Klaus Teuber passed away last week. For those who don’t recognize his name, Teuber designed the boardgame Settlers of Catan. It was one of two games that I discovered in the ‘90s that led to my renewed interest in boardgames. (The other was Richard Garfield’s RoboRally). Settlers of Catan led to a renaissance in boardgames that hit a Goldilocks sweet spot. Not too long and complicated. Not too short and trivial. It has a nice balance of luck and strategy, and there was both a competitive and cooperative aspect to winning gameplay.
In those early years, I played hundreds of games of Settlers, as we called it then. (Now the game is just called Catan.) I still have my first (English) edition. Although the box cover is slightly beat-up, the components are still in good condition. But with the arrival of newer games, Settlers began to lose its shine. I will still happily play it with the right crowd, i.e., one that doesn’t devolve into analysis-paralysis or hyper-competitiveness. For me, the sweet spot is a four-player game that takes 45-60 minutes. It’s much better as a relaxing, low-key, game of building and trading. And occasionally frustrating your opponents.
The first edition does not mesh with any of the expansions, so I’ve never bought them. Also, the expansions add to playing time. I like the Seafarers expansion. It adds 15-30 minutes, depending on the scenario, but provides an element of discovery (which is fun!) and also mitigates the sheep problem. (If you’ve played Settlers a lot, you know what I mean.) On the other hand, the Cities and Knights expansion easily adds an hour or more, and results in more hindrance strategies. I tired of it after my first game, although I did give it a chance by playing it more than once. There are now many themed versions of Settlers of Catan. I only own one: Settlers of the Stone Age because I like the history-evolution theme to it. The gameplay is, overall, slightly inferior to the original, but I like the theme enough to play it sporadically.
I looked up the list of games designed by Teuber to see how many I’ve played. Elasund and Entdecker are games I used to own but gave away to friends as I accumulated too many games and they were hardly played by me. Teuber hasn’t actually designed that many games outside of the Catan spinoffs and expansions. Two famous ones that I haven’t played are Barbarossa and Hoity-Toity. Looking at my own collection, the designer whose games I have collected the most is Reiner Knizia, a prolific game designer who has elegant designs likely influenced by his background in mathematics.
Back in the day, these “famous” German game designers worked on games as a side-project. They had full-time jobs. Teuber worked as a dental technician. Knizia worked in finance. Both finally quit those jobs to become full-time game designers in the late ‘90s. What is it about the Germans and their side hobbies? One of the most influential theories of the origin of life came from a patent lawyer, Gunter Wachtershauser, who quietly toiled away from years before unveiling his metabolism-based iron-sulfur world. It shook up the origin-of-life community and opened new lines of research.
Nowadays, my game-playing has ebbed to a low level. The pandemic didn’t help – although there was a resurgence in my playing the boardgame Pandemic during that time. I read more now; I suppose that’s my new hobby. But I’m always up for a good game. As long as it doesn’t take too long, and has an appropriate mix of luck and strategy commensurate with the time I invest in playing it. Settlers of Catan paved the way for the myriad choices available today, thanks to Klaus Teuber.
No comments:
Post a Comment