LogFAQs > #963134403

55. Settlers of Catan

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13/catan

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Route-building, map development, economic, dice-rolling, open trading
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 3
Game length: 90-120 minutes
First played: 2011
Experience: 15+ plays with 2-4 players
Previous ranks: 86/100 (2016), 66/80 (2018), 111/133 (2019)

In Catan, you settle the land of Catan, which is formed by numbered hexes of five different terrain types corresponding to five different resources. Your settlements go on the corners of hexes, where up to three hexes meet. On each player's turn, they roll two dice, and every player gets rewarded with resources if their settlements touch hexes with that corresponding number. The active player can then freely trade resources with other players and build structures: roads, settlements, cities, or cards, by paying the corresponding resource costs.

Odds are that if you're reading this, you have heard of Catan and have possibly played it yourself. It is one of the games that "started it all," causing a huge stir in the US when these games were still known as "German games" instead of "eurogames." For me, Catan was also one of the first hobbyist board games I played. And I hated it - it felt like it took a really long time; I spent more time trying to grasp the rules and the resources than playing; I got boxed in; and everyone else seemed to be doing a lot of trading, while I had no resources to trade or ways to make points.

Those factors still bother people about the game, and in my eyes, rightfully so. Catan is capable of having many feels-bad moments - when your settlements get boxed in and you can't do anything about it, when a 7 comes up at the wrong time, when you're being left out of the negotiations for any reason, when you're getting a robber played on you, when the dice simply hate you and you can't roll your resources, when people play "take that" cards like Monopoly, which steals cards from your hand as well; when the game feels just a little (or a lot?) too long.

But there are elements of design in Catan that are really smooth. The structure of the island is great. The economic engine at heart is great. Getting stuff on other players' turns is great. Allowing this free-form sort of interaction is actually pretty unique among the more solitary eurogames these days. The role of luck and the rough edges can create stronger emotional responses than the less touchy games that are more popular among hobbyists these days. The game blends strategy and luck and interaction, and the randomized map and elements like the ports ensure some variety in the setup from game-to-game.

One more cool thing about Catan - and this is not super-unique, but again, is kind of cool - is that it's a racing game, with an endgame determined by the person who scores ten points first. There is no endgame scoring; the person who crosses the finish line first wins outright. And I think that can definitely heighten the drama of the game a bit, compared to performing arithmetic at the end of the game.

My experience playing Catan since that first play has never been as negative. Not knowing the rules is a non-issue now; not only are the rules themselves both simple-to-grasp and almost fully internalized for me, but also I no longer have an intrinsic frustration at the discomfort of not knowing rules that well. That said, I think the single thing that can most kill Catan is how long it takes before it's your turn. Catan when people's turns are less than thirty seconds is engaging and snappy and fun. When people are negotiating and pondering in the minute-plus range on their turns, the pace can quickly turn to a slog, and it just feels that much worse when on your rare turn you turn up nothing.

Four players is the canonical best count for Catan, but to me, I really enjoy three-player. The map doesn't get as congested, and your turn comes around more often, and there are fewer trades to deliberate. The game may just take fewer turns overall, as people are more quickly able to get landmarks such as Longest Road with fewer hindrances. Perhaps that's not how Catan is meant to be played, but the speediness and relative non-meanness of that format has been good to me.