I played parts of 2 games last night.
Fun while it lasted.
Clearly losing due to robberies in the first one. Lack of bricks hurt too.
The robber prevented me from getting at least 5 resource cards in that one.
Made it easy for me to give up my spot to the brother-in-law while we went 10 miles away to get the take-out food.
There was one friend who actually knew how to play guiding the rest of us.
One of the newbies robbed my brother in law to win the game as we came back with dinner.
Made up for bad loss in the start of the follow-up game.
I got 2 cities next to brick production. Also picked up wood and grain early before the robber landed on one of my brick hexes. Had a major road program going with the brick and wood (from trades). Also managed to get 2 development cards. A series of other people rolling on my #'s loaded me up with resource cards before I rolled a 7 and got robbed for having to many cards. So I did not get to upgrade to a city, but still got some stuff down due to the abundance.
I will find out later tonight if my brother in law pulled out a victory from the better start.
He may have played before.
My first time playing was 3 yrs ago, and I got left in the dust as the other two got all the good rolls and traded with each other, since I had v. little.
I did check out a few strategies, and I only recall that the brick/wood one was popular. I could see how the other players were getting only the occasional development card while I was getting access to better build sites so I could cover more dice spots and get resources.