Settlers of Catan goal is to be first to reach 10 points. One must do this by building settlements, cities, buying victory point cards, getting largest army card, and/or longest road.

build a road costs 1 wood, 1 brick
build settlement (1 point) costs 1 wood, 1 brick, 1 wheat, 1 sheep
build city (2 points) costs 2 wheat, 3 ore
buy a development card costs 1 wheat, 1 sheep, 1 ore


Resources
Resources hexes are layed out..from bottom left, clockwise.
Sheep, Wheat, Ore, Brick, Wood and desert (produces no resources). When one has a settlement next to a resouces and the die is rolled to the number on the resource everyone whose number comes up gets one resource. If people build cities they get two resources.


Resource cards: Wheat, Ore, Sheep, Brick, Wood


Development cards can be bought and it's a gamble as to what may come up. You can only play ONE development card per turn and after buying one must wait till next turn to play it. Only exception is victory points may be played anytime.

- Monopoly card choose any resouce and all players must surrender all that paticular resource to you that they have in their hands
- Year of Plenty card choose two resources from the bank
- Road Building card build two roads
- 1 Victory Point card there's a total of 4 victory points in the deck
- Soldier card moves robber, 3 or more soldier cards gives you Largest Army card (2 pts.)

Ports
Anytime one may trade 4 of the same resource for any 1 resource with bank
example trade 4 wheat to the bank for 1 brick
If you build a settlement or city near a:
2:1 Sheep Port you can trade 2 sheep to the bank for any resource with bank
3:1 port you can trade 3 of the same resource for any for any resource with bank
2:1 Wood Port you can trade 2 sheep to the bank for any resource with bank

Sometimes strategy pays off to shoot for these two cards both worth 2 points each.

I love playing this online with Sea3D freeware. Settlers of Catan does have some chance that's for sure but it's an excellent resource management card game. I didn't discuss all the rules such as the robber, rolling a 7, etc. but this gives you a quick overview of what Settlers of Catan is all about.


Updated Aug 1, 2005


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