My only real issue with SoC is that there is no real comeback mechanic. For a euro-style game it has a good amount of other player interaction through trading and blocking other people’s road routes. It has a huge amount of replayability due to the fact that the board is different every time that you play. Settlers of Catan is a great game with a lot of strategic depth and a healthy amount of luck added in. Overall Catan is definitely a “gateway game” into the whole new world of board gaming and, since one of my brothers taught it to me, it’s definitely a game I would have no trouble getting my brothers to play.īoth brothers, 100% on the teachability scale. I have seen it happen before more than once. The other nice thing about Catan is that it is very possible for a new player to end up winning their first game. Everything else is either window dressing or follows intuitively from this concept. You might be scrolling up and wondering how I can say that when there are so many rules and parts but the core of the game comes down to a very simple concept: you gain resources via the dice roll, you trade resources with other players to get exactly what you need, and you build things to gain victory points. Part of this is because of how easy it is to pick up even without a lot of board game experience. It is by far one of the most widely known and culturally celebrated board games out there right now. The Settlers of Catan is the game that got me (and eventually my friends) into board games beyond Monopoly and Risk. Once all of the starting positions have been chosen you are ready to play! Brother Rating: If the port has a 2:1 with the symbol of a resource on it, that means you can trade in two of that resource to get one of any resource you want. If the port has a question mark with a 3:1 symbol, that means you can now trade in 3 of any one resource to get one of any resource you want. If you have a settlement on one of the two spots that touches a port, you have access to that port. On the water tiles surrounding all of the tiles you will see some rocks next to symbols. There are also ways to get a favorable deal from the bank instead of the 4:1 baseline. This is not a particularly good deal but if don’t have access to a resource it could be your only access to building something that requires it. One thing that can be useful if you simply cannot get a certain resource is that you can trade four of one resource to get one of any resource you want. This rule applies for both your own settlements and other players’ settlements. Here this is legal because the red settlements are two “edges” away so they are not too close.
The Robber starts the game on the desert tile. Then their turn continues as normal where they can build and trade until they pass their turn to the next person. The roller gets to now blindly steal one resource from one of the players who has a settlement or city taking that tile. Whichever space the robber is placed on will not generate resources until the robber is moved from it. Once everyone who needed to has discarded then the player who rolled the seven moves the robber token to a space. You get to choose what cards you discard. So if you had nine cards in your hand when a seven is rolled you would have to discard four cards. The first thing that happens is that anyone who has eight or more cards must discard half of their hand, rounded down. That’s because when a seven is rolled something special happens. You may notice that there is no seven token to be put onto the board. If you have at least five continuous roads as well as the longest road of all players you get the “Longest Road” points. Use the largest army token to keep track who has the two points at any moment. Another player would have to get to four knights in order to take those two points away from me.
For example, let’s say I was the first one to get to three knights. If two players have the same amount of played knights than whoever had that amount of knights first is the one with the extra points. Once this happens for the rest of the game whoever has the most flipped up knights at a given time has two extra victory points. The Largest Army comes into effect once any player has three or more flipped up (played) knights. You can only play a single devo card during your turn and you cannot play them during other players turns. The cards names are Market, University, Library, Chapel, and Great Hall. It does not need to be played to count towards your total VPs. Victory point: This development card is never flipped over unless you have just won the game.