I have vague memories of the long trip home from a family vacation twenty-ish years ago where we stopped at a number of different game shops in search of a new board game my uncle had introduced to my dad and older siblings during our trip. If my memory serves me correctly, most of the stores we stopped at (and I don't actually recall how many that was...) had never even heard of the game we were looking for. At the time it was still only a few years old and hadn't taken off in popularity. So, it took some searching on my dad's part before we were finally able to find a copy.
That game was Settlers of Catan, and now you can find it and any number of its expansions in virtually any game store you walk into. In the late nineties though, board games weren't anything close to the phenomenon they are today. For much of my childhood, the board games most people were familiar with typically fell into the category of "ancient" like chess and Othello, party games like Balderdash, or games geared primarily to children like Candy Land, Monopoly, and Sorry! I think Settlers of Catan is pretty wildly considered to be the herald of the board game renaissance that has produced any number of modern strategy games in all kinds of shapes and sizes. That was certainly true for me on a personal level.
When my family first purchased Settlers, I was only five or six years old and wasn't yet allowed to play the game due my general lack of maturity, but once I finally earned my spot at the table for the game (by aging) it cemented itself as the "go to" game of choice for years to come. Since then, I've had the opportunity to try a wide range of other board games that I personally enjoy a lot more, but Settlers is still a staple within my family and friends group. For the larger board gaming community as a whole, it certainly represents a significant turning point in the industry. As such, I think it is fitting that Settlers is the first game for me to review on this new blog.
Mechanics & Gameplay
Settlers is not an overly complex game, although it may seem like one at first glance to someone with no experience playing modern board games. The number of actions you can take at any given time are fairly limited, and the different paths one can pursue to earn points (the path to victory) are easy to intuitive and straightforward. Many turns, especially early on in the game, come down to rolling dice, drawing cards, and passing to the next player. Sometimes you don't even do the drawing cards part! A willing newcomer could probably have the game explained to them by an experienced player in fifteen minutes and be ready to dive into the game with minimal rules clarification and explanation required during the rest of the game's playtime.
While my favorite games are all significantly more complex than Settlers, the game's simplicity is the one of its strongest traits. So many games within the board gaming hobby are intimidating and overwhelming to newcomers. They require a significant investment of time to learn and to play, and that creates a barrier to entry that many are unwilling to cross. Settlers is perfect as a gateway game (read drug) into the hobby because those trying it for the first time can do so with minimal cost on their part in terms of time and mental energy invested.
Settlers mechanical simplicity also shines because it allows player interaction, the real heart and soul of the game, to take center stage. Settlers is a die rolling and chance based game, but it is also a game of negotiation, social interaction, and sabotage. The art of convincing your opponent that your extremely one sided trade offer is actually mutually beneficial is where much of the game's skill expression and mastery comes into play. Given that players are almost constantly needing resources other players have in hand, the table is always buzzing with conversation and interaction. I have played other games with negotiation and resource trading, but none have balanced or polished that mechanic quite as finely as Settlers. The simplicity of the game and the ability for all player's to quickly assess the value of every resource type at any given point, is what opens the door for negotiation skills and social manipulation to flourish.
The social component of the game combined with the randomization of the board and turn by turn dice roles also guarantees that no two games of Settlers are quite the same. There are certainly consistently good and consistently bad strategies that players can try and execute or avoid, but no matter how many times you play the game, you have to come to the table ready to adapt based on the players, the board, and the turn of the dice. This gives the game essentially infinite replayability which is something that I value very highly in a game considering how expensive each addition to a game collection can be.
On the flip side, however, the mechanics of Settlers are pretty bland and uninspired next to many other modern board game options available. There is opportunity for skill expression within the game, but it is restricted due to the randomness of resource generation and limited range of actions you can ever take. Since most of the skill expression actually lies in the social side of the game, the more experienced your opponents are and the more times they've played with you, the less likely they are to fall victim to your particular flavor of trickery and deception and the harder it will be to use individual strategy to influence the game which in turn causes the outcome to be driven more by chance than choice. The randomness of resource generation and the ever looming threat of the robber can create high stakes moments and result in exciting moments that get adrenaline pumping at the table, but you rarely have moments where a player comes out swinging with a "pro gamer move" that leaves everyone at the table stunned with surprise and admiration.
Along the same lines, you are much more likely to feel frustrated than challenged. Challenge and the sense that you are facing obstacles that must be overcome are critical, in my opinion, to developing a rewarding gameplay experience. However, in Settlers, your ability to make moves on the board or influence the outcome of the game is subject to a great deal of randomness. You can and should certainly make an effort to manipulate the odds in your favor by going after spots on the board that have greater odds of generating you a diverse range of resources, but if the robber is rolled too many times or somehow everyone else's numbers are rolled more often than yours, you aren't left feeling like you were outsmarted or outmaneuvered, you're left feeling like you weren't really playing the game.
