Winning Tactics for Settlers of Catan

Before anybody can form a successful Settlers of Catan strategy for winning games, they first need to know what delivers points. Ten points equates to victory, however they are achieved. So what awards points in Catan:

• Build a town - one point.
• Build a city - two points.
• Have the longest road - two points.
• Have the largest army - two points.
• Hold a victory point card - one point each.

Your Settlers of Catan winning strategy will take two forms - gaining those points for yourself, while hindering the ability of your opponents to do the same.

In Settlers of Catan, resources are the key to doing anything. We need them to build and to buy development cards. They are our stockpile to trade.

This is why players, when setting up their board, will look for initial settlements that maximize their ability to gain resources. The six and eight hexagons are highlighted in red, because they are the numbers most often rolled (along with seven) with two dice.

But Mike (the blue player above) is an engineering geek and he doesn't like to leave such things to chance. Hence his Catan winning strategy often involves getting a settlement alongside every single number on the board!

In the image above, he's missing just the number 2. Whatever dice are rolled - unless it's the extremely rare double one - he's going to get resources.

A good spread of numbers can be a very effective way to secure a Catan victory. Except in this instance he was out-stripped by Robin (orange), who was playing wheat and ore to maximize the end game.

The above configuration is known in our circles as the Jelmer Move.

(At least it will be after this article is out. What it's currently called changes daily and involves learning ever more vile things to say in Dutch, to ensure that he's got the message after he's once again employed this strategy to win at Settlers of Catan.)

Where you place your initial settlements can determine the game from the outset. In this case, the blue player (Jelmer...) has chosen spots which favor wheat and ore resources. They are the two needed to build cities.

All of that was a lucky bonus, permitted by his forward thinking coupled with this map's configuration.

The important Catan tactic here was that he concentrated on ore and wheat. Cities mean more resources. More resources equate with more ways to win the game. You will always be able to build at least two cities, as your initial settlements are there to upgrade. Just use them as your springboard into constructing more!

It's a major strategy towards victory in Settlers of Catan. Just ask Jelmer.

Whenever a seven is thrown, the player who cast it is forced to move the robbers. This can (and usually is) used tactically.

In the example above, Jrady shifted the robbers onto a hexagon providing wheat whenever a six is thrown. It was a good choice.

Six, seven and eight are the numbers most likely to be cast by two dice. Hence that area probably produced a lot of wheat for the players whose settlements surrounded it.

Wheat is an important resource in the later stages of the game. It is a major component in building a city. Therefore Jrady factored in three considerations:

• Targeted the winning player.
• Reduced their access to the most sought after resource.
• Did so on a highly rolled number.

Suddenly he seems more sensible than evil. Though, of course, he's in trouble the next time I roll a seven or grab a knight card!

If I know Jrady - and I do - then he hadn't even thrown a seven, in order to move the robbers that thwarted me. He'd pulled a knight card, which allowed him to act as if he had.

The fact that I introduced this by recalling how I won a game with three victory points provides another hint. Development cards are important. They're an often under-used element to the game, which can easily be your ticket to winning in Catan.

So what are they and how can they lead you to victory?

1. Victory Point card - awards you a secret extra point each. Opponents may guess that you own one, particularly if you don't play your stored development card, but they won't know for certain.
2. Road Building card - allows you to build two extra roads without the materials usually needed to do so. Great way to beat an opponent to a port or resource rich spot; boost your chances of achieving longest road; or block off an opponent's road-building efforts.
3. Knight card - acts as if you had just rolled a seven. You may use it to position the robbers, in order to steal from an opponent's inventory and block a hexagon from delivering resources to your rival(s). Using the knight card is also your ticket to gaining largest army. Do it three times to enter the running, then ensure that you're always ahead of your opponents in number of knight cards deployed. That's one point right there.
4. Inventory card - lets you produce two resources of your choice. Perfect for those moments when the resources aren't just dropping into your lap.
5. Monopoly card - lifts all iterations of a single resource from your opponents' inventories and plonks them into your own. This not only gives you a potentially mega stockpile of that resource, but stops your rivals having access to their own. Used correctly, it can be like deploying an atomic bomb over your opponents' plans.  My friend Ember is freaking brilliant at this. She waits several turns between acquiring and using it. That time is spent actively working out what resources are plentiful in everyone else's inventories. In that way, she activates maximum destruction, when she pulls that resource into her own inventory.

