Settlers of Catan

Before I get too much further into our journey through our games closet I thought I better talk about one of our original favorites, The Settlers of Catan. It's amazing how many people have played this game, it's definitely reached cult classic status. There are a ton of versions of this game but the one pictured above (another borrowed pic!) is the version we happen to own. We bought it way back in 2003 when David was working at Hastings waiting for me to hurry up and graduate. He drove all the way to Lewiston, ID to get it because the Moscow Hastings was sold out. It was totally worth the drive since we've played it a zillion times since. In fact we used to play pretty regularly with our friends Jim and Shelby Caldwell before they up and moved to Florida on us!

The original Settlers of Catan game is made to play with 3-4 players and supposedly lasts about 90 minutes. I think that time estimate varies pretty wildly. Playing with 3 players goes quicker in my opinion, because when there are four people resources get used up quicker and it takes longer to strategize and get through the trading phase. Especially when you happen to play with Jim Caldwell who will ask everyone 6 times if they are SURE they don't want to trade for his worthless sheep. Or even playing with our friend Peter who tried to sell "futures" on his cards. We had to start the house rule of no futures trading because of him! Settlers happens to be another Spiel des Jahres winner, a surefire way to tell it's a good game.

The board for Settlers of Catan changes with each game because it is made up of tiles that are shuffled before each game. The fact that the board changes each game makes it more fun because the winning strategy for each game can vary considerably. While hoarding sheep cards and trading them in like cash cows with a sheep port might win you the game the next time you play sheep could be in short supply because they're under the numbers 2, 12, and 11 and the sheep port is all the way across the board but ore is in plentiful supply. You just never know. We all have strategies that we prefer, a popular one in our circle is the "Jesus Strategy" which refers to the above mentioned sheep. It seems like nobody ever wants sheep cards because they aren't useful for building much but they're always plentiful so if you can get the sheep port you can have it made. Some people are more in the builder mode and build roads and settlements like crazy while others get a little ore crazy and build cities and soldier cards quickly. I've played the games using all of these strategies which makes it more fun.

You start off the game with 2 settlements with one road connected to each. Each player starts their turn by rolling the dice and resource cards are handed out to anyone who has a settlement or city adjucant to the tiles with the number rolled. You get one card for a settlement and two with a city. You use the cards to build more roads, settlments, upgrade settlements to cities, and buy developement cards. If a 7 is rolled the player whose turn it is gets to move the robber to any tile they choose. If the robber is on a tile nobody adjacent to that tile gets any resource cards when that number is rolled. Points are scored as follows: Settlement is 1 point, City is 2 points, Longest Road (minimum of 5 lengths long) is 2 points, and Largest Army (minimum of three solider cards) is 2 points. Whoever manages to get to ten points first wins the game.

There are lots of expansions to the original game, and yes we own just about all of them! Each one adds a small twist. We have the 5-6 player expansion, Seafarers of Catan, Cities & Knights (we usually play with this one!), and the 2 player card game. Since this is pretty long already I won't talk about the expansions just yet. We'll save that for next week!