There has been a recent increase in interest in one of the most beloved euro’s of all time, Settlers of Catan.  I suspect this is due to the fantastic video play session on the Geek & Sundry’s new TableTop series.   Hit this link for the video. I felt compelled to breakout my CATAN 3D Collector’s Edition set for its first play.  My copy of the collector’s edition rested unplayed on my shelf for a year as I struggled to decide if I should keep it, or resell it. As I’m sure you can already tell, I opened the large wooden treasure chest and set the game up for its first play.  I also wanted to use this opportunity to try out an interesting variant that replaces the fun-crushing robber with a friendly market.  If you want the details about this variant, they can be found here. Of course no game of Settlers would be complete without some soul-crushing dice behavior.  In this game, there were no 5’s rolled, but 9 was rolled over and over again.  I happened to be on the happy side of this equation, as I had set up a nice little sheep factory with the port allowing me to trade those nice little sheep at 2:1.   The dice gods had smiled upon me as I fairly easily took the victory. As for the effect of the market variant on the game.  The market seems to make the game go a bit faster as it

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