As you suggest, Catan wasn't entirely unique in variable setup (Knizia's "Tutankhamen" did that a couple years earlier, and Tom Jolly's "Wiz-War" did it a decade before that, among others), though its overlap of variable board AND variable numbers is, I think, still very much an innovation.
Likewise, there are a few other games where you can only trade with the active player; Bohnanza did this (though it came after Catan and was probably influenced by that mechanic), for example, and Traders of Genoa not only has that restriction but also takes the scope of "trading" to extremes. I also vaguely remember a very old MS-DOS game where you offered a trade as the sole action of your turn (you were offering trades of gems with other players, trying to get the largest set of a single type of gem), which probably also counts on a technicality and does pre-date Catan... though I think Catan might be the first boardgame to really popularize the mechanic.
The Development cards were definitely the most swingy (some were far better than others), though slightly more than half the deck is Army cards so going for Largest Army bonus always did seem to me like an achievable strategy (you're buying 6 cards or so on average - much more expensive than the 5 roads it takes to get the Longest Road bonus, sure, but you're also getting a lot of extra mileage out of the card effects themselves, so it doesn't feel horrendously unbalanced). I'd also say that "if they're holding a card in reserve, it's usually a point card" is probably more dependent on who you play with; I've definitely held Monopoly cards in reserve at the right moment, and also threatened (or bluffed) that my face-down card was an Army card to convince opponents to not put the Robber on me. So I think there's more nuance to the card deck than you give credit for here.
The UI of dots on the numbers that you mention was, interestingly, NOT in the original German printing by Kosmos, so it might not be fair to credit that particular thing to Teuber himself. The first printing did have the numbers 2/12 printed in a smaller font than 3/11 which was smaller than 4/10 and so on, and the 6 and 8 were red, but there were no dots; it did give a sense that some numbers were more powerful, but didn't allow players to do the math of "add up the dots on the 3 adjacent hexes to see how many resources you're expected to get." I think the dots were added pretty early (2nd edition?) though, and they were useful enough that they've stuck around.
I would say that Catan did benefit a fair bit from being in the right place at the right time, too. It's not like good Eurogames didn't exist prior to 1995 - there were decades of fantastic Spiel des Jahres winners predating Catan - but it came across to the US just as there were hobby game stores popping up everywhere to serve the hunger for Magic and other TCGs that was in full swing, so there was actually a direct-to-consumer pathway for Catan that didn't exist for, say, Hare&Tortoise, Scotland Yard, Modern Art, or Can't Stop, even though I'd say each of those deserved the same mass-market success. That said, Catan's particular blend of competition-but-with-collaboration, randomness-but-manageable, and with a sufficiently short play time, definitely set it up for strong success. And it's certainly left a heck of a legacy; as I've said elsewhere, without Catan we wouldn't have had the Eurogames explosion in the US; without that we wouldn't have had as many American designers influenced by the Euros, which means we wouldn't have Dominion, and without that we don't have the entire deckbuilder genre, nor the digital roguelite-deckbuilder genre... I'm not saying Catan is DIRECTLY responsible for all of these things, but I'm saying that of all the parallel universes out there where Catan was not invented, I suspect most of them would not have had these other things at all.
Thanks for the detailed reply! I wasn't aware that the initial German version didn't have the dots on the number tokens. That's a great detail.
I'll have to check out Tutankhamen - not familiar with that one. Wiz War is qualitatively different I think, as the board configuration doesn't steer your strategy so strongly (if at all) at the start of the game. The whole game state (including board configuration) changes so much from turn to turn that each turn is like a new puzzle to be solved.
I agree with you strongly on one point and disagree with you (not so strongly) on another.
1. It is a violation of man and nature to randomize the circular tokens in a Catan board set-up. They are specifically alphabetized to avoid grossly imbalanced production among the tile vertices. Randomizing them completely undermines their underlying genius. There is a place in hell for people who do that.
2. I do not like to place the robber right on top of the number token. Invariably, two turns later, I will say, "Okay, I rolled a five. Here's one of them - you get a brick, I get a brick. Where's the other five? <scan, scan, scan> Where's the other five? Oh, wait, is it under the robber? <checks> Oh, yeah." I hate that.
Excellent work Geoff- I hope that people who think that Catan "sucks" or is somehow obsolete read this and understand how meticulous and thoughtful the design work is.
On the development cards- I think they are pretty important, they fill in the "I got no wood or brick" gap and give players a way to spend resources not immediately spendable on material progress toward a chance at a VP, moving the robber, or one of the resource functions that could make up for a shortage. It is interesting in C&K how the cards are replaced by the more complex city development cards- but I don't think that is necessarily better than the simpler base game option.
Also- thanks a lot for making me want to track down another copy of Crude- that's a great game, very underappreciated!
Good point about the resource usage balance. I do know that Seafarers was part of the original design, and excising that (to reduce complexity) may have skewed resource usage, and pushed the cards more.
