[xorbie]

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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?

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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).