Convince me Catan is a Good Game

Catan has a weird superpower: it’s one of the most loved gateway board games and one of the most mocked “I’m too serious for this” targets. We lean into that tension and ask the honest question: is Settlers of Catan actually good, or are we just remembering 1995 with rose-colored glasses? Clay brings the frustration many hobby gamers feel, like three-hour runtimes, dead turns, and trading that drags. Sam joins us bright and early from New Zealand to make the case that the problem usually isn’t Catan, it’s how the table plays it.

We get tactical fast: why Catan is closer to an engine builder than a pure dice fest, how initial placement and number coverage can prevent that “I got nothing for 20 minutes” spiral, and why upgrading to cities early changes the whole pace. We also talk trading etiquette, decisiveness, and simple house rules that reduce early pain without turning the game into something unrecognizable.

Then we zoom out to what keeps Catan ubiquitous in board game culture: replay value through changing board layouts and changing opponents, plus expansions that add the right kind of variety. Sam shares favorites like Seafarers and the Through The Fog scenario, plus lighter add-ons like Helpers of Catan for asymmetric player powers. If you’ve ever sold your copy and wondered whether you should buy it back, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share this with your game night group, and leave a review with your hottest Catan take.

Check out Sam at https://www.instagram.com/mesmerealm_games/

Transcript

Morning Check In And Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast. I'm your host, Clay, and joining me today, bright and early from New Zealand is Sam. How are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Morning, uh, Kiora. Uh I'm I'm tired. I'm tired.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Yeah. I appreciate this. I, you know, we're we're asking a lot of our friends of the podcast right now, um, with Travis on the move, and you were kind enough to step up and raise your hand in the Discord and say, Yeah, I'll come have a chat with you. I'll come have a chat.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Yeah, it doesn't matter that it's quarter to seven in the morning. It's not a problem.

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Yeah, and you you I mean, you look ready to go. How long have you been up now? Oh gosh, what's the time now? 30 minutes. 30 minutes. Wow. You you yeah, get yourself together quick and look nice. Don't don't most men I don't know. I I take a long time. Yeah, it takes a lot to get this hair ready. Um yeah, I can imagine. Get my eyebrows plucked, you know. Um I pamper. So but anyway, out of your face. Yeah.

Why Gamers Dunk On Catan

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Face pleasantries aside, I you're you're on here for a very particular reason because I know that you, you know, a lot of hobby board gamers come to a point where they start looking down their noses at Catan. One of the, yep. My and I'm I'll be honest with you, I'm one of them. I looked down my long schnazz at Catan, but I know you're out there and you still claim this is one of your favorite games, am I right?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Yeah, it's probably top five easy for me. It's probably number two or number three, I'd think. I think at the moment, I haven't updated my BGG in ages. So I think it's number two on BGG at the moment. Wow. Um I just uh it's it's a game from 1995. So sure, it's gonna have some aspects of it that are out of date, right? Like there's no dice mitigation. Um, you know, you know, and it and it is primarily a dice roller, but I don't think what people realize is that it's actually uh an engine builder.

Catan As An Engine Builder

SPEAKER_00 2:43

You're building an engine.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

So you've got your hexes, right? They've all got numbers one through twelve. There's double-ups of all the numbers except one and twelve. Um place your uh what is it, settlement in between hexes. If those numbers roll, you pick up those hexes. Doesn't matter who rolls.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

So I think what a lot of people struggle with is they go, Oh, I don't have wheat as a resource. Who cares if you don't have wheat? Try and get all of the numbers. Because if you have all of the numbers, then no matter what roles, you you pick up.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Alright. Next is you always gotta upgrade early. Upgrade to a settlement. So you it doesn't matter if your roles are intermittent, at least you're picking up multiple resources on that role. Um, but I think it gets a lot of a lot of flack for being slow. I was just talking to a guy last night who said that he's never played a game of Catan that wasn't three hours long,

