Catan (or Settlers of Catan, as it used to be called) is a classic strategy game where players race to expand their settlement and score victory points. You’ll trade resources, build roads, amass armies, and try to avoid that pesky robber. Want to learn how to play Catan? The rulebook can get a little confusing, so we’ve put together a clear, handy guide to the official Catan rules.
Whether you’re new to Catan or you consider it one of the best board games ever made, these rules will remind you exactly how things work. Bear in mind, though, that we’ve only covered the rules for the core game – for more info on Catan expansions, head to our other tabletop gaming guide.
How to play Settlers of Catan:
How many people can play Catan?
Catan is a board game designed for three to four players. Some expansions allow up to six players, and the tabletop community has created a variant that allows you to play with two players. However, base-game, unaltered Catan is always for three or four people.
How long is a game of Catan?
A standard game of Catan takes between one and two hours to play. Play time will change depending on how many players there are, and random dice rolls are always capable of lengthening or shortening a game.
Who goes first in Catan?
If this is your first game of Catan, the oldest player goes first. You can also decide the starting player by rolling dice. Whoever rolls highest goes first. Play continues clockwise around the table from that person (starting with the player on their left).
Catan setup
A copy of Catan contains the following components:
- 19 terrain tiles
- 6 sea frame pieces
- 9 harbor pieces
- 18 number tokens
- 95 resource cards
- 25 development cards
- 4 building cost reference cards
- 1 longest road card
- 1 longest army card
- 16 cities
- 20 settlements
- 60 roads
- 2 dice
- 1 robber
Catan setup begins with building the board. Connect the six sea tiles (those long, straight blue hexes with jigsaw teeth on either end) to form a hexagonal frame. Inside that space, place the 19 smaller terrain tiles.
In most games of Catan, these sea and terrain tiles are placed at random. However, beginners should follow a specific setup – see the picture below:
With all tiles arranged, you’ll next place the circular number tokens on top of your terrain. For beginner games, place these as shown in the above setup photo. If you want a more modular Catan game, place the number tokens in alphabetical order (there are letters on the back), starting in a corner and moving anti-clockwise towards the center of the board.
If you’d like even more random elements in your game, you can shuffle the nine harbor tokens and place them on top of each harbor shown on the sea tiles. This is optional and not recommended for a beginner game.
Next, each player chooses a color and collects its corresponding pieces: five settlements, four cities, and 15 roads. If you’re using the beginner setup, everyone places two settlements and two roads on the board as shown in the above image. (In a three-player game, nobody plays with the red pieces.)
Otherwise, take turns placing one city with an adjacent road on the corner of space you like. You’ll place a second settlement and road after this, but the turn order is reversed. Basically, the person who placed their first settlement last now gets to place a settlement first.
Separate the resource cards into piles and place them face-up next to the board. There should be one pile for each type of resource:
- Wool
- Lumber
- Brick
- Ore
- Grain
Set the longest road and largest army cards nearby, and place the robber pawn on the blank desert hex. Give each player a building costs reference card, too.
In a normal game of Catan, each player receives one resource card from each terrain tile adjacent to their second settlement. In a beginner game, deal out the following:
| Color | Starting resources |
| Blue | Lumber, ore, brick |
| Red | Grain, lumber, lumber |
| White | Grain, brick, lumber |
| Yellow | Ore, grain, grain |
Keep your hand of resource cards hidden from the other players.
Catan rules
According to the official Catan rules, a player turn has three phases:
- Produce resources
- Trade resources
- Build
On your turn, you’ll complete all three phases before passing play to the next person.
Produce resources
To produce resources, roll both dice. Terrain with a number token that matches the result of your roll will produce resources this turn, and anyone with a settlement placed at the intersection of those tiles will gain one resource card.
Naturally, the type of resource card gained matches the kind that terrain produces. Players receive one resource card for each adjacent settlement, so if you have two settlements next to the tile, you’ll get two cards of the relevant resource. If there aren’t enough resource cards left to supply all players who need one, then nobody gets any of that resource.
If you roll a result of seven, there are no resources for anyone this turn – but you do get to move the robber.
Catan robber rules
Rolling a seven on your turn lets you move the robber to a different terrain hex of your choice. Any settlements or cities at the intersection of the robber’s tile stop producing resources, and production can’t start again until the robber moves somewhere else.
Trade resources
There are two ways to trade resources in Catan:
Domestic trade
This means you can swap resources with other players, so talk with your opponents to see if anyone fancies making a deal. Perhaps someone’s willing to take a wool off your hands in exchange for some ore?
It’s crucial to remember that, during your turn, other players can only trade with you. If they want something another player has to offer, they’ll have to wait for their own turn to make that request.
Maritime trade
Even if no one at the table wants your goods, maritime trade means you can always trade four of any one resource for a single card of another, taking the resource straight from its pile on the table. If you have a settlement or a city on a harbor, the exchange rate gets better. You might be able to exchange three or two resources for one new resource, for example.
