PASTIMES: Someone tell me about Settlers of Catan

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

Alright, you geeks. Tell me about Settlers of Catan. What's the story here and how is it played? And what's all this Canaan and Starfarers crap? Is this one of those games that's supposed to have minimal luck involved? Should I be a D&D geek to play this?

[Eurotrash]

I was skeptical about this game at first, but after learning it and playing it a bit, it's actually pretty cool.


i'll let somebody else go into the explanation of game play, I don't think i have the patience right now to try to explain.

[xorbie]

[ QUOTE ]
Alright, you geeks. Tell me about Settlers of Catan. What's the story here and how is it played? And what's all this Canaan and Starfarers crap? Is this one of those games that's supposed to have minimal luck involved? Should I be a D&D geek to play this?

[/ QUOTE ]

Like I said in another post, it's a game that involves gathering resources with which you build settlements and cities. Basically there is a board made up of various hexagonal hexes, and each hex has a number on it and a resource on it. A turn begins by the roll of two dice by whoevers turn it is, and the numbers on the dice are added up. Then anyone on a hex which has that number gets whatever resource that hex represents. Then whosever turn it is may trade resources with anyone else. There's no rule governing this, and I've seen some really boneheaded trades go down, which is why playing with idiots can get a bit frustrating sometimes.

There are five resources, brick, wood, sheep, ore and wheat, and various resources are needed in different amounts to build different things. For example, a road (roads are needed to build new settlements, which must be attached by roads to exisetent settlements or cities) coasts one brick and one wood, while upgrading a settlement to a city costs three ore and two wheat.

The game is won by getting 10 points, where a settlement is 1 pt and a city is 2, and there are also special bonuses for longest road (self explanatory) and largest army (collecting these certain types of cards, theres no actual army).

[imported_anacardo]

Played it a few times. Seems pretty bad-ass. The board, such as it is, is randomized every game, so reading the lay of the land effectively seems like the primary skill involved. Nobody I've played with is yet to figure out an effective port strategy, but I'm sure it can be done.

[Cancer Merchant]

No army?!? What's the point?

Then again, I play Civ like a wargame. Never seem to win; go figure.

[jakethebake]

[ QUOTE ]
Should I be a D&D geek to play this?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. Also you should be 12.

[bravos1]

Yeah.. there are many strategies...

The 3 most common are probably:
wood-brick : easy to get longest road and to cut other people off from ports and building settlements.

Ore-grain : build cities quick, also good for dev. cards.

Monopoly : try to monopolize a rare resource and get the matching port.

Best part of the game is that the board changes every game therefore different stategies work better on diff board layouts.

Really fun game.

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

Well, my in-laws are annoyingly fixated on playing games whenever there's a family get-together (read: at least once a week). I hate them. I either pwn them at Trivial Pursuit or I get frustrated playing lame idiot games that require no thinking past knowing how to roll dice or collect all the 4s in the deck. I especially hate games that are predicated on chance. If I must be subjected to these stupid games, I at least want to find one that's actually based on intelligence and strategy and not the luck of the dice or the shuffle of the deck and that is at least somewhat fun.

Is Settlers this game, or is it too complicated to try to introduce to the in-laws? What else should I look into?

[Eurotrash]

[ QUOTE ]
Is Settlers this game, or is it too complicated to try to introduce to the in-laws? What else should I look into?

[/ QUOTE ]


oh boy, I foresee some kind of disaster if you try to teach your in-laws this game. I think it'd either work out that they don't understand it at all and just give up eventually, or that you (being the rocket scientist with presumably greater reasoning skills than them) will just dominate.

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

[ QUOTE ]
or that you (being the rocket scientist with presumably greater reasoning skills than them) will just dominate.

[/ QUOTE ]
Well, it does turn out that I do dominate some games to the point that I'm not allowed to play (Trivial Pursuit) or that they want to play 5 people against me and one other guy. There is a bit of satisfaction to be had in that, but you're right - it does get old.

I'm also not sure how excited I am to try to teach them how to play a somewhat complicated game.

