So, I take back what I said about getting shut out early in Catan Junior. I’m red here, and the guy happened to be the first to build a lair (the game’s version of settlements). He built it next to my ship in the lower right.
Ships are like roads in Catan Senior. You build ships from your lairs, which let you build lairs next to your ship. (A ship has to be built next to a lair, and lair has to be built next to a ship.)
So, by building next to my ship, he eliminated one of my potential lair sites. What, then, is my path to seven lairs (which is what you need to win)? I had to build a lair near his stuff, so I could have a chance of building further into his territory, which I did. So, that’s three.
Potentially, I could get the most pirate cards, then get a lair on Pirate Island. That would be four. Then, there’s an uncontested spot on the east of the board where I could build five.
But the last two? I had to race to build on the center hex to have a chance of building to seven. The guy only needed to block one of those spots to make it impossible to get to seven.
Which he did.
Then, he got the other spot, and I conceded, but he enjoys things like trading things for other things and resetting the market (which I have to say feels like a sweet hack), so he said we had to keep playing, and he took his time getting to seven lairs.
In Senior Catan, if you get locked out early, you can hope to get lucky and win via VPs from development cards. Here, there are no VPs, and you can in fact get locked out of seven lair potential early.
Now that I think about it, maybe there’s some errata online that addresses this.