The active player being involved in all trades was sort of used by Reiner Knizia in Res Publica (1991). There is only (up to) a single trade per turn and it feels rather different, but it may well have been an inspiration for Settlers.
What? Didn't realize Crude came before Catan. I've always heard of Crude when I started listening to the Dice Tower podcasts, which was after I discovered Catan, so my timeline's all screwed up.
I first encountered Catan laying on the bookshelf of a friend back in 2002. I had vaguely heard about the game. When I asked my friend about the game she answered: "this game is amazing". Later that year we organized a gaming session. I fell in love with modern, "German" style game and never looked back.
Together with my girlfriend at the time I started going to local board game events. She beat me in many games, especially Catan. She even ended up participating in the one of the first Belgian Catan tournaments. And won.
I still have Catan but as many "heavy" gamers, don't play it that often. I particularly like the Cities and Knights expansion, despite the added complexity.
On a final note, in my family and game group we have a running gag regarding Teuber's first design, Barbarossa. Some of us love it, others find it really dumb. Once every few years we play this clay modeling-annex-guessing game and sculpt not only poor objects, but also memories which last a lifetime.
Mr Teuber was a genius (I haven't even mentioned the excellent Domaine...). Thank you, Klaus, for the wonderful contributions you have made to our world! Not all heroes wear capes...
Geoff, now I need to know the details of playing Lord of the Rings in a tournament setting. It's one of my favorite games if all time, and I would argue almost as brilliant as Settlers, and at least as epochal.
I still have a problem with the robber. It is often used reluctantly during the start of the game within my players - as Catan is the game chosen amongst those who want to play hard yet not advance due to the downfall of others - but then used freely to stop the player closed to winning during a later stage. I like how there is a Barbarian counter in Cities and Knights - so it is an approaching threat. I wonder how Catan would feel if the robber does not appear at first but is only approaching (or can be defeated easily at first) and builds either in power or frequency later in the game. In any case, great review, as always. Thank you!
Many these days play with the friendly robber variant, which might even be the official rule in new editions. The robber can only be played on someone with more than two victory points. If everyone has fewer, the robber moves back to the desert.
Catan got me into board gaming and I still think it is a great game. Nice writeup of some of the design choices. I also think the focus on building and trading was a breath of fresh air compared to something like Monopoly which was a zero-sum game. Even when you lose, you still have the settlements and cities that you built.
As you suggest, Catan wasn't entirely unique in variable setup (Knizia's "Tutankhamen" did that a couple years earlier, and Tom Jolly's "Wiz-War" did it a decade before that, among others), though its overlap of variable board AND variable numbers is, I think, still very much an innovation.
Likewise, there are a few other games where you can only trade with the active player; Bohnanza did this (though it came after Catan and was probably influenced by that mechanic), for example, and Traders of Genoa not only has that restriction but also takes the scope of "trading" to extremes. I also vaguely remember a very old MS-DOS game where you offered a trade as the sole action of your turn (you were offering trades of gems with other players, trying to get the largest set of a single type of gem), which probably also counts on a technicality and does pre-date Catan... though I think Catan might be the first boardgame to really popularize the mechanic.
The Development cards were definitely the most swingy (some were far better than others), though slightly more than half the deck is Army cards so going for Largest Army bonus always did seem to me like an achievable strategy (you're buying 6 cards or so on average - much more expensive than the 5 roads it takes to get the Longest Road bonus, sure, but you're also getting a lot of extra mileage out of the card effects themselves, so it doesn't feel horrendously unbalanced). I'd also say that "if they're holding a card in reserve, it's usually a point card" is probably more dependent on who you play with; I've definitely held Monopoly cards in reserve at the right moment, and also threatened (or bluffed) that my face-down card was an Army card to convince opponents to not put the Robber on me. So I think there's more nuance to the card deck than you give credit for here.
The UI of dots on the numbers that you mention was, interestingly, NOT in the original German printing by Kosmos, so it might not be fair to credit that particular thing to Teuber himself. The first printing did have the numbers 2/12 printed in a smaller font than 3/11 which was smaller than 4/10 and so on, and the 6 and 8 were red, but there were no dots; it did give a sense that some numbers were more powerful, but didn't allow players to do the math of "add up the dots on the 3 adjacent hexes to see how many resources you're expected to get." I think the dots were added pretty early (2nd edition?) though, and they were useful enough that they've stuck around.