You definitely need to get Settlers man. Once it starts getting old, get the Cities and Knights expansion. Thumbs down on the Seafarers of Catan expansion though.

You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to play and everyone who has ever played it loves.

I don't know if anyone's mentioned it yet but you need a minimum of 3 players to play.

Some other good Euro games are Carcassonne(2-5 players) and Puerto Rico which is fairly hardcore as far as games go.

This is one of the best sites to review and purchase games:
www.thoughthammer.com (http://www.thoughthammer.com)

[ddubois]

While not completely predicated on luck, there's too much luck in Catan to really "dominate". It's similar to that-which-cannot-be-mentioned. And it's not hard to learn. I've played it with lots of non-gamers, and they like it. Catan is really the perfect cross-over game. Teach your family, it will be fun.

[Eurotrash]

[ QUOTE ]
While not completlely predicated on luck, there's too much luck in Catan to really "dominate". It's similar to that-which-cannot-be-mentioned. And it's not hard to learn. I;'ve played it with lots of non-gamers, and they like it. Teach your family, it will be fun.

[/ QUOTE ]



ok, well I suppose I phrased it poorly. I agree there's luck to the point where one can't "dominate," but there's a lot to be said about having a dominant strategy. and I think with a game like this, a guy like Patrick (as opposed to his in-laws) would definitely have a leg-up in this department.


edit: i was of course just offering this stuff as my opinion. Patrick, it's a fun game, so you should probably pick it up and try it out anyway.

[jedi]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
or that you (being the rocket scientist with presumably greater reasoning skills than them) will just dominate.

[/ QUOTE ]
Well, it does turn out that I do dominate some games to the point that I'm not allowed to play (Trivial Pursuit) or that they want to play 5 people against me and one other guy. There is a bit of satisfaction to be had in that, but you're right - it does get old.

I'm also not sure how excited I am to try to teach them how to play a somewhat complicated game.

[/ QUOTE ]

There's enough luck involved that you likely won't dominate them every game, or even if you do, the scores will be close enough that they'll "almost beat you" every time. Fun game. I'm playing again tonight. I do like Puerto Rico a bit more, but Settlers has more of a following among my friends.

[xorbie]

[ QUOTE ]
Well, my in-laws are annoyingly fixated on playing games whenever there's a family get-together (read: at least once a week). I hate them. I either pwn them at Trivial Pursuit or I get frustrated playing lame idiot games that require no thinking past knowing how to roll dice or collect all the 4s in the deck. I especially hate games that are predicated on chance. If I must be subjected to these stupid games, I at least want to find one that's actually based on intelligence and strategy and not the luck of the dice or the shuffle of the deck and that is at least somewhat fun.

Is Settlers this game, or is it too complicated to try to introduce to the in-laws? What else should I look into?

[/ QUOTE ]

You can also look into Bohnanza, which is purely a trading game. There's a certian element of luck to the shuffle of the deck, but it's rather fun and not really a "thinking" game (well, there's strategy, but on the face of it, its really simple).

[4_2_it]

There's always this one (http://www.etoys.com/genProduct.html/PID/63402/ctid/17?cpncode=11-1206140-2&srccode=cii_14110944)

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

The in-laws also like to focus on thwarting me to the extent that someone ends up being forgotten about and is allowed to build up points/tiles/cards and winning almost by default. Am I going to be screwed over something fierce when they ally against me in this game?

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

[ QUOTE ]
There's always this one (http://www.etoys.com/genProduct.html/PID/63402/ctid/17?cpncode=11-1206140-2&srccode=cii_14110944)

[/ QUOTE ]
Oh my aching ass! Don't worry - this is already there and is played by the younger kids. They like to set it right on the wooden floor right behind me and pound on it like there's no tomorrow.

[xorbie]

[ QUOTE ]
The in-laws also like to focus on thwarting me to the extent that someone ends up being forgotten about and is allowed to build up points/tiles/cards and winning almost by default. Am I going to be screwed over something fierce when they ally against me in this game?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, if they do it well enough. If nobody ever trades you any resources and they trade within themselves to cut you off from key expansions/ports/longest road/largest army you are basically screwed.

