Catan: Console Edition – Review

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Catan: Console Edition is the digital recreation of the popular board game Catan (originally called Settlers of Catan) which was released back in 1995. Many will be aware of the original, or even the Xbox 360 title released back in 2007, but for newcomers here’s a lowdown of the rules, which I highly recommend checking, but if you always know the ins and outs, you can skip the next two sections.

The Catan board is made up of 19 hexagonal titles in hexagon 5 tiles wide, 1 is the desert where the robber starts (more on him later) while the other 18 tiles each represent one of 5 resources, lumbar, brick, wool, grain and ore. Upon each of the tiles is also a number between 2 and 12 (excluding 7). Players take it in turns rolling the dice, with the amount on the dice, awarding the appropriate resource, to anyone who has a settlement on a corner of that tile. The game starts with each player taking it in turns to place 2 settlements and two roads, further settlements can only be built on a road, and can’t be placed directly connected (1 tile) to another settlement. So, players need to keep collecting resources, such as 1 lumbar and 1 brick to build a road, or 1 each of lumbar, brick, wool and grain, to build a settlement, players can also use 2 grain and 3 ore to convert a settlement to a city (which doubles awarded resources for connected tiles) and finally 1 each of wool, grain and ore for a development card.

Development cards come in a variety of flavours, Year of plenty gives two free resources, Road building gives you two free roads, Monopoly allows you to take all resources of one type from the other players, and some award a victory point which you’ll want to save, finally the Knight works towards the largest army