What’s Going On?

Settlers of Catan is probably one of the best board games ever invented. It is a game that can last a long time and never get boring. Settlers of Catan is a 3-4 player game which can be expanded to 5-6 players by purchasing an additional expansion set. It was designed in Germany by Klaus Teuber and distributed by Mayfair Games in the United States. The game was introduced in 1995.

The basics of the game is to reach 10 points. There are various combinations of getting to that goal by collecting victory points from development cards (1pt ea.), building settlements (1pt ea.) and cities (2pts ea.), having the largest army card (2pts), and having the longest road card (2pts).

The game is based on collecting resource cards need to build such roads, settlements, cities, and purchasing development cards. To collect resource cards you have to roll the dice. Each resource on the game board has a particular number corresponding to that tile. When that number is rolled with two dice a person with a settlement or city built in one of the intersection of the resource tiles collects that particular resource. Exchanging of resources can be done with other players, with the bank or with harbors. Trading to the bank is always 4 cards of the same kind in exchange for any card that you would need to build. The harbors are different. If a person has a settlement built on one of the harbor points then it’s possible to trade 3 similar cards in exchange for one card that you would want,  and there’s other harbors where you can trade 2 cards of a particular resource for a resource of any one kind you would need to build.

I know all of this sounds complicated, but once you learn the rules and get started it becomes very addicting. Sometimes when you play the game gets really tense between your opponents and you just go nuts.

I played this game in some spare time that my friends and I had and boy was it a crazy game. Never in a long time have they and myself yelled and screamed over a simple little game. It was probably one of the best times that we’ve had in a while. This game is addicting and if you want to have hours and hours of fun and mayhem get a hold of it. If the basic set is not enough for you Mayfair has come up with some expansion sets that make the game a little more interesting. Two of the designed expansions that make the game much more interesting are Cities and Knights of Catan and Seafarers of Catan. Go and get yourself Settlers and have fun!