This may be a personal preference, but I am a more gracious loser if I feel like I performed well even if another player performed better. If I am instead left with the feeling that I had no shot at wining because I was left sitting on the sidelines, effectively as a non participant, I just find myself getting frustrated and wondering why I'd invested in the time in "playing" the game. I imagine that anyone who has played Settlers more than a handful of times has either been on the receiving end of this unfortunate scenario or has witnessed another player experience the drought. The fact that, as I mentioned above, one of Settlers' greatest strengths is the fact that it is a predominantly social game makes the whole experience all the more discouraging when any one player is rendered a passive observer by poor dice roles that never give them any resources to work with. This, I believe, if Settlers' greatest weakness, and as a competitive person, I find it to be a pretty glaring one. More easy going players are perhaps better equipped to shrug off a game of Settlers where they were never in the running to begin with, but if I'm playing a game I want to be really playing it and the results of that game have stakes for me.
Theme & Presentation
Possibly related to the fact that Settlers was one of the first games to lay the groundwork for the rise of modern gaming and didn't have much in the way of competition when it entered the scene, there is little in the way of theme to the game. Apart from a very basic kind of colonial, discovery of a new world aesthetic in the card art and concept of settling a new island, the game doesn't tell a story or provide much room for players to create their own story.
Storytelling is not a necessary component of a good board game, and I would much rather have a game with interactive, enjoyable gameplay and a lackluster theme than I would a game with a fascinating story and jaw dropping art but gameplay that is boring or simply unenjoyable. With the array of different board games available for purchase and play today, however, there are plenty of options that balance the best of both worlds so you don't have to choose one over the other.
This isn't to say Settler's isn't a pretty game. I personally prefer the older art style of the early edition I grew up playing, but even the brighter, softer art style of the newer editions is pleasant to have on your table as you play a game. There is a simplicity in the game piece style that is charming but also instantly recognizable, and the visual representation of every resource, development card, and board tile is clearly identifiable for what it is. It does not take more than a couple of play throughs for every key component of the game to be instantly recognizable to a player, and that is a contributor to the fact that Settlers is a great beginner game and a great game for more casual players.
A game that lacks a compelling theme or setting does lean more heavily on its gameplay and mechanics, though, as there is little else to distract from the actual mechanics of what you are doing from turn to turn. This is, in part, why I think the holes in Settler's gameplay that I mentioned above stick out as much as they do on repeated playthroughs. When you get shut out of the game because someone cut you off or because your numbers never role, there isn't another aspect of the game to get engaged with. There aren't fictional factions or teams with backstories you can role play with, there aren't many opportunities to come up with flavorful explanations of how the events on the board are playing out as you might find in games like Lords of Waterdeep, Runbound, Twilight Imperium, or even Dominion.
Settlers is largely generic in theme. That is possibly a contributor to its mass appeal and success. After all, people can't be put off by your theme if you don't really have one! For me personally, however, there are so many games available these days that offer so much more, not just in terms of mechanics and strategy, but in terms of flavor and personality. Games like Chess, Go, and Catan have a timelessness about them because of their lack of theme that will ensure that they're always relevant, but that generic presentation also hinders them when it comes to creating really compelling experiences as a game that sticks out and grabs someone's attention when there are so many good options to consider within the hobby today.
The Verdict
When examined as a whole, the replayability, the fact that the game is easy for newcomers and casual players to grasp, and the fact that it is a deeply social and interactive game all are strong points in Settlers' favor despite its shortcomings. What it lacks in strategic depth or creativity, it can generally make up for simply by virtue of the fact that it creates an opportunity for almost any group of friends with the slightest interest in gaming to sit down, play together, and have fun... as long as no one cuts off my longest road.
It has been a long time since Settlers sat near the top of my list of favorite games. Even so, it is a game that I do recommend that everyone have in their collection regardless of whether they're die hard board game enthusiast or a more casual player. There are plenty of better games out there, but there are few other games that are as widely appealing and as easy to get a full table of people playing. It is a game you can always return to time and time again, regardless of who you're playing with, and it will still offer just as high quality of an experience as it did in the past. Even without a significant amount of strategic depth, it still provides enough variability to keep it from getting stale or boring. This is why, for me, Settlers is a "must have" for every collection and will always have a well-earned spot on my gaming shelf... er, shelves.
