PASTIMES: Someone tell me about Settlers of Catan

Patrick del Poker Grande · #1 09-23-2005, 05:08 PM

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 · #2 09-23-2005, 05:13 PM

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 · #3 09-23-2005, 05:21 PM

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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).

imported_anacardo · #4 09-23-2005, 05:25 PM

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 · #5 09-23-2005, 05:26 PM

No army?!? What's the point?

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

jakethebake · #6 09-23-2005, 05:27 PM

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Should I be a D&D geek to play this?

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Yes. Also you should be 12.

bravos1 · #7 09-23-2005, 05:32 PM

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 · #8 09-23-2005, 05:35 PM

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 · #9 09-23-2005, 05:37 PM

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

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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 · #10 09-23-2005, 05:39 PM

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

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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.