LogFAQs > #932520283

111. Settlers of Catan (1995)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Trading, route-building, area control
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 2
Game length: 45 to 100 minutes
Experience: 7+ plays with 2-4 players (2011-2018)
Previous ranks: 86/100 (2016), 66/80 (2018)

Summary - Catan is almost certainly the most famous board game on my list, so if you're reading this far, you probably know it: On a hexagonal grid of hexagonal tiles, players build roads and settlements and gain five different types of resources from communal dice rolls that favor their settlements. These resources are used to build more roads and settlements, upgrade the settlements to cities, and purchase special cards that grant one-time use abilities or victory points. Players can also trade resources with one another.

Experience - My first ever game of Catan, in 2011, was brutal. It was so brutal it turned me away from the idea of "getting into board games" for years. Resource conversions were brutal, the ports felt unintuitive and random, the game took far too long, and worst, I couldn't fucking do anything. These were my closest friends at the time, and I abhorred the game.

I picked it up when a friend was visiting from town and played two-player. With an open map and a much better grasp of the rules, it went much more breezily. Since then I've had lightning-quick, enjoyable 3-player games and some longer 4-player games

Design - Catan recognizes that luck is fun; there's something undeniably endorphine-releasing when someone else rolls the dice and you collect resources. I think people genuinely enjoy trading and negotiation (though I personally don't care for it). It's also got a beautiful aesthetic simplicity (with its wooden components and pastoral setting the definitive eurogame look). As one of the earliest euros, Catan also contains some familiar take-that elements that can even the playing field, and its relatively simple board state allows people to decipher who's winning and losing easily, making it feel more interactive than some other games in the list.

As for why it's low, my massively negative first impression may give a clue. My early hobby gaming days, starting from Catan, were dominated by sucking at pretty much every eurogame. Therefore, when considering this game especially, I'm very sensitive to how it feels to be doing badly in a game.

Like so many economic games, when you have very little, getting more is even more difficult. But making Catan even more brutal is the route-building style in which you expand your territory: if you fall behind at the beginning, you can easily be locked out of ever expanding beyond your initial settlements. And yeah, sure, you can trade, but... if you have the fewest settlements, you also have the fewest goods to trade. Oh, and there are no restrictions on the "screwage" factors of the Monopoly card and the Thief, which allow people to take cards from you, so there are lots of feel-bad moments, too.

As a side note, I'll also say that while it's most known for being played with four, and there is the most competition for spaces there, I actually find it much more enjoyable at three - the playtime goes down by a ton, because not only does each player get to go more frequently, but there's less competition for space, as well as less time wasted asking whether someone has a resource that it's been established no one has. That's why I listed the playtime's range so wide - a 3-player game would be hard-pressed to hit an hour in playtime, while a 4-player game with not-the-fastest-people would average 90 minutes.

Future - Catan is the first game on this list that I own. It does fill a somewhat unique niche, but I don't love it. It doesn't have that unique factor, and it takes a bit too long with four. That said, it's rules-light and decision-light, so I'd definitely be up for playing it with people who aren't cutthroat and are happy just to roll the dice (provided no more interesting alternatives). At three players, I'd be even more eager to break it out. Perhaps its biggest hindrance for its hitting the table at home: it doesn't "really" play two.
---

yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness