There are many strategies, but one thing I find not talked about often is number diversity.

Like, if your two initial positions are both the exact same numbers, it can really slow you down if those numbers don't get rolled as often as you'd like.

If I see two nice spots on the board, but they are both "5,9,10." I might opt to make my second position a "6,3,4" instead.

Agree with getting good starting places with high odds of rolling. Try to make sure you have complimentary resources that you’ll be able to use together. If ore is available for example, try to also get wheat, and sheep. In most cases building a city should be your first goal, then start working towards whatever will help you get largest army or longest road.

The biggest mistake I see being made is people don’t make adjustments to strategy. If your in a battle for longest road and you realize they opposition has better numbers for brick and wood maybe look somewhere else for points so your not wasting resources.

At minimum I like to find a 3:1 port early. Ideally I always find a way to land a 2:1 port with whatever resource I have good numbers on. Lastly I find as long as I have good to solid ore and wheat numbers over the other resources I will usually remain competitive in each game.

A common mistake I see people make is with initial placement. I believe it’s more important to place on good numbers that roll often, rather than trying to place so that you have one of each resource.

Lots of great advice here, especially with being flexible! You never mentioned anything about cities, but cities are amazing boosts to your economy. Also, trading is important to get a head start. Don’t be afraid to give up extra resources like 2:1 or 3:1 with other players to rush cities or roads and settlements that are contested.

So my personal strategy is not always the best but it suits me well(assuming plain red box (. I go for the best ore and wheat spot I can. My philosophy is if I can get two cities really fast then I can trade for the stuff in missing.

If you're wanting to lose friends or have your friends/family never want to play with you you can use my go to strategy. Start on good Wood and Brick spots and use your surplus to build roads to block people from certain resources or parts of the board. It usually works good to block them from things like rock or wheat to become the kingpin of those resources.

Plop a settlement near a 2:1 port that is going to be getting that resource, even if it is sheep.

"The only winning move is not to play."

My personal strategy is keeping away from my wife, then pointing out how someone else is making it tough for her to win. They fight over area and won’t trade with each other and I hope I can get 4 villages and 2 point cards before the other player

If you’re playing with beginners they probably don’t understand the true power of OWS (ore-wheat-sheep) yet.

If that’s the case, you can go full force on ore, wheat and sheep spots. Get cities way earlier than everyone else and buy nonstop dev cards. They won’t recognize how well you’re doing until it’s too late.

In order for this strategy to work well you have to have a reasonable balance of OWS. If you have only 2 pips of ore and 16 of sheep with no ports, then you’re likely setting yourself up for a rough game. In my experience, you want to have the most ore, second most wheat, and least sheep out of the three.

Having more ore will allow you to get cities much earlier and increase your production significantly faster than everyone else while sheep will just clog up your hand if you don’t have other complementary cards to go with it.

Now OWS, while focusing on ore wheat and sheep, does not mean that you need only to have ore wheat and sheep. Brick and wood will be very helpful. It’s just not strictly necessary and often times you’ll be better off going for increased OWS instead of brick and wood.

No matter what your strategy is, you should have a general idea of what your plan is to get to 10 points from the start when you’re placing.

For example, if you are playing OWS you are likely not going to be going for longest road. Your win condition is probably gonna look something like 6 points from three cities, 2 points from largest and 2 points from 2 victory points, or a victory point and an additional settlement.

Another option is just having four cities and largest army and that wins it for you. There’s a good chance since you’ll be buying so many dev cards that you’ll get even more victory points and it’ll be even easier to win, but have a plan of where you’ll be getting your additional settlements early on because if you have to fight for those settlement spots with an OWS set up you’ll probably lose that fight.

Take all this with a grain of salt because it’s not necessarily possible on every single board to have a strong OWS set up and that’s OK. What’s important in Catan is knowing how to be flexible and adapt to whatever situation you’re put into to make your position as strong as possible.

If you want more advice, feel free to ask, I’ve been playing Catan casually and in tournaments for many years now!

Pick one of your opponents to assist and help them build an early advantage so the other two have to shift their focus. I'd chose the person that's the combination of furthest away from you/worst player. Help them get to 5 while everyone else is at three and the remaining players will have to disregard your past wins and deal with the present. When the other two players turn on the leader join them.

Pretty hard to win against everyone if you have more than 3 players.

Accept losing.... it's character building

Bring loaded dice. Poison the cheese dip. When all else fails, flash em for the win.

I would focus on trying to convince the table not to gang up on you. It’s not an easy skill to develop but you won’t win nearly as many games if it’s 3 against 1. Learn how to motivate your friends to at least occasionally go against each other. And when you must be the target, robber control is your best friend. Make sure your good spots are shared with other players so they won’t be blocking your best production. Accumulate knights so you can keep moving it off you. If your friends won’t trade with you, you’ll need an early port so you can keep building. The ore-wheat-sheep advice already given is great. Eventually somebody else will start winning and the focus will shift- until then, be a little more humble, attribute your success to lucky rolls, and try not to gloat!

Seems like there’s no skill involved and the winner is just who gets the best rolls

This is the uno equivalent to Catan. Like this must take 12iq to play.

Others are saying “no skill involved” but I actually think there would be a some in deciding how vertical to go early (to increase resource draw) verses when to sprint for the city to win. Also trading and the robber come into play. Sounds like a fun alternative game.

This seems uneven. But it’s an interesting concept. I think it could be reworked for something interesting.

I thought that jug at the back was a huge robber when I first glanced at the image!

You should try to build your roads so it looks like a penis. They will find this mind blowingly hilarious and crowd surf you to the bedroom for a game of "Patchwork".

Playing Catan in 2025????

I love King Making. It shows that a game has meaningful interaction and we're not just all trying to get the best score.

I would argue that the players who feel like they deserved the win are the problem. You deserve to win if you can beat all of the players. If they are tired enough of you winning all of the time just take the L, or consider that your challenge to win anyway.

Two things:

1. You need to play other games. Katan sucks with multiple skill levels.
2. If it's gotten to the point where everyone is gaming up on you, I think you might need to look at how and why you're playing games. In general, social dynamics will lead to groups fighting back against a perceived bully. That sounds like you.

Not reading that. Cole welrhe says King making = good so King making = god. Nuff said

It sounds like you are bitter that you aren't easily winning anymore? Many advanced Catan players do play like that. To halt the winning player at all costs by teaming up with others and not trading is a valid strategy. Sometimes I'm dead last but will still be robbed to death because others know that I'm a big threat. I get serious joy when I still win despite the constant clobbering.

I would talk to them about it, and if they want to keep it up then Catan needs to leave the game rotation. If they insist on playing it, sit it out or don't go. There's no point in playing a game if you know you're going to be miserable, and what kind of friends are they if they expect you to put up with a crappy experience repeatedly.

Have you tried trolling? Have a new objective, like becoming sheep lord and just trying to monopolize and carry as much sheep as possible and only target to sabotage anyone who has a sheep. Really get into it and roleplay like it's DnD and your character has a huge sheep fetish. You might lose with like 4 points but you can have fun and just make sheep sounds all game lol.

I did something like this once on game night with Risk. My entire objective was to control Asia and only Asia. Once I claimed all of Asia, I announced "the first person to attack me, I will direct all my forces against you AND ONLY you."

It of course got them to gang up against me...but nobody was willing to make the first move to attack. Two turns later we had to stop playing because nobody could figure out what to do lol. I consider that a win for me :)

Yes, most often they say I'm only helping the other players so I can fool them and win in the end, and table talk like that. Example - early game, just to test their stupidity, I was giving 3 rocks for 1 wheat to build my first village and not even players with no rock hexes but that had wheat took it.

On our last game, I've literally brought someone 65+ with close to no Catan experience to play an 5-6 expansoon, knowing they would screw me over anyways so at least I could teach this person.

Ridiculously enough, this person won against them, who have ~200-300 games, even doing mistakes. Just because they kept doing dumb moves such as blocking me with 2 points or cutting me off and building a village on a 2/12/11 triple sheep hex instead of going for hexes with good odds/resources, just because that was one of the hexes I could build to.

