Yeah, not my point, though. Not trading with the guy in the lead is fine and expected; it's when the losers actively decide who the winner is going to be that real problems arise. It's a structural problem to some degree, and the endgame relies heavily on people thwarting the leader in some ways but not others in order to not disintegrate into farce.

In my experience, most groups don't do that. If someone is within 1 turn of winning, nobody trades with him and he gets the robber every time. If multiple people are within 1 turn of winning, you try to pick the guy most likely to win and thwart him or you try to screw both of them at the same time.

I wonder if it's legitimate to do this, but every group I've seen uses this strategy: "if you put the robber on him instead of me, I'll give you an ore." In a 4-player game, you might get three resources out of the robber that way: two players bribe you, and the third guy gets stolen from. That makes a special card strategy very viable for the guy who is closed out of the great settlement spots. That's part of what makes Settlers so fantastic a game; there really are a lot of viable strategies.

One of the house rules that I've seen (I played it once and felt it was neutral) is the "resource chit." Every time there's a roll that doesn't match any of your settlements, you get a resource chit. You can trade in a number of resource chits equal to your current victory point total for any single resource. With this house rule, it's really hard for the game to be completely out of reach for any player, and that can help avoid blatant kingmaking.

On the other hand, the game is short enough that it's not that serious a problem. It sucks when you play a three hour+ game and you lose because of a non-competing player's arbitrary decision on the last turn; in a 45-minute game, it's a bit easier to swallow.

re: M:TG

I'm not a huge fan of the most recent block (Innistrad), but the previous one was really fantastic.

I don't care so much about theme as I do cool mechanics, and I really don't like the double-sided cards at all. I appreciate the innovation but I don't really love the cards.

I have to get into constructed. I play only limited and I really miss out on understanding a huge portion of the game. I think I'm resistant to how rare-heavy (read: expensive) the really competitive decks are.

One of the house rules that I've seen (I played it once and felt it was neutral) is the "resource chit." Every time there's a roll that doesn't match any of your settlements, you get a resource chit. You can trade in a number of resource chits equal to your current victory point total for any single resource. With this house rule, it's really hard for the game to be completely out of reach for any player, and that can help avoid blatant kingmaking.

Interesting idea--it does reduce the role of luck, which I generally prefer.

Yeah, it's when you're halfway through the game and something like this happens that wrecks the fun: You're clearly well on your way towards taking over longest road. The guy who you're going to take it from is, at that point, a little ahead. After you take the road, he'll be slightly behind you. The third player is a likely non-entity, and the fourth player is already hosed. So, the first player gives the fourth player three ores, one wheat, two wood and two brick to take his existing brick and wood and build three roads to sever your ability to take longest road.

Ugh.