Intro

Hello, my name is Me, and I should warn you that I love this game (which is called The Settlers of Catan)! It consists of a core game with several expansions.  Yes, I would highly recommend it.

I'll describe each game progressively, though not all in the same post.  Here's the first.

The Settlers of Catan, the core game, is essentially a game of collecting the resources of lumber, wool, grain, brick, and ore to expand your empire.  You need to build roads (a brick and a lumber) to get to spots to build settlements (a brick, a lumber, a wool, and a grain), which will provide you with more resources.  Development cards (a wool, a grain, and an ore) let you do things such as build two roads, or steal all of a particular resource in circulation.  Settlements can be upgraded into cities, which produce twice the resources they normally would.

You can also build settlements on ports so you can trade resources with the bank.

Settlements are worth one victory point each, while cities are worth two.  The first person to get to ten wins!

I should warn you about the robber.  It can block your production of one resource, but can be chased away by knight cards, which also increase the size of your army.

The person with the longest road gets two extra victory points, while the person with the largest army also gets two victory points.

The setup of the board will always be different, though the shape and size are the same.  You never know what to expect in this game (though wool usually seems to be common for some reason)!