Catan Game Review

This months Blogger Board Game has been one the eldest has been after for well over a year! Apparently it’s the gold star prize among board games. The game is of course Catan. It used to be the settlers of Catan but hey the shortened name is much easier!

Catan is a superb but challenging strategy where you play in the role of a settler who has reached the previously uncharted island along with other settlers. Catan is the island which has fields and forests, pastures, mountains and hills and of course the island is surrounded by the sea. The aim of the game is to use your natural resources to create roads and settlements and slowly grow these to be cities. You need though to be the stronger, dominate player.

 

The initial set up takes longer as you have to spend about 15 minutes popping out all the hexagons which make up the island and sea. There are then two ways to play game, you can play using the paper instructions which is how we started. However, we pretty quickly moved to the digital app which we found a lot easier to help us play the game. The app provides how to set up the game and then tutorials for playing. There is also the ability to use the digital dice and events cards. We found it made the game much easier to understand and play this way.  Set up involves randomly placing the large hexagonal tiles, you’ve spent the 15 minutes popping out, into a large island shape and the surrounding the island with water tiles which sometimes include ports.

 

Players play and build up their strength by spending resources – sheep, wheat, wood, brick and ore – which are determined by the resource cards. Points are gained by certain things such as having the longest road, the largest army or from the settlements and cities. When one player reaches 10 points, he announces his points and can win!

 

We all loved this game and voted that our favourite thing about the game was that each time we played this we could play the game differently. It make the game so much more playable as you don’t get bored with playing the same over and over again.

 

Catan is for suitable for 3-4 players and aimed at ages 10yrs old and above. Our 10 year did need an adult to play along side him though. It RRPS for just over £40 but you can purchase it online for £36 and this is a board game worth every penny as the evenings start to close in!