Placement Advice And Number Coverage

SPEAKER_00 3:49

and that blew my mind.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

I don't know how you've played ones that's shorter than that, because this that is my experience with Catan as well. So just a background on kind of my journey with Catan. Like most people, this was one of the first games I played, getting into modern board games. Thought it was awesome. I was like, this is so cool. Propelled me into the wild world of BGG and just buying tons of new games, trying them all out. And I got to a point where I I thought I was too good for Catan. And and I I will admit to you, I got over that. I got over that. And I was like, you know, I had some friends that were like, oh, we want to play Catan. I was like, yeah, you know, I I'm starting to like get back into some older games and kind of reappreciating um games that are more broadly appealing. And I played it and I was like, oh,

Clay’s Three Hour Catan Problem

SPEAKER_01 4:43

that was rough. Like it went three hours, and I botched the initial placement, and you know, you just sit there, you roll, nothing comes up for you. Everybody rolls around the table, you're not getting anything, so you have nothing to trade. Nobody wants to interact with you because you're just sitting there with one sheep, and every time the die roll, you're watching everybody else rake in all this stuff. And I swear to you, it felt like it was like 20 minutes of people rolling, and I just not collecting anything. And over the course of a three-hour game, I'm like, man, that kind of blew. But I tried it one more time. I went and I think it was like Catan Starfares or something. This went, oh my god. I was excited. I was like, listen, I'm open-minded. That's why you're here. This is why you're gonna convince me that Catan is a good game and I shouldn't write it off forever. But I've tried that and had another like three-hour game of it, and it just drags on, and it just feels like so many times I'm just sitting there for long stretches where nothing is coming my way, and as such, there's just really no decisions to be made. So that's where I'm at with Catan.

Why Starfarers Won’t Fix It

SPEAKER_00 6:04

If you don't like Catan, if if someone said to me, I don't like Catan, I would never suggest Starfarers of Catan to them. Yeah, yeah. It is just so much more game. Like I totally un like I uh three-hour game of Starfarers, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's it's four times the amount of game. The the only similarities really are the fact that if you have your um what are they called, space ports on a planet and it rolls, you pick up those resources. Yep. That's really the only similarity between Catan and Starfarers. You know, like Yeah, yeah, I mean it I could see that. Starfarers is a is a a movement move and build. You know, you you move your little pieces, you actually have movement where you gotta go out and explore. You don't have that in Catan. You just have you you explore by building as you go.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Um and then there's the four different uh alien factions that you can befriend and get special powers, and you've got your rocket that you upgrade, and depending on how many rockets, and you shake the rocket and the ball's going, oh perfection. But yes, if you don't like Catan, don't play Star Fares of Catan because especially if you're going into it thinking it's gonna be Catan. Yeah. Because it's really not, it's it's a much heavier game. Um, but three hours on a game of base Catan, did you

Trading Time Sinks And Player Count

SPEAKER_00 8:00

how many players did you have? Three or four?

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Four, four people just people t take too much time on the trading. They're like everybody, everybody's trying to make a deal every single time, and it's like turns just drag on forever. And when you're not involved in those deals, it's like, what the heck?

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Um I'm pretty brutal. Like if someone's like wheeling and dealing, like my kids do it, right? They're trying to wheel and deal, trying to get some sort of trade going. And I'm like, everybody said no, move on.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

That's what you need to do.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Nobody's trading with you, shut up. Um but no, I think Catan plays best at three players on a standard board. Okay. And then five to six player is a whole nother beast because you've got other rules and things that you need to adhere to. But standard Catan at three players. We when my wife and I were living in Korea, we used to play Catan with a a friend of ours there. Almost every night. Wow. She'd come over to apart my apartment and we'd play Catan. And we would play three games, four games. And we were getting to the point where we could smash one out in forty minutes. Wow. You know what you want to do and just decisiveness. I think a big part of it is like you say, the the trading drags.

