This game is too much fun. I’ve played Risk with friends before and thought it was fun, but mostly because it was an excuse to hang out with friends, drink and shout, but that’s about the extent of board games that I’ve played in a long time. Settlers of Catan is just plain addicting. I think it’s a lot like Civilization IV on a board, made for multiplayer.
It involves building settlements, collecting resources, and trading. In Risk when an opponent screws you over with attacks and lucky dice rolls all you can do is call them names. In this game you don’t attack opponents, but there’s all sorts of more satisfying and subtle ways to compete, and dice rolls can benefit multiple people at a time. What really makes board games fun is the social aspect, and this game has all sorts of ways to interact: trading, blocking routes with roads, blocking resource production, stealing resources, and competing for longest road or largest army.
Normally I’m not a big fan or randomness in games because it leaves little room for skill, but in this game the randomness makes it more interesting by forcing you plan a strategy based around what is most likely to happen. It’s not just hoping that the dice roll the highest number, because sometimes you want a low number, or a low probability number to pay off since high probability numbers pay for just about everyone.
Now the only problem is finding people to play when I want to which is all the time lately. I just found out that there’s an online version (although it’s run by MSN and only works with Internet Explorer), but I don’t think it will be nearly as fun without friends nearby to share it with.