The downside of development cards is that you never know which one you'll receive for your wheat, wool and ore payment. The upside is that none of your rivals know precisely which card you possess. They can't effectively defend against it.

People like Jrady and Ember have refined their Catan strategies using development cards, turning their winning tactics into an art form. I always worry, when I see that either of them have such a card unused. It's bound to end badly for me!

There was an almighty battle for longest road taking place in the game pictured above. The white player (Ember) and the red player (myself) passed the accolade back and forth between us, until one of us reigned supreme.

Constructing the longest road in Catan awards that player with two points, which can mean victory.

The road has to be unbroken. In the image above, the orange roads around the number two wood count only as three. Two branch off, hence aren't included in the tally. But the game will opt for the farthest reach. For example, that blue road in the center would count as five, as that is its longest route. The branch between the six and eleven would be discounted.

Longest road can be one of the easiest ways to gain a couple of points, but it's not always wise to attempt it.

Committing your resources to building routes means that they aren't being used elsewhere. You can see that situation playing out in the same picture.

Moreover, it's also a dangerous gambit, as those are points which can be taken off you. All that has to happen is another player building a longer road, and those points are gone.

Alternatively, a rival could deliberately break your route by building a settlement at an exposed juncture. This too would rob you of your longest road points in Catan.

To an experienced Settlers of Catan player, this map looks downright bloody!  Three separate skirmishes can be discerned along the white route (mine).

Beginning at the top, there's a random road sneaking between the twelve and five. This could have been an early, abortive attempt to reach the rich resource potential of that number six wool (as indeed it was).

But it could also have been a defensive road. If the white player was aiming for longest road, then the blue player (Tabt) could easily have thwarted it by building her own route there and creating a settlement on the 12, 5 and 9 spot.

Meanwhile, I too acted aggressively by cutting straight across Tabt's blue route at the bottom. It blocked her in, giving her nowhere to expand there, thus robbing her of potential access to resources.

Incidentally, Jethraw (orange) won this game, which shows how building small but big can be the winning strategy for Catan.

Ember is the Queen of this Catan winning tactic. She consistently uses trades to force the result that she wants on the board.  Unable to see the strategy?  Let me run you through a few uses for trade as a Catan winner.

• Exchange one of your resources for something else.  This is the bog standard trade and good for a quick fix. Hopefully the wool you just swopped for a wheat didn't buy someone a settlement.
• Exchange one of your resources for two or more items. This is where Ember gets serious. She works out what's in high demand (clay and wood at the beginning; wool throughout; ore and wheat at the end), then demands a high price.
• Charge for using your resource port. A player can give you three resources and that would still be cheaper than the four demanded by the bank. So offer your port as an amenity, and add on a tax.
• Trade materials to a resourceless player in a position to exploit a vulnerability in a winning player's longest road, or able to cut off access to a wool port for a player whose settlements are surrounded by wool hexagons. What you lose in resources here is worth the price of hobbling a third player's potentially dangerous advantage.
• Trade as a Kingmaker.  This is when two or three players gang up against a fourth.  (Three of us once held poor Robin off for an hour, when he was on nine points, by pooling resources in this way!) This is traditionally done to stop a winner, well, winning.  But it can also be revenge.
• Kingmaking as revenge. This is employed when a player decides that they really can't win, or simply determines that they'll throw their game to punish an opponent for whatever reason. It's never going to be a winning strategy in this game, but it'll make people think twice about acting aggressively against you in later games!
• Stopping trading.  This generally happens when someone is winning. They'll suddenly discover that nobody is about to trade them anything at all. Why help them gain those extra two or three winning points?

Trade can most definitely become part of your winning strategy in Settlers of Catan, so don't overlook its inherent possibilities!