Many people are suggesting ways to mitigate these issues, but something I've learned in both video and board games is that if the groups goals when playing the game the game is fundamentally misaligned, someone is gonna be left having less fun.

If you enjoy a game where you've minmaxed and play with optimal strategy, find a group that also plays like that. If you're spending time outside of game night researching strategies and such, you're obviously going to paint a huge target on your back when you show up to the next game night. If you don't enjoy the heat that comes from that, find a new game, and play it more casually like the rest of the table, or look for a different group who will challenge you strategically. One of the first questions when I'm setting up a new group for anything is "What is everyone's expectations from this? What do you find fun about the activity?" Because if one person says they just want to get drunk and hang and another says they enjoy the strategy and game theory, I know there's gonna be a problem one way or another down the line.

Find a compromise if possible, but it's important to not sacrifice your fun for the sake of the group, because at the end of the day we all play games to have fun, and while there is no one way to have fun playing games, there are some ways that are not compatible with eachother.

Its a tough call, but an important one.

It's one of the reasons why my family tries to find a new game to play every year at the holidays, because in our group often the best games happen in that middle ground stage after everyone has learned the rules but before anyone figures out the meta. We have a mix of strategy minded players and more casual players, and there is a sweat spot around 5-10 games in where everyone has tried a few different strategies, seen the strengths and weaknesses, and there are a few different ways people have won the past games, so we see a nice variety in strategy but any one could win depending on how things go.

Meanwhile the games we've played 100+ times, we all know one or two strong strategies and can tell what the others are probably going for, which can make for a competitive game for the strategy minded players, but also for one that is frustrating and stressful for the casual players. Obviously leaving the group doesn't work when it's your family at the holidays, so we mitigate the issue by finding those fresh new experiences and giving the older games some time to rest before revisiting them.

I got to master last time - though not that high. Still a fun experience i love playing it

Well done! I’ve played many different types of games. This is hands down the best designed game I’ve ever played. Love it!

Bro every single time I think I have THE strategy down, I get humbled. One day, I'll get this rush, congrats!

It really is great, I keep telling gaming friends to get on it, I've had some fantastic gaming experiences.

It’s such a fun game!!! Nice win! My most recent win I played with my friends that I’m really proud of. I won it by round 6! It was with the immortality expansion and it just went almost perfectly for me

I mean probably 50/50.

Obviously original placement and where you choose to build is skill.

Opponents can cut you off you’re placing at the turning point so that is a bit out of your hands.

Dice rolls are obviously luck and the development cards are also luck.

But… a seasoned player vs 3 newbies will likely win 50+% of the time. So clearly skills is required.

For base Catan I would say it’s about 60% skill, 40% luck & for Cities & Knights it’s about 75% skill, 25% luck.

With the base game, you rely heavily on the dice rolls and your initial setup.

With C&K, there’s more complexity, which reduces the amount of reliance on “pure luck”.

I think it depends. Whenever I win it’s obviously 100% skill. But whenever anyone else wins it’s obviously 100% luck and I actually played the superior game.

If you rolled a single 12-sided die, then Catan would be mostly luck. Since you roll two 6-sided dice, it becomes a game of probability management, which is a skill. That’s to say nothing of the social aspects such as trade and negotiation that don’t play out as well online but work great in person.

Highest elo on boardgamearena is around 500. That’s quite a separation from some noob with 100-150 elo. It’s less separation than some high weight euro like Terra Mystica or Castles of Burgundy, where the top players are >700 elo, so the ceiling is lower for sure. It’s even a fair bit lower than the top players of Ticket to Ride, also around 700, but that’s apples to oranges with many of the “top” players playing a ton of 2-player games which is 1) lame (who actually wants to play 2-player TTR on the US map?) and 2) much less likely for a worse player to win than if playing with 3-4 players like Catan. Also, even if you convince me that TTR has a higher skill ceiling than Catan, you can’t convince me it’s a better game.

So anyways, there is definitely skilled play to Catan, and better players will win much more often than worse players, but it’s the sort of game you can master by being smart and playing a fair bit without having to actively “study” the game, whereas some games I feel like I’d have to actively study to become awesome at.

I like white, but would have pointed at least one of the roads to a port.

Tell us how it ends!!!