Trading - The Most Absurd Trade Offer Ever, Is It Possible?
Updated: Apr 4
Catan is the game that many times makes you want to start an argument. The reason for that could be your road got blocked by another player, someone put the robber on you, or because of an outrageous trade offer.
Before we continue, we would like to clarify with you that the trade we are going to mention is completely legal, which means it cannot be done via maritime trade. Now, let's go ahead and discuss the main subject of this article. The ridiculous trade offer that we have been hinting at is "12 resource cards for 01". First and foremost, those 12 cards must consist of 03 copies of 04 types of resources. Secondly, the player trading away that bulky lot must not have any ports. And last, to offer (or be offered) such a huge trade like this, that player should be very far ahead in terms of in-game progress.
The picture above illustrates our example where the turn player - Alex offers to trade away 03 Brick, 03 Wood, 3 Sheep, and 3 Wheat only for 01 single Ore. Asides from the trading contents, what he has left are 02 Wheat and 02 Ore; so in his hand he has 16 cards in total. The other player has just spent all his cards in the previous round, and you only have Ores in hand. At that exact moment, Alex is leading with 07 concrete Victory Points (no dev. card), 05 VPs from settlements along with 02 VPs from the Longest Road; the other player has 04 on-the-surface VPs (with the Largest Army with a couple of facedown dev. cards) and you are still stuck with only 02 VPs. The reasons why he refuses to spend his cards on other kinds of stuff are because:
He has already claimed the Longest Road and no one else at that moment has the potential to take over, so more roads are unnecessary.
He does not have any settlements available to build, he needs to upgrade one to a city first.
Ore is extremely valuable to him as he has no Ore hex, the Ore cards in his hand come from tradings in the previous rounds.
There is no way he can compete for the Largest Army. Let's say he is 04 Knights away from taking it. Wasting his Ore buying dev. card(s) may do him more harm than good.
Alex sees that he has been extremely lucky with the dice rolls since the beginning while you are still stuck at the starting point. Your turn is coming right after his so he offers you this generous trade to help both you and himself. Even if you get struck by number 7, you will still have enough for at least a road and a settlement, not to mention if you don't. This is the ultimate opportunity for you to regain your momentum, will you go for it?
To share your answer, please let us know in the comment section below. Thanks for reading!