I’ve mentioned Kids of Catan before, but it was recently brought to my attention that I haven’t spoken about Settlers yet. Settlers of Catan is a game of resource collection, building, trading, and, of course, backstabbing.
Each person starts with a settlement and a road. The settlement is at the intersection of three hexagonal tiles, each with resources on them. There are five resources – ore, lumber, wheat, brick, and sheep. There’s also the desert, which people avoid starting adjacent to because it has no practical purpose to neighbor. Each resource tile has a number on it. When that number is rolled, every settlement adjacent to any tile with that number gets the resource specified on that tile.
Resources can be used for many things, namely, building. Building roads, building settlements, building cities…. They can also be used to trade for things you do want, either with other players or with the bank, though usually the deal is better with people. You can also trade them for development cards, which have various perks.
There’s one special number that has only one tile it is present on, and that number is seven. Seven is on the desert. “Why would seven be on the desert?” you ask, “You said the desert is useless.” Yes, yes it is, but it’s resource isn’t. When you roll a seven, you get the robber. Instead of everyone getting something useful, you get to take something useful by placing the robber on a tile and stealing one random card from one player that neighbors that resource. That resource is also blocked, so until the robber is moved again no resources will come out of that tile, even if it’s rolled. I may have gotten in trouble once for blocking a tile that all three of my opponents had settlements near, which proceeded to be rolled by each of the three of them, in turn, before the dice got back to me and I rolled another seven. Whoops.
In the end, the game comes down to who gets the most stuff fastest. Settlements, cities, longest road, largest army, extra point cards… you get the idea. If you’d like to read a comedy piece pointing out the logical flaws of Catan, click here. It mentions some more complicated processes, like Universities, which are from the expansions that I don’t think I’ve played, hence I haven’t mentioned them here.
