12 House Rules For Settlers Of Catan You Should Try In Your Group

The board game 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Settlers of Catan is a classic that's been enjoyed in households across the world for꧋ 25 years. The idea is deceptively simple: you are a settler on the island of Catan, where re﷽sources are plenti🌜ful and your citizens can thrive. That is, assuming you can beat out the competition.

Players compete in Catan to be the biggest civilization on the island. To do this, they build roads, villages, cities, and port towns. However, if you have had your copy of Catan for a few years, you may be sick of the normal rules after a few times around the block. Try out these house rules from real players that mix up the fun!

Updated May 3, 2022, by Gabrielle Huston: Catan is a beloved board game in family homes, board game cafés, college lounges, and more. These house rules help to spice up those experiences with the people you love to be around! We've updated the article with a few extra house rules to try, and made sure that every rule is explained in detail so that you can implement it in your own games.

12 Roll Twice On Doubles 𝕴 ♚

Settlers of Catan Board Set Up With Two Dice On Top

A simple rule to update your games and keep things interesting is to take something out of the Monopoly playbook: role again on doubles! There are a few variations of this house rule, but the most basic version is just to continue rolling so long as you get doubles, and only start your turn once you've stopped rolling.

This adds a little bit of spice to the players' turns, since rolling again might activate the Robber and force the person who has just rolled a bunch and earned resources to dump have their cards.

11 🍃 🎃 Fairness Counts

This is a rule that changes the way the game was purposefully designed, a little bit. on the boardgamegeek.com forums says that his group will consider twos and twelves to be the same. If you👍 rolled a two, any tile that had a two or a twelv🐬e on it would provide resources. If you rolled a twelve, any tile that had a two or a twelve on it would provide resources.

Now, the game purposefully has tiles that are easier and harder to roll in order to create variety between games and risk during an individual game. Maybe the only Brick tile you can reach has a 2 on it: do you put your Settlement next to it and hope that you get lucky and a two is rolled? Or, do you focus on a resource you already own aღnd try to trade with the bank? This rule eliminates that particular risk a little bit, but also adds a bunch of other factors to consider, too.

10 Build Roads Through Other Players' Cities

Settlers of Catan Board with 2 Players' Roads Meeting

This may be a rule you've been using without even realizing it! Under normal Catan rules, if the "1" town is already present, you cannot build the "2" roads through it, even if you approach it and the blue player hasn't placed their own road on the other side.

Some players learn about this for the first time when they try out the mobile or . Many people have decided to ignore the rule and allow it anyways since the Catan board can be pretty small for four players and it's easy to be cut off.

9 Natural Disasters ♊ ཧ

Settlers Of Catan set up on a table with wood cards lined up.

uses the rule in which you roll again on doubles, but with an 🌄added twist. If you roll three doubles in a row, a natural disaster occurs!

Natural Disaster	Third Set Of Doubles Rolled	Consequences
Forest Fire	1s	No players can coꦆllect Lumber for one round of💦 turns.
Landslide	2s	No players c꧑an c🍌ollect Brick or Ore until the next time doubles are thrown.
Famine	3s	All players re♏turn all of their Sheep and Wheat back to the ban൲k.
Pirate Raid	4s	Any player with a coastal Settlement or City loses half their resources. For each additional coastal Set🥀tlement or City the player owns (if applicable), they lose half of their remaining hand.
Sandstorm	5s	All Settlements, Cities, and Ro𒊎ads are buried under sand and destroyed.
Communist Revolution	6s	Every player gives all of ꦑtheir resources to the player who rolled doubles. That player redistributes them one at a time, starting with the player on their lef🅰t and giving one card to each player at a time until there are none left.

8 🃏 ♓ The Banker

The robber piece on Settlers of Catan board

The Banker rules come from . Lots of players are frustrated by the Robber, an aspect of the game tha💯t can steal yourꦕ cards and block one of your hexagons from producing for you.

Turning the Robber into the Banker means that the player who rolls a seven can take any resource they choose. That player will also still move the Robber but instead of stealing from the hexagon they choose, the Banker will produce an extra resource every time that number is rolled.

7 Give 'Em A Fighting Chance

Settlers of Catan Board Game With Three Players Set Up

Another popular board game, Splendor, allows every other player to go again once one person has reached the winning score, in case another player can beat that score in their next turn. This Catan house rule does the same thing.

Once one player has reached 10 victory points, the winning score, every other player gets another turn. Whoever has the most victory points at the end of the other players' turns is announced the winner, so it's a race to see how many points you can earn in one turn! Plus, it makes players more hesitant to rush to the end line; they'd want to make sure they have plenty of points, not just enough to hit 10.

6 ꧑ Robin Hood

on the boardgamegeek.com forums developed the 'Robin Hood' rule to prevent one player from getting too lucky and getting too far ahead early on. It's something that almost every Catan player has experienced.

Under these rules, the Robber is transformed into Robin Hood and, when a 7 is rolled, must follow these rules:

Robin Hood cannot be placed on a tile that would prevent the player(s) with the fewest number of victory points from gathering resources.
The player who rolled the 7 doesn't keep the resource that Robin Hood steals. Instead, the player gives it to the player with the fewest number of Victory Points (if it's a tie, the player may choose).
Robin Hood differentiates winners and losers by 2 Victory Points. If there are no differences between any players of 2 or more victory points, Robin Hood acts as the Robber usually would.

5 Raise The Bar 🔯

Settlers of Catan Game Box Parts Spread Out

An easy way to make the game more interesting is to simply up the bar for victory. Usually, you need to get ten victory points to win, so upping that cap to 15 extends the game by an hour or so.

This change encourages players to think more long-term and compete for the longest road and largest army points (which will probably bounce around a lot towards the end of the game). This simple cha🧜nge affects almost every choice the settlers make in-game.

4 Superman For A Day 𝐆

This is the only Catan house rule that will make you feel like a superhero while playing (). It comes fr꧑om on the boardgamegeek.com forums.

This house rule also cuts out the Robber mechanic (a lot ofꦯ people seem to hate him, with good reason). Instead, the number on the red die that you roll each time you get a seven determines your superpower for the round. The originator has their own list, which we have included below, but it could be fun to create your own.

Number On The Red Die	Superpower
1	Take any tile of land from the board a𒁏nd swap it with another tile.
2	Receive two resource✃s of your choice from the bank.
3	Re🐽ceive one resource from every player (chosen by the player who is giving it).
4	Take a number token from a land tile on the board and swap it with a different tile's number token.
5	Move the merchant. (Only if you're using the Cities & Knights expansion. If you're not, come up with your own rule!)
6	Trade up to four💞 cards from your hand with any c﷽ards from the bank.

3 Tricky Trad♈ers 𝄹

Two Settlers of Catan Players Trading Cards Over The Board

While Catan's normal rules don't prohibit this house rule per se, they certainly don't suggest or encourage it. This variation takes a creative approach to the Robber and other trading interactions. To convince someone not to put the Robber on their hexagon, players can attempt to bribe whoever rolled the seven, forcing everyone to compete.

You can also make regular trading extra interesting by pledging future resources; everyone has been in the position where they needed a stone or a sheep and didn't have anything to trade for it. This way, you don't have to have the clay right now – just promise to hand over the next clay you get.