Catan - A Family Review

“Want to play a game of Catan?”

Friends of board gamers have heard this sentence for nearly thirty years. Maybe you always suggested something else, or maybe you didn’t think you’d have fun. But it keeps coming up—and now you’re curious.

Any collector worth their salt (or sheep, in this case—you trade sheep in the game quite a lot), has Catan on their shelf. It’s the Monopoly of hobby board games, and like Monopoly, it lends itself to longer game sessions. Evenings full of laughter and frustration and triumph. Catan is great at keeping everybody at the table engaged on every roll and nearly every turn, and if you want to win, you have to get in there with everybody else—trading and haggling with the best of them.

The main fun of the game is in bartering with other players (I’m looking for two wood and want to trade sheep. Anybody?) then strategically placing your roads and settlements to corner markets and score points. You have to strike at the right time though, because other players can block you with their own builds. Which definitely causes vendettas. Friendly ones, but definitely vendettas.

11yo: I loved the betrayal and bartering and making up stories about my settlements.

It’s a competitive game with only one winner, and with your hand of hidden cards, nobody is ever 100% sure who’s in the lead until everything is revealed at the end.

As hobby games go, the turns are pretty simple but can lend themselves to a bit of decision paralysis. We found that we had to remind the kids to make a choice and pass the turn or else they’d get stuck on finding the perfect thing they needed. The box says 10+ for age, and that’s pretty accurate. Our 9yo really enjoyed himself, but he wasn’t thinking a couple turns ahead—he was going after what seemed valuable on each turn.

This game is fantastic for a family with teenagers—older kids who want to plan big swings, make clever moves, and reveal a master strategy or get the best possible exchange at the right time. It’s a cool way to get a little competitive in a fun environment. Even when your plans fall through or you make a bad trade, you can bounce back within a turn or two.

The dice rolls keep players on a roughly even footing, so it’s manageable to play with people of varying skills and investment, and as competitive strategy games go, you won’t find many that fall into the hour-or-two range rather than the two-to-four hour range.

Want to be a little cutthroat and competitive around the table and all in good fun? Catan is the game for you.

Helpful Hints

• Trading can get confusing. Work on your shorthand for who is offering what and looking for what
• Catan Junior is a much stronger fit for a younger group