by David Park

Created on: January 11, 2009

So that's a 6, so you get a sheep, he gets a pasture, she gets three rocks, and I get a clay. Now I can build a settlement!

What the heck am I talking about? The best board game you'll ever find, that's what! Settlers of Catan is the award winning idea of Klaus Teuber. You are a settler on the island of Catan and you are trying to build up your settlements and cities into a crop-hoarding successful masterpiece.

To set up the game, it seems a little confusing. There are 19 different tiles, and these make up your game board. After shuffling them up, you place them into a giant hexagonal shape, making a different board every time you play. This hexagon is your island of Catan. All of these tiles are your resources. There are rocky cliffs, clay deposits, pastures for sheep herding, fields of wheat, and forests of wood. There is also one desert, which is the home of the robber, who will be explained later. Along the edges of the board, there are various ports, including 3:1 non-specific trade ports and 2:1 resource trade ports. After the tiles are all spread out, you need to spread out the numbered tiles. These tiles each have a letter and a number on them, and they are placed on the board in alphabetical order, no matter what the number is. There are two of each number, excluding 2, and 12, which there are only one of each, and there are no 7s; 7 has a different use. So after you've got the board set up, you can roll between your 2-4 players (2-6 if you have an expansion pack) to see who goes first.

This first player will strategically place their first settlement somewhere on the board. Each settlement is worth 1 point, and the players' goals are to reach 10 as soon as possible. The place where the settlement is built determines the resources received. Since all of the resource tiles are hexagonal, anywhere on the inside of the board will yield 3 different resources. So if the settlement is on the edge of a rock, a clay, and a wood, and then the player who owns the settlement *may* collect some of those resources. It all depends on the dice rolls. If the number on the rolled dice and the number on the resource tile beside a settlement are the same, then the settlement receives one of that resource. Resources are used for everything, from buying 'development cards' from a deck, to upgrading your settlement into a city, which gives it the power to give the player double resources.

Along with this settlement, the player builds a road attached to the settlement. Excepting

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