House Rules To Reduce Friction

SPEAKER_00 9:36

But if you don't like that trading aspect of it, house rule it. Yeah. You know, there's nothing wrong with house ruling. We we the robber doesn't count on the first round when we play.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Um, like sevens don't count because you know it's the beginning of the game. You've got your fresh resources, nobody wants to steal and and and bear dick, basically. Yeah um so sevens don't count on the first round, and one and twelve are the same. So if you roll for a twelve and you're on a one, you get to pick up for your one. This is a house rule? It's a house rule, and it is act that that particular rule is actually implemented in some of the Catan expansions.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

Okay.

unknown 10:19

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

In seafarers, there's an actual token that you put down that says one slash twelve.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

You know, so there's things that you can mitigate, things like that. Sometimes the numbers don't roll. Yeah. But then you gotta pivot. And that's the beauty of Catan. You pivot. It just feels stuck.

Stop Chasing Longest Road

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Next time you play, don't worry about building the longest road. If you get it, that's cool, but it's not something you should aim for. You should build um cities, you should upgrade cities, and you should buy development

Development Cards And The Monopoly Play

SPEAKER_00 11:00

cards. Okay. Because no matter what you get with a development card, it's gonna be good. You get a knight, cool, save it. Someone was robber on you, move it. Yeah, you keep doing that, you're eventually gonna get largest army, two points. There's five victory points in there that you could just happen upon. But my favorite, favorite thing is the monopoly card. Do you know the monopoly card?

SPEAKER_01 11:23

I vaguely remember the monopoly card. You'll have to explain it quick.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

You declare a resource and everybody has to give you everything of that resource that they have in their hand. Oh god. So if I play Monopoly and I say sheep, and you've got six sheep, you have to give me all six sheep. Dang. And if you talk to people who play katan, I tell them that I like to do this and it's dirty. But it's not illegal. I trade away everything in my hand. Say I've got ten wheat in my hand. I trade, trade with everybody. Yeah, do you have a rock? Yeah, do you want a wheat? Cool. Do you have a sheep? Cool. Have two wheat, you know. I trade away all my wheat and then I go, Monopoly, can I have everybody's wheat? And they've got to give it back to me. Wow. That that's pretty fun. I've had people not play with me after that, but you know, it's what Yeah, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

It's within the rules. But within the rules.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Catan is it's an engine builder, it's not the most elegant engine builder, but if you can play a game with people who are decisive and actually use other people's turns to figure out what they're gonna do, I mean it's hard because you can't really do anything until the roll happens.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

But roll, pick up, look at your hand. Can I build anything? No, move on.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Yeah, I mean, uh if people play like that, I would play Katan. And like, I mean, I don't have a problem with luck and and player interaction and that type of stuff, but when it when the game drags on that long, it better be giving me a lot of uh a lot of return on investment in terms of interesting decisions. And I while I do think there is some interesting decisions to be made in Catan, it's like I don't know that it warrants a three-hour runtime.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

No, what does it say on there? It says 60 to 120 minutes. I would say that a four-player game for newbies who don't really play games and who have maybe a little bit of AP,

Make Turns Snappy Or Suffer

SPEAKER_00 13:32

60 minutes is is right. But for a three-player game, you're not playing for an hour and a half, two hours, that's ridiculous. Nah, I don't believe it.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Well, what do you think about this game has made it just so ubiquitous and approachable for people getting into board games?

SPEAKER_00 13:52

I think it's the replay

Why Catan Stays Popular

SPEAKER_00 13:53

value.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Like, and when when I talk about replay value, I I took I think about like um how much does each game change between you know between games. The board is changing. Where the the um numbers go on the board changes what resources you pick up on, who you're playing with grey gravely changes it, right? Like hugely, hugely makes a difference. Um I could play a game say I play a game with you and Travis. Set the board up, we play it, absolute dunger. I get five points, you get ten, Travis gets nine. We play again, and I get the the ten points, I get the win, and you guys get seven and eight. It's that's a closer game, and it's it's the same game, but because of the layout of the board, because we know each other, I think Catan's one of those games that really benefits from playing with the same people multiple times as well.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Like I would hate to play this with people who've never played Catan every time I played it.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Yeah. I can see that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

But I think it's yeah, I think it's replay value. I think it's the fact that it is really easy to set up and play. There's a couple of niggly rules in there that trip up a few players when they first start playing it, but after two or three rounds going around the board rolling the dice, you've seen it and you know how to play.