[Eurotrash]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The in-laws also like to focus on thwarting me to the extent that someone ends up being forgotten about and is allowed to build up points/tiles/cards and winning almost by default. Am I going to be screwed over something fierce when they ally against me in this game?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, if they do it well enough. If nobody ever trades you any resources and they trade within themselves to cut you off from key expansions/ports/longest road/largest army you are basically screwed.

[/ QUOTE ]



yeah, this is what I was thinking. they can basically just pool all their resource cards to one player who will essentially pwn you.

Yeah it's easy to gang up on someone in Settlers. This maybe a good alternative though:
http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/2154/apples2bs.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

This seems a lot like what's that game called where you think of possible definitions of random obscure words? I pwn them in that game too. They're all so incredibly easy to read and it's easy enough to figure out what the word roughly means that I can pretty much score points on every turn.

[JMP300z]

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah it's easy to gang up on someone in Settlers. This maybe a good alternative though:
http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/2154/apples2bs.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[/ QUOTE ]

this game is a f'n hilarious w/ a group of the right friends....

-JP

[flatline]

[ QUOTE ]
This seems a lot like what's that game called where you think of possible definitions of random obscure words? I pwn them in that game too. They're all so incredibly easy to read and it's easy enough to figure out what the word roughly means that I can pretty much score points on every turn.

[/ QUOTE ]

Balderdash; that game is great.

Settlers, however, may be the best board game in existance. Its not really that complicated, and its fun as hell. Strategy is a big part, but enough luck to let new players have a chance.

[JPinAZ]

Another cool game to play is Acquire.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/prod/acquire

You place tiles on the board to build up companies that you can then buy stock in. When a tile is place that connects two companies, the one with less tiles is merged into the larger. If you have stock in the smaller company, you can get cash or shares in the larger. If you have stock in the larger, it's now worth more (the stock is valued based on how many tiles it has.) Whoever has the most money/stock value at the end wins. My descriptions probably sounds a bit complicated, but it's really pretty easy to play.

No it's not like that at all. You don't have to be a vocab genius.

Everyone gets a hand of seven red apple cards that are nouns like Michael Jackson, tornado, Tobacco Companies, My Hair etc.

Everyone takes turns being the judge. The judge randomly puts out an adjective green apple card like zany, wet, puffy, cute, comical etc.

The other players pick one of their own noun cards that best matches the adjective card and anonymously give it to the dealer. The dealer shuffles them up and picks the best match and awards the set to whoever gave that particular noun card.

Then everyone draws back up to 7 and the next person is judge. The first to collect a predetermined number of sets wins.

For example, say the judge puts out a green apple that says 'Kinky'. You turn in a red apple that says 'Chains' or 'My Hair' if the judge has kinky hair. If the judge likes your answer, you'll get that set.

It may sound kind of lame but people love it. I used to run a couple of game stores and it was always a sure fire hit.

Part of the fun is trying to figure out what card will appeal to the judge.

[PocketJokers72]

[ QUOTE ]

I'm also not sure how excited I am to try to teach them how to play a somewhat complicated game.

[/ QUOTE ]

There is this new game going around that I saw on TV. Its call 'Texas Hold'em Poker' and apparently it's really easy since the only thing you do is say "all-in" and then flip your cards up and see if you win. Looks fun, I think I'll try it myself.

[Cancer Merchant]

Anyone for trying a game? www.jsettlers.com (http://www.jsettlers.com), Host 2, game oot.

Never played before, come pwn a n00b

trying to get in now as docman.

Talking to server.

[bravos1]

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah it's easy to gang up on someone in Settlers. This maybe a good alternative though:
http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/2154/apples2bs.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[/ QUOTE ]

This game is hilarious.. but you really need 6+ people for it to be real fun!

[xorbie]

[ QUOTE ]
Anyone for trying a game? www.jsettlers.com (http://www.jsettlers.com), Host 2, game oot.

Never played before, come pwn a n00b

[/ QUOTE ]

Blah. This keeps crashing my firefox and not showing up with IE.

