Board game week day one: Settlers of Catan

This is one of many board games I've found thanks to Tabletop. It looked like it would be quite a fun board game, even for one of my friends who is rather selective about the board games she plays. Once we'd pulled the various parts of the board from their outers, we set up the game. Several hours later, we'd played 3 games and were still going!



The setting

You are a newly arrived bunch of settlers and have turned up on the island of Catan. Catan is rich in resources and you use these to build settlements, cities and roads or to gain development cards- all of which help you to gain victory points.

Setting up the island

The game board is made up of hexagons and these can either be placed in a specific way, as shown in the game rules, or you can randomly set the board out- allowing for a high level of replayability as well as a harder, or easier, game board to play with.

There is, however, the robber, who can steal resources from players and block them from gaining more resources. He activates on a roll of a 7 or when someone puts a Knight card into play, so watch out!

Winning the game

To win the game, you have to gain victory points, which are as follows:

Settlement= 1VP City= 2VP Longest road= 2VP Largest Army= 2VP

Certain resource cards, such as the library, can also give players victory points.

Building things

To build cities, settlements and roads, as well as gaining resource cards, you have to have resources. These are sheep, ore, clay, wheat and wood. If you don't have a certain resource, you have the ability to trade with any player or to trade at a port (at 4:1 at the beginning, but that changes if you gain control of a harbour).

My view of the game

This was one of the first board games I played after watching Wil Wheaton's Tabletop gameplay of it. This game is awesome, both competitively and in a friendly way. We now have the 5-6 player expansion and I plan to see how this affects the overall gameplay.

The different gameplay elements work well together and allow for a brilliant game!

I do truly enjoy this game and if it pleases my friend who is ultra-picky about the type of board game she plays, then it should be able to please pretty much anyone!

MmRed