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

And I think that's what the draw is, is that it's it is simple. Roll the dice, pick up, build. And trade. And trade. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:40

If someone's if someone's not telling you to shut up and move on.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

And a an another great house rule, um, do not trade. You're not allowed to trade with whoever has the most visible victory points.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Oh, okay. I mean, they hardly even need to house rule that. I think people just inherently just inherently know better.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

I think people do that when someone's on like eight or nine points, but I'm talking like if someone builds their beginning of the game, someone builds their first house, they're on three points, you guys are on two. That person's not getting traded with.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Well, a three-player game, then you only got one person you can trade with.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah, true. That could suck.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Yeah. But you make it work, right?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Yeah, exactly. But I I do think that this game really shines

Smart Table Habits And No Leader Trades

SPEAKER_00 16:29

at three player. And if you want to, if you get to the point where you're you've you've done everything you feel like you have done with a three-player standard gaming guitar, chuck in the five to six player expansion, still only play three players, but the board is bigger and go to twelve points.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Oh, interesting. Is that like a stand is that a in the rules to do that, or is that just something no, that's just something we like to do.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

This is just uh those last two points, getting from 10 to 12 points is very hard.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

How much longer does that take you?

SPEAKER_00 17:06

Another 35 minutes for a three-player game.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

Okay. So you how how many of the different there's a whole like katana verse

Bigger Board To Reach Twelve Points

SPEAKER_01 17:16

now? We talked about starfares, there's nights, and there's seafarers and katana.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

I've got I've got seafarers, yeah. I've got I've got I've got Catan, I've got the five to six player expansion, um, I have Seafarers, I have Catan Starfarers, I have Catan on the Road, which is a brand new 15-minute card game. Um came out at the end of last year, or maybe it was the beginning of this year. I think it was the end of last year. Um what else have I got? I have Klaus Tauber's Catan book that he wrote before he died. Um what other Catans do I have? I think that's it.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Yeah. Okay. I love Catan. And is your it is your favorite just bass Catan, or do you prefer Starfarers or none of them?

SPEAKER_00 18:21

I would play Starfarers

Favorite Catan Versions And Collection

SPEAKER_00 18:24

per day. Yeah. It's awesome. But like my my table is, and I know the dimensions of my table and feet because I had to order a playmat from um let's play boardgame tables.com, whatever it's called. All play. Is it all play? They changed your names.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

There used to be board game tables and now they're all play.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

My my mat says board game tables on it.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah, so is mine.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

So my table is three and a half feet by five feet.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

And Starfarers doesn't fit on my table with more than well, you have to play it three players. It it doesn't it it just fits on my table. Dang. It's huge. But my no, my favorite Catan is is Seafarers.

Why Seafarers Through The Fog Rules

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Um specifically, uh there's a uh uh so seafarers you can just play it has scenarios that you play through the book. I think there's I think there's 15 scenarios that you can play through, and it tells a story of how you've settled Catan and now you are out exploring the other islands around Catan. That's the premise of stuff of seafarers. Yeah. My favorite one is called Through the Fog. So you've got the board, one side is set of islands, another side is set in islands, and you can choose where to place your um settlements on that island or that island. Yeah, and then in the middle, there's a line of tiles that are face down, so they look like water, and when you reach them, you flip them over, and you're discovering new islands. If you discover the island, you get some victory points, you get some resources straight away. You might discover gold, which is a wild resource.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Oh, that sounds kind of fun. It's it's good, it's good. It sounds kind of fun, I think. That's also a beast. Yeah, you you're you're doing a decent job here. I'm I'm finding myself feeling a little bit of butterflies for Catan right now.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

I I think, right. I think that if there's someone, if you can play with people that have played lots of Catan, they don't necessarily like I'm not good at Catan. Like my wife wins most of the Catan game. She's very good at it. I've got another mate um that we play lots of guitar with when we were living in Korea, and her name's KJ, and I don't think I've ever beaten her in the 10 years that I've known her.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

12 years I've known her. Like, she is a beast.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

I just don't know how you can be that good at it. You know, it doesn't I haven't unlocked it, you know.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

Will we be playing like talking? She's like, I won. Like, what the hell happened?