I would say that Catan did benefit a fair bit from being in the right place at the right time, too. It's not like good Eurogames didn't exist prior to 1995 - there were decades of fantastic Spiel des Jahres winners predating Catan - but it came across to the US just as there were hobby game stores popping up everywhere to serve the hunger for Magic and other TCGs that was in full swing, so there was actually a direct-to-consumer pathway for Catan that didn't exist for, say, Hare&Tortoise, Scotland Yard, Modern Art, or Can't Stop, even though I'd say each of those deserved the same mass-market success. That said, Catan's particular blend of competition-but-with-collaboration, randomness-but-manageable, and with a sufficiently short play time, definitely set it up for strong success. And it's certainly left a heck of a legacy; as I've said elsewhere, without Catan we wouldn't have had the Eurogames explosion in the US; without that we wouldn't have had as many American designers influenced by the Euros, which means we wouldn't have Dominion, and without that we don't have the entire deckbuilder genre, nor the digital roguelite-deckbuilder genre... I'm not saying Catan is DIRECTLY responsible for all of these things, but I'm saying that of all the parallel universes out there where Catan was not invented, I suspect most of them would not have had these other things at all.
Thanks for the detailed reply! I wasn't aware that the initial German version didn't have the dots on the number tokens. That's a great detail.
I'll have to check out Tutankhamen - not familiar with that one. Wiz War is qualitatively different I think, as the board configuration doesn't steer your strategy so strongly (if at all) at the start of the game. The whole game state (including board configuration) changes so much from turn to turn that each turn is like a new puzzle to be solved.
I agree with you strongly on one point and disagree with you (not so strongly) on another.
1. It is a violation of man and nature to randomize the circular tokens in a Catan board set-up. They are specifically alphabetized to avoid grossly imbalanced production among the tile vertices. Randomizing them completely undermines their underlying genius. There is a place in hell for people who do that.
2. I do not like to place the robber right on top of the number token. Invariably, two turns later, I will say, "Okay, I rolled a five. Here's one of them - you get a brick, I get a brick. Where's the other five? <scan, scan, scan> Where's the other five? Oh, wait, is it under the robber? <checks> Oh, yeah." I hate that.
Excellent work Geoff- I hope that people who think that Catan "sucks" or is somehow obsolete read this and understand how meticulous and thoughtful the design work is.
On the development cards- I think they are pretty important, they fill in the "I got no wood or brick" gap and give players a way to spend resources not immediately spendable on material progress toward a chance at a VP, moving the robber, or one of the resource functions that could make up for a shortage. It is interesting in C&K how the cards are replaced by the more complex city development cards- but I don't think that is necessarily better than the simpler base game option.
Also- thanks a lot for making me want to track down another copy of Crude- that's a great game, very underappreciated!
Good point about the resource usage balance. I do know that Seafarers was part of the original design, and excising that (to reduce complexity) may have skewed resource usage, and pushed the cards more.
The active player being involved in all trades was sort of used by Reiner Knizia in Res Publica (1991). There is only (up to) a single trade per turn and it feels rather different, but it may well have been an inspiration for Settlers.
I'm not familiar with Res Publica - I'll have to check that out!
What? Didn't realize Crude came before Catan. I've always heard of Crude when I started listening to the Dice Tower podcasts, which was after I discovered Catan, so my timeline's all screwed up.
I first encountered Catan laying on the bookshelf of a friend back in 2002. I had vaguely heard about the game. When I asked my friend about the game she answered: "this game is amazing". Later that year we organized a gaming session. I fell in love with modern, "German" style game and never looked back.
Together with my girlfriend at the time I started going to local board game events. She beat me in many games, especially Catan. She even ended up participating in the one of the first Belgian Catan tournaments. And won.
I still have Catan but as many "heavy" gamers, don't play it that often. I particularly like the Cities and Knights expansion, despite the added complexity.
On a final note, in my family and game group we have a running gag regarding Teuber's first design, Barbarossa. Some of us love it, others find it really dumb. Once every few years we play this clay modeling-annex-guessing game and sculpt not only poor objects, but also memories which last a lifetime.
Mr Teuber was a genius (I haven't even mentioned the excellent Domaine...). Thank you, Klaus, for the wonderful contributions you have made to our world! Not all heroes wear capes...
Geoff, now I need to know the details of playing Lord of the Rings in a tournament setting. It's one of my favorite games if all time, and I would argue almost as brilliant as Settlers, and at least as epochal.
I still have a problem with the robber. It is often used reluctantly during the start of the game within my players - as Catan is the game chosen amongst those who want to play hard yet not advance due to the downfall of others - but then used freely to stop the player closed to winning during a later stage. I like how there is a Barbarian counter in Cities and Knights - so it is an approaching threat. I wonder how Catan would feel if the robber does not appear at first but is only approaching (or can be defeated easily at first) and builds either in power or frequency later in the game. In any case, great review, as always. Thank you!
Many these days play with the friendly robber variant, which might even be the official rule in new editions. The robber can only be played on someone with more than two victory points. If everyone has fewer, the robber moves back to the desert.
Catan got me into board gaming and I still think it is a great game. Nice writeup of some of the design choices. I also think the focus on building and trading was a breath of fresh air compared to something like Monopoly which was a zero-sum game. Even when you lose, you still have the settlements and cities that you built.