Written by Gibran
October 17, 2023
This is the first ‘modern’ board game I played. I still can’t find the right word to describe these games that you have to explain every time you invite someone to play, and that you invite to play because they are awesome.
The Settlers of Catan board can be different every time it’s played. Players take turns rolling dice to collect resources from the hexagon with the number on the dice. These hexagons can be occupied by more than one player at a time, giving balance to the game. With these resources, players trade to acquire roads, settlements, cities, or special cards that can be knights, victory points, or special actions that change the pace of the game.
A game can be resolved in 45 minutes or last for hours.
Absolutely fantastic.
Finding the time to sit down for a game of Catan is a luxury during the early years of parenthood; however, we manage to find gaps that allow my wife and me to challenge each other in luck and strategy with this game. Although setting up the game takes a while and takes up a lot of space on the table. Furthermore, children are more drawn to it than to other games due to its colorful and multifarious design.
It sparks the imagination, making you feel like the lord of the forests or the sheep, holding the rest of the players under the monopoly of a resource, or cycles of vendettas between players that could cost them victory by succumbing to emotions rather than reason. Catan is an immersive game. Not in vain, the instruction manual greets us as if from a real place: ‘Welcome to the island of Catan.’
In summary: Play it!
As for the marital scorecard, at the time I write this article, it’s a bit forgotten for this game, as I explained before, it has been the first of several, some of which we are still testing. So, the scoreboard is forgotten, we have more important things to store in our heads.
Expansions
As I mentioned earlier, the game takes up a lot of space on the table, and for a married couple with young children, it complicates the option of pausing the game for later. However, now I know that there are some options that optimize two-player games with limited available space. Below, I present only the two editions that I know, clarifying that there are more about which I have nothing to comment.
1.-Travel Edition: This is not an expansion but a design variant that is suitable for playing even in a car, thanks to the miniature board with slots to insert the pieces, unlike the regular edition in which practically any piece could be moved with a bump to the table.
2.-The Duel: The Duel is an edition in the format of small cards. It is, in turn, a more portable and space-saving presentation of the original version, and it’s actually practically the original game with rule modifications to make the 2-player game more fun. This is because the original game does not include instructions for games with fewer than 3 players; instead, the gaming community has chosen to use some custom rules to adapt the game.
Reminder:
I highly recommend that if your situation is similar to ours, where most of the time you play with only two players, you should consider acquiring the Rivals edition, which exchanges tokens and boards for cards but replicates the normal Catan experience.
