Overview

The Settlers of Catan. Catan. Socialist Monopoly. This game was, and continues to be popular among many board gaming enthusiasts.

Here at Shelfside, we played this game plenty of times back in high school, swore it off for good, branched out into complicated games, and are now coming back to Catan for another look.

You don’t need us to explain how to play here! Chances are you know this game’s rules like the back of your hand.

Pros

It seems like Mayfair Games has really nailed the production on this, with a terrific insert, a streamlined rulebook, and no-nonsense components. That just lets you jump into the elegant turn structure of 3 things: Roll, build, then trade. That’s it, with a robber mechanic sprinkled in occasionally to get people to steal from each other and keep hand sizes neat.

Catan is just a satisfying progression as you build your colony, increasing the variety and quantity of the resources you want. And then as the game starts to cinch to a close, its starts to get really tense. The buyable development cards make gameplay unpredictable as people can play cards with straight points on them to grab the victory, or suddenly drop a knight card to snipe the largest army for a 4 point swing.

It really does hold up as the perfect gateway game to get people interested in the hobby with tons of ways to interact with your friends. You can go really cutthroat, constantly build up your army to steal resources from others and still get points. Or you can play really peaceful, make good deals with others, and expand your road network to get points. You can’t rely on being too cutthroat, or too peaceful if you want to win consistently, but you can have a really fun time playing either strategy. No one ever gets eliminated in Catan either, so there won’t be any hard feelings.

Plus, Catan really really hits the nail on the head with the little to no downtime. One person rolls the dice, everyone else watches AND CAN benefit. And then anyone can trade amongst with the player who just rolled! Rarely do we find a game that is just so engrossing on other people’s turns for newcomers! This is especially the case for newcomers to board games, who probably won’t be thinking of any sort of counterplay on other people’s turns, but will have to be engaged to get any sort of income.

How do you keep people focused? Make sure that their literal way of making money is attached to other’s people’s turns, genius.

Final Thoughts

So its weird to point out, because Catan is so elegant, but there’s a little bit of a LOT of mechanics going on in the game. So first, there’s the simple trading rules, and those coming from Monopoly will be used to this potential to wheel & deal. But then there’s also growing your economic engine, managing the map, and a fair amount of politics when 3 of you gang up on one guy who’s been getting way too lucky. But you won’t have to stop and dwell on any one mechanic for too long because the game just keeps rolling forward. One of the most immersive parts of Catan is that you have to constantly be engaged as everyone can get resources on anyone else’s turn.

A good comparison for Catan is like a light sampler at a restaurant that just gently holds your hand into this realm of board games, and doesn’t stuff your stomach while giving you a digestible amount of fun variety. Like, there’s games that do trading better, there’s games that better use the building on hexes thing, and so on and so forth.

Just note that you HAVE to trade during Catan if you want to win more consistently. You cannot be the player who tunnels in on the gameplay purely, as that is a one way trip to grumbling about dice rolls. Instead, wheel and deal to make the best of your rolls.