The Settlers of Catan

Great gateway game into the German-style boardgame world. Positives: all players may benefit from each roll of the dice, not just on their own turn. Opportunity for positive and negative direct interaction between players, via trading and e.g. the placement of the robber. Negatives: taking ages to set up/tear down, lasting a little too long in gameplay, and having no real balancing mechanism for players who fall behind, resulting in one person twiddling their thumbs each game!

Expansions: Cities and Knights is needed to add complexity, Seafarers is good especially for explorative maps, haven't tried Traders and Barbarians.

The Settlers of Catan on BoardGameGeek

Introduction

I live in the UK and I love games. I read many computer game and board game reviews, and I'm tired of how long-winded they can be. If you're like me, you end up TL;DRing your way through to the summary. Well, here I attempt to give an adequate review of mainly board games and some computer games whilst sticking to the restrictive constraint: 100 words long. No more, no fewer. I'm hoping this will help me forgo the usual comparisons to several different games and discussions about the fairness of dice or the futility of particular strategies. Let's see!