2011 Game 1: January 3

Ness Dominates Round One
Burt Household, Kaysville, Utah

In an early 2011 test of wits over the fertile fields that represent the proverbial battlegrounds of Catan, Janessa, comparatively new to the game of Catan, blew out Beeg and Neal, two of the "originals" in the ever growing Catan gameplay legacy. A spectator of the game made the following observation, "I pretty much knew it was over when Neal decided not to put his second settlement on the wheat, brick, wood location, which would have enabled him to make an early play for the 2 for 1 wheat. Had he done so, his 6, 5, 10 wheat combo would have bordered on unstoppable, and he could have easily moved to pick up the nearby 8 ore within the first several moves of the game."

As it was, however, Janessa's superb positioning paid off and, after fending off a mini run by Neal around the 5 or 6 point level, she went on to 10 pretty much uncontested. It should be noted that Beeg was visibly hampered by the abuse he and his basketball team took earlier that night, getting down by almost 40 points and ultimately losing by just 30 once the other team completely stopped playing defense. A teammate who missed several layups during the game noted the following, "We are bad at basketball." At any rate, the mental and physical abuse was too much was clearly too much to overcome, and the outcome indicated as much.

Game Notes:
Final Score: Janessa 10 w/ longest road, Neal 7, Beeg 4
Big play: Janessa's first city--the first of the game...prompting the question of how often the person who builds the first city wins the game. Preliminary estimate: 50%
Spectators: Nate Burt, Paisley

Overall Standings after 1 game:
Janessa: 1-0-0-0
Neal: 0-1-0-0
Beeg: 0-0-1-0
Boom: 0-0-0-0