Board games are pretty much dead it seems, as Monopoly and others have seemingly disappeared to closets and attic boxes. However, every so often a new one will come along or be transferred to a computer and console, and suddenly it is being played again. One such game is Catan, a strategy board game that has you battling other players over pieces of land on the newly discovered island of Catan. Do you have the smarts to put your foot down and claim your slice of island heaven?

When you and the other players first come to the island of Catan, you’ll see it randomly populated with various resource cards, ranging from wood to brick to ore to wool to grain. On each card you’ll also find a number ranging from two to twelve. The numbers on the cards relate to the combined roll of two dice, which starts each player’s turn. So, for example, a player rolls a four, all of the four cards on the board will give players one card of the resource type that is represented on that card.

However, not everyone will get a card every single time the dice are rolled. Instead, you must have a settlement or city with a road right there touching the card. When you start the game out you get to place two settlements and two roads. Depending on your strategy, you’ll place these in one of several ways. The placement of your settlements are an important one, as you only get resources for those cards your settlements and cities are touching. If you have a settlement, you’ll get one resource card of that type, but if you have a city there you’ll get two of that resource type.

As you gather resource cards, you’ll use them to benefit your gameplan, utilizing them to build objects. You’ll be able to build new settlements (road must connect to it and be two away from any other settlement), the roads needed to connect to new settlements, cities which act as upgrades for your settlements, and development cards. Each thing you can build costs different resources, so to build roads you’ll need one wood and one brick, and then after spending them you can place the roads either to other roads you already have down or attach them to one of your settlements or cities. Though you’ll get resources by rolling dice, the other main way you get new resources is through trading with other players, where if you want to offer up one grain for one wood you may need, you can place that offer up and see if anyone will take you up on the offer; sometimes they will and sometimes they wont – part of the way you’ll succeed and win is by being a good trader. If you really need one resource and not another, you can go to the ports to trade in four of one kind to get one of another. However, if you own a port, you can trade two of one resource for one of another.

You can also buy development cards, which are random and will do one of several different things. One development card type is the soldier, which adds to your army, but will also randomly take a card that you put the stopper next to. You’ve also got cards that will let you build two roads and cards that will give you victory points when you play them during a game.

The object of the game is to be the first of the players to reach ten points, and these all come from different ways and play styles. You can get points for each settlement or city you place down, for building the longest road, having the largest army, and by playing development cards. Games seem to run about thirty each, perhaps slightly less or more depending on how long trades take and for your plan to come to action.

There appears to be many rules when you first play, and probably will confound you at the start, but after playing and seeing how things work, you’ll be getting good at it all in no time flat. For as complicated as it starts, things seem to get much simpler as you go on, and yet it all remains deep in its gameplay. Catan is very much a thinker of a game, as you really need to use your brain to ever have a chance at doing well in the game. You need a gameplan. You need a strategy. And you need to be able to change it up if you see your plan won’t work because of the competition.

The game exists as both a single player game against computer AI or either online against real players. For the computer AI, you’ll play against different historic people, such as Sun Tzu, Lincoln and others. Each historic person has their own styles and ways they play. You can also change up the difficult from easy to medium to hard. Easy is a bit too easy, and mostly there only for you to learn the ropes, but medium and hard provide really excellent challenges. However, nothing beats playing against real players, so get onto Xbox Live and get proving to yourself and others you are a Catan master.

The sound work is pretty sparse, featuring muted music that plays lowly, and the audible but yet nothingness of rolling dice and the occasional card play or soldier steal. The game board looks nice, but nothing spectacular. As a board game though, it looks really well done, and easily conveys all the information you need to properly do well at the game.

Having never played Catan before, I had heard a lot about it and how fun it was and mentally rewarding it was, and in that regards I wasn’t let down. I found myself surprisingly compelled during each of my matches, as they played out more like the thinking in chess than the subtle placement of the hotels in a Monopoly. It would be nice if you could save games in solo play, but with that little nothing of an issue, it’s still a really fun game if you are looking for a new board game. If non-stop action is your cup of tea though, you won’t find what you are looking for here.

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