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Just takes over the longest road and the army in the last turn or something.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Yeah. Jeez.

First Placement Decides Everything

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Yeah, the the key is those first placements. If you if you mess that up, then your game's gonna be ruined. I think that's what I've been doing. You either need to go for a variety of resources, which is beginner moves, but it doesn't matter what resources you start on, really. It doesn't. As long as all six of your numbers are different. Okay. Then you have a fifty percent chance. It's actually not quite that, but you know.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Um my wife just texted me, Well, so you still use the gold tile for fun, like taking the gold tile out of seafarers and chucking it in the Catan base game. Oh, nice. Use that instead of like a um instead of the desert or something. Swap the desert out for the gold tile. Yeah, get that out of here. Yeah. Um all different numbers, because then you've got uh a way, way higher chance of picking up something, anything that you can trade with. Yeah.

Helpers Of Catan For More Agency

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Oh, the other thing is if if you if you find that the game's going slow, there's an actual like mini expansion called the Helpers of Catan, which is asymmetrical player powers.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

It's a a card with a person on it and it's two-sided. You use it once, and if you want to use it again, flip it over to its B side so you can use it a second time, or you can use it once. If you don't want to use it again, discard it, draw another one from the deck. And then they just they keep cycling through. Like one of them is um what is his name? They've all got different names, but one of them is um move one of your roads somewhere else for free. One of them is build for cheaper. Helpers of Catan.

unknown 23:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

It's a great, great expansion to add to your game.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Man, I never even heard of that. I've never seen that anywhere. It's good, it's quality stuff. Dang, this is quality stuff. You you've inspired me. I want to wrangle up

Buying It Again And Playing On BGA

SPEAKER_01 23:46

two buddies and set a timer for an hour and say, we're doing this thing and we're gonna play this game the way it should be played. Do you own Katan? I don't. I got rid of it. But I'm probably gonna buy it again now that I talk to you about it.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Do you have a game library or something like that?

SPEAKER_01 24:07

Wait, like no.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

No, I'm sure. Or a game board game cafe, you can go and play it there and give it a try before you buy.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Oh, I've already tried. I just need to buy. I just need to buy again.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

You can probably get a decent secondhand copy for like 20 bucks.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Yeah, or I can just get the katanzip.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Let me ask you a question about Catanzi. Yeah. Do you like mini Azul?

SPEAKER_01 24:39

I that's actually the only Azul I have.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

Cool. You'll love Catan Zip.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Uh maybe, maybe. We'll see. Uh, but I do think it's worth it's worth going back to. There's a reason. It is what it is, and people love it the way they love it. I'm gonna I'm gonna get off my high horse and come down to reality. I'm gonna come all the way down to New Zealand. Hey, come and learn and learn to love Katan.

SPEAKER_00 25:15

Come and learn to love it. Um we can play on BGA. It's on BGA.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

All right, but I uh but I wouldn't do a turn-based, I'd do a real-time.

SPEAKER_01 25:27

Yes, that's the problem. I always get in these turn-based games on BGA, and I totally lose my my steam. I'm like, I don't even know what it what's happening anymore. I don't care about this game anymore.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

I and there's a notes thing that you can do, and I've I've tried to start writing notes about what I was thinking for my next turn. Yeah, it doesn't help. Yeah, yeah. I read it and go, what was I thinking? That's dumb.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Yeah, what's going on here? Yeah.

Wrap Up And Instagram Shoutout

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Well, either way, I think that should do it for our Catan episode. I'm I'm appreciative of you getting up early to teach me a lesson or two about Catan. I needed this. All right. Well, for Operation Game Night, I've been Clay. He's been Sam. Oh, at Mesmeralm Games on Instagram. Check him out. I'll put a link to his uh his page in the show notes and in the description. So give him a like, follow. He's doing good stuff. He's busy right now, though, but he's he's still he's still putting out the content.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Every now and again.

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Every now and again he'll post about Katan. So you can go check him out there. Yep, that's awesome. All right, we're out of here.