F@%& Settlers of Catan

Settlers of Catan

Plot:  Uh.  Colonize an island or something.

Goal:  It's a game about victory points, 1st player to 10 wins!

Set Up:  The genius of this game is in the set up.  There are 19 resource tiles: 4 sheep pastures, 4 wheat fields, 4 wood lots, 3 clay pits, 3 stone quarries and 1 desert.  In addition there are 9 ports:  5 specific for a resource and 4 generic.  Resource and port tiles are placed randomly in such a way to form an island, see below.

There's a lot of replay here, something along the order of 19! (that's 19 factorial) different possibilities for the map.  Ok it's a lot less than that because of duplicate tiles, but let me assure you there are a lot of combinations.  But WAIT there's more.  Each resource tile gets a number from 2-12 assigned to it.  Those numbers correspond to the results on 2D6, if that tile's number hits, a resource is potentially generated.  There are specific rules for assigning these numbers, specifically to make sure that the higher probability results aren't right next to each other.

Gameplay:  After set up, a snake draft occurs.  Player 1 picks a spot on the map to place a settlement and a road, then onto player 2 then player 3, then player 4 twice then back down the line.  So the player 1 theoretically gets best and 8th best spot.    The 2nd spot picked gives you some starting resources.

So player 1 rolls dice.  Anyone with a settlement attached to the number rolled gets loot.  You need loot to build more roads, more settlements, upgrade settlements to cities, and by special cards.  There's a specific recipe for everything and gathering enough resources is the game.  Trading with other players is allowed, but anything with future considerations is of course non-binding.   Get enough of one type of resource and you can trade with the bank.  Settlements on ports make this easier.  The normal ratio is 4-1, a generic port is 3-1, and a typed port is 2-1.  A typed port ONLY deals in the resource depicted.  Duh.

So the twist.  7 is not applied to any resource.  Instead a 7 activates the robber (robber starts in the desert.).  The player who rolled the 7 moves the robber to a new tile, and can steal a resource from someone with a settlement on that tile.  That tile is also now interdicted, if it's number comes up, no resources are generated.  Also a 7 forces a discard check, anyone with over 7 resources must discard half.  

Action Cards:  a certain recipe allows purchase of action cards.  The most common available is the knight, the knight moves the robber with the usual consequences, except for the discard check.  Get 3 knights and you may qualify for the largest army, which gets you VPs!  Other cards include Road Building, Discovery, Monopoly and VP cards.  Road Building gets you two free road builds, Discovery gets you 2 resources of any type and Monopoly forces everyone at the table to give you a specific resource type (your choice.)  VP cards get you VPs.  Duh.  Only 1 card can be played per turn (except for VP cards which are kept secret until game end).

Game ends when someone reaches 10 VP.  Settlements are worth 1 VP each, but you only get 5 of them.  Cities are worth 2 VP and recycle a settlement back into stock.  Having the longest road gets 2 VP, the largest army gets 2 VP and some action cards give 1 VP.

Tactics:  It is extremely hard to win this game without cities.  To do that you would need to play all 5 settlements, have the longest road, the largest army AND draw a VP action card.  So the resources for cities are really important; you need a lot of stone.  How you get that stone varies, but you absolutely need a plan for getting some.  Sheep are the least useful, the recipes never require multiple sheep and they are only used for settlements and action cards.

Other than that, tactics are often contradictory.  Drafting spots with high resource yields (the 6's and 8's) is important.  So is getting hits on a big range of die rolls.  So is having access to every resource.  So is having the ability to get favorable trade ratios via the ports, and on and on...

Action cards are important.  At the very least they control the robber, keeping him off your tiles and interdicting your opponents.  I really like the discovery and monopoly cards.  Those are like giving resources to Tony.  Think of him like a bank, but better than a bank since banks are getting knocked over all the time.  Getting monopoly and discovery robber-proof your resources.

Review:  I still really like this game.  It's fast paced and has lots of good decisions.  Unfortunately its about 15 years old, which means I have had the opportunity to play this lots.  It's not something I want to play often, but a once a month or every two months this would be great fun.  7.5/10