[Cancer Merchant]

weird, doc and I are playing against bots. Fun game.

Apples 2 Apples is an awesome game, especially at a crazy drunken party.

[imported_anacardo]

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah it's easy to gang up on someone in Settlers. This maybe a good alternative though:
http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/2154/apples2bs.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[/ QUOTE ]

With the wrong friends, i.e. a hypercompetitive sociopath who has to win every argument, playing this game can be one of the most trying experiences of one's lifetime.

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

[ QUOTE ]
With the wrong friends, i.e. a hypercompetitive sociopath who has to win every argument, playing this game can be one of the most trying experiences of one's lifetime.

[/ QUOTE ]
I think I'll leave this one on the shelf.

[BoxTree]

First of all, Settlers is the best board game ever. I devoted a thread to this topic a few months ago.

Second, thanks to Joker for pointing me here.

Third, go here (http://www.s3dconnector.net/index.php) to play Settlers online against real people. For free.

Now to your questions, Patrick.

It's easy to learn.

It's easy to teach.

It's a great game to play with in-laws. I play with the mother of a good friend of mine, my friend's 15-year-old brother, and a varying fourth player about once a week. And sometimes my friend actually plays, too. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

The game has a nice balance of luck and skill. A first-time player can win, but a long-time skillful player is more likely to win.

Collusion is quite possible but not to be feared. While it's certainly true that two or three people can gang up on one player, that strategy quickly goes down the tubes when the victim decides to exclusively help one other player. Just make sure you pick the same "ally" every game. Pretty soon, the other two players will stop colluding with the third player because they'll realize that, in thwarting you, they're only helping the other guy to win. It's a remarkably effective counter-strategy if you plan on playing with the same people over and over.

If your opponents are quite tough and become good at the game, introduce Cities and Knights (an expansion). It adds many layers to the game. Basically, C&K reduces the impact of trading and favors the players who are able to make the best use of many options.

Seafarers sucks as its own expansion. Seafarers with C&K and the original game is pure ambrosia.

For the original game, a dominant strategy usually becomes apparent for each game. But such a strategy varies from game to game due to the randomness of the board, and a dominant strategy for one player is almost never the same strategy for another player in the same game.

Aieee! Settlers rocks. If you'd like to chat more about it, PM me. I'm always excited to talk shop about this game.

I recently bought all three games for under $80 total. I can dig up the website if you're interested.

[Mason Hellmuth]

I agree that Settlers is probably too complicated for your in-laws. A good alternative would be Carcassonne (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/822). It's very simple to learn, even if you're not so bright, but a skilled/thinking player can run circles around the amateur. Luck can be a big factor at times, but it's not as bad as the card games you mentioned. It's just a freakin' fabulous game.

[BoxTree]

[ QUOTE ]
I agree that Settlers is probably too complicated for your in-laws. A good alternative would be Carcassonne (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/822). It's very simple to learn, even if you're not so bright, but a skilled/thinking player can run circles around the amateur. Luck can be a big factor at times, but it's not as bad as the card games you mentioned. It's just a freakin' fabulous game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Carcassone is a good alternative. But I actually found Settlers to be less complicated. Either game should be fine, though.

[The Armchair]

Boxtree ruined my set by losing a piece.

[BoxTree]

[ QUOTE ]
Boxtree ruined my set by losing a piece.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, I didn't lose a piece. I lost a card. A Monopoly card. And since you had the fux0red Second Edition German edition (printed in English) that had 3 Monopoly cards, 3 Road Building Cards, and 3 Year of Plenty cards (that were called something else...Early Harvest?), 19 Knights (not Soldiers), and 7 Victory Points, I actually helped to balance your farputchk'd game.

Once the American version was released, we realized that the original game was horribly unbalanced. So we took out one of each super card, five knights, and two victory points, and tada, we now had the same progress card distribution as the American (read: more balanced) version.

And I lost a sheep card, too, which actually would have come into play tonight when all 19 sheep were in the hands of various players. Whoa to the person who wished there were 20 sheep cards. Ah-cha.

And your set was already ruined for people like Yoni. Stupid color deficiencies.