Boards & Brews at Home: The Settlers of Catan

Once again we return to our monthly, at home segments to play larger games with more components.  It's one that nearly every gamer knows, The Settlers of Catan.  This game in my opinion has been one of the quintessential gateway games for people who are curious about strategic, euro board games.  It was released way back in 1995, and that makes me feel old.  The Settlers of Catan was my first real introduction to TableTop gaming back when I was in college at Taylor University.  
I first played this game when I was in COS Club, a group of computer science majors that assembled to play board games.  The whole experience was not like the board games I was raised with.  It was completely different, and I loved it!  To this day, every single person I have ever met whether it be at game nights, or meetup groups have all told me the exact same thing, that they had gotten into TableTop gaming because of Settlers of Catan.  The premise of this game is that during the middle ages, you are trying to attain dominant force on the island of Catan by building settlements, cities, and roads.  On each turn dice are rolled to determine what resources the island produces.  The players collect resource cards such as lumber, grain, wool, brick, or stone to build up their civilizations to get to 10 victory points first and win the game.

The gameplay is really fun and lends itself to various strategies.  I really enjoy games like this that take place during the medieval era and provide players the opportunity to learn newer strategies and interactive elements such as negotiation by trading goods with other players.  The Cities and Knights expansion really adds a lot more mechanics, new cards such as commodities which allows you to upgrade resources, add new buildings, and advance through trade, science and politics which can give you more resources.  This particular expansion is definitely a very good addition to Settlers if you have not purchased it.  The overall experience of Settlers of Catan is excellent and absolutely an essential game for your library.

The Settlers of Catan 

Overall Meeple Rating: 7.5/10 

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