We had a blast last night at the first-ever TechFlash game night where 24 geeks competed to become Seattle's very own "Lord of All Catan." And the winner of Settler night in Seattle (drum roll please) was someone actually from San Francisco. Yep, that's right. An outsider flew into town and just cleaned everyone's clocks. (Maybe this will add to Seattle's ongoing inferiority complex with the Bay Area).

The victor of the evening was none other than tech journalist Ina Fried, who writes the popular Beyond Binary blog for CNET. Fried -- who was in town covering Microsoft and casually asked to join the game -- knocked out hometown favorites Dave Scott of Marketfish, Philip Lee of BuzzLabs and others in the first round. And then she went on to collect the most victory points in the six-person championship game.

Asked about the performance, Fried marked it up to "good luck and three soldier" cards. But Evri's Matt Kolve -- who lost to Fried in the championship round -- said Fried's game play consisted of more than just luck. "She's shark like, and blew it up in the last turn," he said.

As for me, I finished in last place in both games that I played. (Looks like I need to brush up on my road building and settlement creation skills.

Thanks to everyone who came out to trade a little wheat, brick, wood, sheep and iron on a rainy Seattle night. We'll do it again some time. Here are some photos that Todd Bishop shot from the evening.

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UPDATE: Ina offers her account of the night's activities in this post, writing that a "combination of luck and shamelessness" led to the victory.