How to Play Catan

How to Play Catan

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Welcome, you must be here for the games workshop. I'll need you to sign this release form. What did you say your name was? Oh, ok. Here's your nametag, place it so everyone else can see it, and then right through the door. It's dangerous out there what with the stampede of people, so take this map - it'll save you time in trying to find the workshops you're here for - if you have spare time, I'd recommend the Settlers of Catan workshop over in the corner room, it's always a hit every year. Again, welcome to the 20th annual Games Workshop in Duluth...


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You arrive at the middle of the ballroom. Three halls extend in front of you, to the North, East and West.
>Read Map
The Settlers of Catan workshop is scheduled for now, and can be found to the North.
>North
You head North past the various booths and spectators to the corner room.

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Welcome to this year's Catan workshop where the topic is "Advanced Opening Moves". Before we start, does anyone not know how to play Catan? Eh, you? Okay, here's a quick overview - We have a hex map randomly generated with tiles and numbers. In the "Initalization Round", we go around the table to place our first two settlements and roads - clockwise first to place one settlement and road, then at the last player we go counterclockwise and place the second settlement and road. All the settlements go on the corner of three hexes, and the roads go along the edges of the two hexes. Remember, the second settlement you place will get resources from all the hexes next to it, and only hexes with numbers will produce resources. Don't worry about the ocean, it does nothing.

Now the first player rolls the two die - see all the hexes with the same number as the dice? We generate resources from them. There are five resources - Wood, Clay, Wheat, Sheep, and Ore. You'll use them to build roads, settlements, cities, and buy development cards. As long as you have a settlement next to a resource that has it's number rolled, you'll get one of that resource. Cities produce two resources, which makes them valuable to keep your stockpiles high.

You might be wondering - what's the point of the game? I'm glad you asked - your goal is to produce 10 points, which you get from building settlements, cities, playing victory point cards, having the longest road with a minimum length of five roads connected making a path or the biggest army with a minimum of three soldiers. Since you'll need resources to build structures to win, a good early goal is to build another settlement, or possibly build a city. See your second settlement you placed? It's next to two ore and one wheat, which means you have two ore and one wheat resource cards. Since you need three ore and two wheat to build a city, you're over half way to your goal - and the first player rolled a 6, the same number on that ore, so you get one more ore. We watch him as he builds a road - roads cost one wood and one clay, and he passes on the dice to the next player. Keep watching, don't lose focus yet...

It's your turn! You've accumulated another wheat, so now you have the resources needed to make a city - give your resource cards to the bank and then place your city on the board where a settlement once was. Let's place it at the two ore and one wheat settlement - it'll help you to build a second city quickly. Take back your settlement, and place the city - because you built your city, you can build another settlement with the marker you gained back. Let's look at the other things you can build: we've already seen the road, with it's cost of one wood and one clay, you'll need it to expand as each settlement must be connected to a road and also to get the "Longest Road" title for two victory points. The settlement - costing one wood, one clay, one wheat and one sheep, it produces one resource whenever a hex touching it is rolled. One note about settlements - they need to have at least one empty space between it and another settlement on all sides, so you can't place settlements too close to each other. The city costs three ore and two wheat, you've seen it already. Finally, we have the "Development Card" - a Monopoly "Chance Card" you can buy.

There are x flavors of cards - the Soldier card, the Victory Point card, the Year of Plenty card, the Road Building card and the Monopoly card, in order from least to most scarce. The Soldier card allows you to move the robber - I'll get to that later. The Victory Point card allows you to gain one Victory Point, the Year of Plenty Card allows you to take two resources of any type from the bank - good for when you need that one resource you can't get to finish your settlement. The Road Building card allows you to build up to two free roads, as long as you have markers for it - there are only 15 road markers per player. The Monopoly Card allows you to choose one resource and take all of that type of resource from any player - good for stealing some twenty plus resources from all other players in a big game and making that last push to win. See this player? He's about to play his Monopoly card for sheep, taking five, six, seven, eight sheep from all other players on the board. Fortunately or unfortunately for you, you have no sheep for him to steal. Go ahead, call him a "Kiwi." It'll make you feel better, knowing he's into beastiality. One more note - only one Development Card can be played during your turn, unless it's a Victory Point card which as many Victory Point cards can be played during your turn.

Oh look, he wants to trade his sheep back to their rightful owners after devirginizing them. What a guy. In Settlers of Catan you can trade resources between players in order to get what you need - if you need clay, you can trade your ore to a willing player for clay. Otherwise you can trade to the bank at a ratio of four of your resources to one of what you need, or you can build a settlement at a port to trade to the bank at a lower cost. In order to take a port, you must build a settlement at the edge of the island - you'll have to give up either one or two possible resource hexes in order to gain the port, but you can either trade any good at a ratio of three to one at the ports with the question mark, or you can trade two of a certain good for one of another at the ports marked with the symbol for a certain resource. Let's refuse his offer for now, sheep are no longer lambs after they've been "played with" in the countryside. And what we really want are lamb chops to impress that little lady over there in the corner to get some action later tonight...

Ah. Someone rolled a seven, how nice. Notice that there are no sevens on the board? That's because the robber take his orders whenever a seven is rolled, moving from his desert square to another hex. The robber allows the player to steal one resource from one player, randomly chosen, and denies any resources from being produced by neighboring settlements and cities. This allows you to stop players from getting resources they need to slow down their growth, possibly multiple players that have all built settlements around a single hex. The final effect of the robber causes certain people to lose half of their resources if they're above a certain limit of resources, usually seven resources for a small map, and 9 resources for a large map. A nice seven roll would be cutting the leaders resources in half - it's a good reason to limit the growth of your settlements, because more people in a game means a greater chance of someone rolling a seven and destroying your resources. Remember the Soldier card? It allows you to move the robber, allowing you to get the robber away from you and next to another person, possibly to get back against others for moving the robber next to you. If you roll a seven and play a soldier card, you can get two resources from a person and place the robber twice, whereever you want. Remember, if a player has no resources, you can't steal anything, but it might be worth it to stop them from rolling a lucky nine with three cities around it - then that guy would have six sheep, the Kiwi. Is it better to take one resource, or to stop them from taking six? It's up to you. Also, the Largest Army title takes a minimum of three soldiers and provides two points, so you might want to build a few soldiers of your own to make the points.

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You now know everything you need to know to win the game - at least the basics. Let's get back to the main point of the workshop though - "Advanced Opening Moves". You'll notice that as people place their settlements during the Initialization Round, the better spots are being taken - you know, the places with hexes of number 5-9. You have a couple of choices here - you can try to take good places for resources to deny the spots to others, or you can hope that they move somewhere else. The second settlement is important as it gives you resources - you're able to build a road or a Development Card right off the beginning if you choose a place allowing you to get the resources needed. This may or may not apply to your strategy for what you want to do - with a clay and wood you can set up a road for your third settlement right away, or you can place by two ore and one wheat like you did to build a city. You can apply a "breadth" or "depth" strategy to rolling resources - your settlements can be spread across all the resources and numbers so you have a chance of always rolling a resource every turn for "breadth", or you can focus around a couple of high rolling numbers in order to gain lots of resources in one turn, a "depth" focus. You might also want to build between people to stop them from building longest road, or try to build longest road yourself in order cut off area to build for other players. Think of it as "Area Denial" - people can deny others from building around certain points with roads and settlements. Or think of light cycles from TRON - simply trap your opponent in a area and choke their growth.

That covers the end of our workshop time - we've got a few rounds of Catan going on in the room and a tournament. If you win, you'll get a fluffy sheep to hold and to love - you Kiwi.

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END (11:51PM)