How to Set Up Catan: Board, Number Order, and Ports

A Catan board looks busy the first time you see it: hexes, numbers, ships, a robber, four colors of wood. Underneath, it is a simple system. By the end of this lesson you will be able to build a fresh island, place starting settlements, and hand out starting cards without opening the rulebook.

The quick answer: connect the sea frame, lay the 19 land hexes inside it in rows of 3, 4, 5, 4, and 3, and spiral the number discs in letter order from one corner. Put the robber on the desert. Then each player places a settlement and a road in order 1, 2, 3, 4, and again in order 4, 3, 2, 1. Your second settlement pays your starting cards.

What comes in the box?

Here is what a 6th Edition base game holds. Older editions are almost identical.

Those piece limits are real limits, not just what fits in the box. We will come back to them in Lesson 5.

How many hexes are on a Catan board?

The island has 19 land hexes, laid out in rows of 3, 4, 5, 4, and 3. Five kinds of land produce resources, and the desert produces nothing.

Notice the 3s. There are only three hills and three mountains on every board, so brick and ore tend to be scarce. Lesson 8 explains why that shapes the whole game.

Settlements and cities never sit on a hex. They sit on the intersections, the corners where hexes meet. A good inland corner touches three hexes, which means three chances to collect when the dice roll. Roads sit on the edges between corners.

What do the number discs do?

Every land hex except the desert gets a number disc, so there are 18 of them. When the dice total matches a hex’s number, that hex produces.

There is no 7 among the discs. Rolling a 7 does something else entirely (that is Lesson 4). The 2 and the 12 appear once each. Every other number, 3 through 11, appears twice.

Look closely and you will see small dots under each number. The dots show how likely that number is to be rolled. More dots, more rolls. The 6 and 8 have the most dots and are printed in red so you cannot miss them. A full lesson on the dots is coming in Level 1, and it may be the most useful lesson in the course.

What are ports, and how many are there?

Older editions call them harbors. The 6th Edition calls them ports. Either way, there are 9 of them around the coast, and they let you trade with the supply at a better rate than usual.

• Four 3:1 ports. Trade 3 of any one resource for 1 of your choice.
• Five 2:1 ports, one for each resource. Trade 2 of that resource for 1 of your choice.

You use a port by owning a settlement or city on one of its two coastal corners. Lesson 3 covers trading in full.

One edition note: older editions came with separate harbor pieces that you could shuffle and place on the frame. The 6th Edition prints the ports right on the sea frame. To mix up port positions, you shuffle the frame pieces themselves.

Should you use the fixed setup or a variable board?

The rulebook gives you two ways to build the island.

Fixed setup is a set layout printed in the rulebook, with starting settlements already chosen for each color. Use it for your very first game, or when teaching someone new. It removes the hardest decision so everyone can learn the turn.

Variable setup is the real game. Tournaments use varied boards too, though there the organizers choose each layout and every table plays the same map. Here is how to build one at home:

1. Build the frame. Shuffle the six sea frame pieces and connect them into a ring.
2. Place the hexes. Shuffle the 19 land hexes and lay them face up inside the frame, in rows of 3, 4, 5, 4, 3.
3. Place the number discs. Each disc has a letter on its back. Line them up in A, B, C order, letter side up. Start at any corner of the island and lay them in order, moving counterclockwise in a spiral toward the center. Skip the desert. Then flip them all number side up.
4. Place the robber on the desert.
5. Set out the supply. Sort the resource cards into five face-up piles. Shuffle the development cards into a face-down pile. Put the two bonus tiles nearby.

The letter spiral matters. It spreads the numbers out so the high-rolling 6s and 8s are not crowded together. Some groups skip the letters and place discs at random, usually with a house rule that no two red numbers can touch. Older rulebooks printed that red-number rule; the 6th Edition base rulebook leaves it out and simply uses the letter spiral.

What order do the Catan numbers go in?

Every number disc has a letter from A to R on its back. Laid out in letter order, the numbers come out like this:

Put A on a corner hex of the outer ring. Go counterclockwise around the outer ring with B through L, then continue around the inner ring with M through R, and finish in the center. When the spiral reaches the desert, skip it and give that letter to the next hex. If the letters on your discs ever disagree with this table, trust the discs.

How do you place your starting settlements?

This is the part people forget most often, so take it slowly.

1. Pick a first player. Everyone rolls the dice. Highest roll goes first.
2. Round one. Starting with the first player and going clockwise, each player places 1 settlement on any open intersection, then 1 road on an edge touching it.
3. Round two. Now go in reverse. The last player goes first, then back around counterclockwise to the first player. Each player places a second settlement and a road touching it.

In a four-player game the order looks like this:

Players call this a snake draft, because the order snakes forward and back. The fourth player gets two picks in a row. The first player gets the first pick and the last.

Every settlement, including these two, must follow the distance rule: no settlement may sit on an intersection right next to another settlement or city. In other words, there must be at least one empty corner between any two buildings. That rule applies to everyone’s buildings, not just your own.

Your second settlement does not have to be near your first. It can go anywhere on the board that follows the distance rule.

Why does the second settlement pay starting resources?

After round two, each player takes 1 resource card from the supply for every land hex touching their second settlement. A settlement touching a forest, a hill, and a field starts you with 1 wood, 1 brick, and 1 wheat. A desert pays nothing.

There are two good reasons for this rule:

• It balances the snake. The last player in round one picks after everyone else has taken the best spots. Choosing two spots in a row, with a starting hand from the second, helps make up for that.
• It gets the game moving. With a few cards in hand, most players can trade or build within their first turn or two.

This is also your first real strategic choice. Your first settlement is usually about the best numbers you can get. Your second can fill in what the first is missing, and hand you the cards to build right away. Lesson 7 turns this into a full checklist.

Try it this week

Set up a variable board alone, and play out the snake draft for four imaginary players. The goal is to get setup under 10 minutes, without the rulebook.

1. Build the island. Shuffle the frame, lay out the 19 hexes, and spiral the number discs by letter. Put the robber on the desert. Time yourself.
2. Draft for four players. Place round one in order 1, 2, 3, 4, then round two in order 4, 3, 2, 1. For each pick, take the spot you honestly think is best for that seat.
3. Check the distance rule on every placement. If a settlement touches a neighbor’s corner, move it.
4. Hand out starting cards for each player’s second settlement only.
5. Look at the result. Which seat do you think got the best start? Write down one reason. You will compare notes with yourself after Level 1.