Settlers of Catan

 

Settlers of Catan
Company: Kosmos; Type: Eurostyle; Players: 3-4; Time: 1-2 hours; Genre: Builder; Rating: 💥 I hate it!

I know that this will be controversial. This is one of my two most hated games. Games that I will never willingly play again. Chew on that. And then I will explain.

In my opinion, the game is very much broken and not very fun when and if you realize this. (This is not always the case. I can think of a handful of "broken games" that I find intriguing and continue to play.)

Some minor nitpicks -- none of them fatal. First, the game is rather abstract and oriented primarily to its game mechanics. While it is themed, the theme is largely irrelevant to you play experience in my opinion. Second, its playing space is geomorphic, which I'm generally not a fan of. (This has something to do with my least favorite board game Gammarauders, which is also geomorphic.) Finally, the gameplay environment is highly random, which makes it rather swing-y and hard to plan for.

Also, the choices you make at setup become critical for your future success in the game. Player setup is the single hardest part of the game (see above my point about randomness in this game.) One thing I do like about this game is how it handles turn order in setup: 

There are two rounds to placement, and they switch direction so that the first player to place in round one, becomes the last player in round two. The last player to place in round one, becomes the first player in round two -- essentially doubling up.

On each player's turn, they roll two six-siders. Each space has a number attached to it, two to twelve and with seven excepted. Whichever spaces have the same number as the dice roll produce their commodity to each player that has a town or city located at one of its vertices. On a seven, the robber comes into play and is placed by the player whose turn it is. A space that has a robber on it fails to produce when rolled for again, until the robber is moved again.

Players trade for cards to amass the necessary commodities to build towns, cities, roads or to purchase special cards. Each of these is worth some points. The game ends when a player reaches a total of 10 points, and that person wins.

Here are my two grips that ruin the game for me. First of all, the robber. I HATE the robber. First, it can disrupt consistently and for an extended period any strategy or planning you've engaged in since the very start of the game. Placement of the robber in actual play turns out to typically be less strategic, than personal. Second, my experience is that trading often gets short-circuited by personal embargoes, and that there are insufficient incentives for players to avoid it. My experience has been that trading at ports is almost always more productive than trading with other players. And that is just plain boring!

I mean, if I want to play a game that has that kind of potential to piss me off so thoroughly, I'll play Diplomacy, where at least I feel I have agency in what happens. I know that there are many folk who will strongly disagree with me, since this is one of the most popular games currently on the market. But for me, no way!