it would already end. That's not good design.
That's exactly it. Even if you're not in a place to have any shot at winning, you should at least have the chance to do
something that has a meaningful impact on the endgame. As it happens, you're just left there, feeling bored and unengaged.
bazilisek: I've also witnessed a game where a 2 was rolled considerably more times than a 5, which effectively determined the winner -- sitting on what theoretically is the most worthless position in the game. The element of randomness really hurts Settlers of Catan, in my opinion.
Yeah, I remember once getting soundly humiliated when I put myself at junctions where I was guaranteed a good intake of at least one of every resource, only to have the dice completely favour the other tiles. It felt almost like I was being punished for good planning, or that it didn't matter at all.
bazilisek: Do check out Puerto Rico; there is almost no randomness in that game, which is one of the reasons I like it.
I've heard a lot about it at my board games group, and hopefully I'll get a chance to play it, if we can tear ourselves away from Ticket to Ride.
