Stats:
No. of players: 3-4 (or 5-6 if you buy the expansion)
Amount of time to play: 1-2 hours
Age requirements: 12+
Set-up time:  10-15 min

Description:

I decided to start with The Settlers of Catan as it seems to be a gateway game for many people. It is a light strategy game with a trading mechanic and some luck thrown in. The Settlers of Catan has players acting as settlers on the resource-rich island of Catan. (I bet that is where they came up with the name for this game.) The goal is to become the “Lord of All Catan” by scoring 10 Victory Points(VPs) first. You get these VPs by building roads, settlements, cities and buying development cards. Building requires resources which include:  lumber, bricks, grain, wool and ore.

Acquiring resources is done by trading with other players or by a roll of the dice. All of the spaces of the board produce a different resource and at the beginning of the game are given a number between 2-12. A player starts their turn by rolling the dice. If you have built a settlement on a space which number gets rolled you receive a resource that the space produces. The only exception is when you roll a seven. A seven activates the thief and you may place him on any space. You immediately get to randomly take a resource card from a player adjacent to where you placed the thief and the space the thief is on produces no resources. Also when the thief is activated any player with more than seven cards in their hand must discard half of them (rounding down).

A Quick Review:

As I said above The Settlers of Catan is a gateway game for many and while not being the only game that got me playing more board games, it was certainly one of the first. I remember playing this game over and over when we first got it for many reasons. First the game is never the same. I didn’t mention this in the description but the board is tile-based and modular. Therefore the layout of the island is random and never the same from game to game. There is also a good bit of interaction between players when you are trying to trade which I also enjoy. Lastly, there is just enough luck to make things interesting.

There are only a couple things about the game I don’t like. There are a couple strategies that will work most of the time. These strategies can be countered if most of the people playing are experienced, but if not someone may win most of the time. That being said, The Settlers of Catan does encourage some ganging-up on the leader. In fact when someone usually gets to around 8 VPs they find trading gets harder and everyone is out to get them. This can be overcome, but usually requires some luck. If more than one person is close to 10 VPs it is not as easy to gang-up, but this can be frustrating. The game can also have people so far behind they know they will not win and that is rarely fun.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 4 out of 6
Luck 5 out of 6
Player Interaction 5 out of 6
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 3 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6

I highly recommend this game (giving it a 5 out of 6) and find that despite a couple small shortcomings I still enjoy playing it.

Click here for some Settlers of Catan Strategy Tips.