Build
Finally, you get to build. This is where you put those carefully gathered resources to use.
By paying the required resources listed on your construction costs reference card, you can create new settlements, buildings, and cities on the board. You can build as many items as you like on a turn, given you have the resources to pay for them. However, once your pool of possible constructions runs out, you can’t build anything else.
There are four things you can build in Catan:
- Roads
- Settlements
- Cities
- Development Cards
Roads are the simplest construction, and the basic means through which you expand your reach across the island. Pay one brick and one lumber to place down a road between two hexes.
There’s a two-point bonus to be earned at the end of the game for having the longest road. Once someone has built a road with five segments, give them the ‘longest road’ card. If anyone can beat the length of their road, they then take that card.
However, you must ensure the new road is connected to one of your existing roads or settlements. Roads also can’t be placed adjacent to each other – one edge of a tile fits one road, and no more.
Settlements cost a little more: one brick, one lumber, and one grain. You can only place down a settlement that’s connected to one of your existing roads, and must place it at least two road spaces away from another settlement (both yours and your opponents’).
Settlements are powerful, as they produce resources every time the numbers of their adjacent hexes are rolled. Each settlement is worth one victory point.
Cities are upgraded settlements. By paying three ore and two grain, you return one of your existing settlements to your supply and replace it with a city. These guys are worth two victory points each, instead of one – and produce two resources per tile when they’re activated by the dice.
Development cards
During the build phase, you can also buy development cards. It’s possible to play development cards at this time too, but not if you bought the card you want to play on that same turn. Typically, you can only play one development card per turn.
Development cards represent your fledgling empire spending resources on improving the territory you already own, rather than pushing its borders. There are 25 of them in the game, and they come in three flavors:
Knight cards
Number in game: 14
Playing a knight card lets you move the robber once to any hex that you like. After it’s played, this card stays face up in front of you and becomes part of your army.
There’s a two-point bonus for having the largest army at the end of the game. Once someone has three knights, give them a ‘largest army’ card. If at any point someone else’s army grows larger, exchange ownership of the card.
Progress cards
Number in game: 6
Progress cards give you a specific reward, like picking two resources of your choice. Once you’ve played it and resolved its effects, return it to the game box.
Victory point cards
Number in game: 5
If you draw a victory point card, it stays in your hand (keep it a secret). You reveal the card when you think that you have enough victory points to win the game. Because of this, victory point cards can be played on the turn you bought them, and you can play multiple at once.
Driven by the luck of the draw, development cards are, on the face of it, a less reliable path to victory than pure construction. But, as your games become more complex and competitive, they will play more of a role, as more building plans get blocked, and the prospect of gambling – to try and pull a point-generating University or Great Hall – gets more inviting.
Catan scoring
The first player to reach ten victory points on their turn wins the game. If you reach this score on another player’s turn, you’ll have to wait until it’s your turn – and hope your score doesn’t change in the meantime.
As a reminder, here’s all the ways you can score points in Catan:
| Source | Victory points value |
| Settlement | 1 |
| City | 2 |
| Victory point card | 1 |
| Longest road | 2 |
| Largest army | 2 |
How to win Catan
Catan’s core gameplay offers so many possible developments from player decisions and interactions, that no one strategy can ever consistently win the day. Nevertheless, here are just a few rules to keep in mind if you want to learn how to win Catan.
Build where the dots are
In Catan, a sure-fire way to generate more resources than your rivals is to build your settlements adjacent to tiles whose number tokens have multiple dots on them.
The more dots a token has, the higher the probability of it being rolled each turn – and so the more frequently your adjacent Settlements and Cities will end up churning out delicious resources for you.
Basically, the most probable result on a roll of two six-sided (d6) dice is seven, and roll results become more probable, the closer to seven you get on either side. Catan uses the dots as a handy indicator of how far up that probability ladder each token is – so factor that into your start-of-game build choices.
Be a resource baron
After you’ve graduated from the pre-set beginner game layout, and started playing Catan with a randomized map of resource hexes, the game map will often end up with two or even three of the same resource hex ‘clumped’ together.
It’s something of a no-brainer, this – but make sure you build at the centres of these nexuses of a particular resource wherever possible. While there are various viable strategies for targeting certain resources through the game, if you can gain a monopoly over one of them (any one), it’ll give you a huge advantage – especially early on.
Keep score
Usually, after the first several turns of the game, nobody will know exactly how many VP each player has, because most people will have picked up at least one Development Card – and that could always be a secret Victory Point Card.
But, even with that unseen element to contend with, you can relatively accurately track the VP leaderboard by keeping a tally of settlements, cities, the longest road, and largest army – and you really, really should.
When it gets to the latter part of the game, every move counts – and knowing roughly how close your opponents are to the finish line can be crucial when deciding if it’s best to continue with your own strategy – or take a detour to take a rival down a peg or two, before they run away with the win.
Looking for more strategy board games? Here are some great family board games that are suitable for all ages. Or, for more complexity, check out the best board games for adults.
Source: Wargamer
