Catch on to Cataan (Settlers of Catan)

Member Name: oneshallstand

Product:	Settlers of Catan
Date:	21/08/01 (580 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Variety whenever you play., Colourful, Simple to learn.

Disadvantages: Abstract style of play may not suit all., Tricky to get hold of copies.

I don't know why it is that boardgames that are spawned on the continent are so much better than what we seem to get here, but I'm not complaining as long as they keep sending them over.

Whilst we seem to get stuck with, 'roll a dice, get this far round the board' licensed games, our friends on the mainland are getting neat little games like this. When I first played it it was in German, supplied with a handy translation, but now there's an english language version courtesy of American Comoany, Mayfair.

The game itself, well, it's a game of expansion and resource management, played on a randomised terrain.

The game comes with numerous hexagonal boards, which you randomly select and place together to create your playing area. Each board represents a different type of resource, such as wood, rock or crops. Using these resorces you build towns, which you place on the junctions between board pieces, each such town allowing you access to the resources of the adjoining terrain.

From there you expand, building roads, new towns and gaining features for you towns to make them bigger and better. Each turn certain territories produce raw materials, which you can then use in turn to build roads and buildings. Your efforts are hampered though by a randomised 'bandit', who runs around the board stealing resources.

The eventual aim is to reach a set number of points, which are earned for building towns, owning the largest roads and for attaining certain tasks.

The gameplay is well balanced, there's a good amount of thinking involved, but the rules make thing nice and easy, so you can devote your thinking muscles to your strategy, rather than to remembering how to play the darn thing.

In all, this is a nice light strategy type game, that probably won't appeal to the very young, but from teens upwards it becomes an enjoyable distraction.

The length of game varies qu
ite a lot, but in general doesn't take so long as to become boring.

The only thing stopping this being more popular in this country is the fact that you can only get it from certain specialist games stores.

Summary: