Placing Under the Clock

At your kitchen table, setup takes as long as it takes. Someone stares at the board for five minutes, someone else goes to get chips, and nobody minds.

At an official CATAN event, setup runs on a clock. You get two minutes to place each settlement and road, and three for a double placement. That sounds tight. It is less tight than it sounds, once you know where the real thinking time is. This lesson shows you where to find it, gives you a routine for your window, and ends with a drill that makes the clock feel calm.

What does the clock look like?

Here is the setup sequence in the current CATAN tournament rules, as of October 2026, in plain words:

• Map study: 5 minutes for every table to look at the board, and talk about it if you like. It can end early if all players agree.
• Placements: 2 minutes per placement. The player who places twice in a row gets 3 minutes for both.
• Global timing: the rules ask hosts to time placements for the whole room at once, so each window starts when the judge calls it.

In a four-player game, the snake draft runs 1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1. Seat 4’s two picks share one window. So there are seven windows: six singles and one double. If every window runs its full length, that is 6 x 2 = 12 minutes, plus 3 for the double, or 15 minutes of placing. Add the 5-minute study, and setup can take 20 minutes before anyone rolls.

Three-player tables follow their own timing pattern on that page. The ideas in this lesson work the same way there.

Where is your real thinking time?

Here is the trick. Your two minutes are not your only two minutes. You can think during map study and during every window that is not yours.

The arithmetic: seat 2 gets the 5-minute study plus seat 1’s window, so 5 + 2 = 7. Seat 4 waits through study and three single windows: 5 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 11. Between seat 1’s picks come the windows for picks 2 and 3, the double, then picks 6 and 7: 2 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 11.

Two things jump out. Seat 1 has the least time before its first pick, so seat 1 has to finish its read during map study. And seat 1 has the most time before its second pick, which helps, because six settlements land in between, as Lesson 15 showed.

The rules also ask organizers to rotate play order across your preliminary games, so expect to see more than one seat in a day. Practice all four.

What should be ready before your window opens?

A ranked shortlist. Not one spot, a list. During map study, your board read from Lesson 31 should leave you with:

1. Your top five or six corners, in order
2. A note on what each one gives you: resources, rough pip total, port access
3. The direction your road would point from each

Then, during the windows before yours, keep the list current. Every time a settlement lands, ask two questions. Did that take or block a spot on my list? Did it change what my spot is worth? If seat 2 takes the best ore, your second-best ore corner may matter more than it did a minute ago.

For your second pick, the list changes shape. Now you are filling gaps. Use the Lesson 7 checklist: which checks does your first settlement fail, and which open corners fix them? Rank three or four candidates before your window opens.

What is the routine inside your two minutes?

Four steps, the same every time. Call it strike, settle, steer, set.

That leaves 15 seconds of cushion. You will need it once or twice a day, when a pick right before yours wrecks your plan.

The point of the routine is that most of your choices are already made. Strike is quick because you know your list. Settle is quick because the list is ranked. Steer is quick because you noted road directions during study. The only new thinking is one question: did the last pick change anything?

What about the double placement?

Seat 4 gets 3 minutes for two picks. That is 90 seconds a pick, the tightest ratio at the table. But seat 4 also has 11 minutes of thinking time before the window opens, the most of anyone.

So plan pairs, not spots. As Lesson 15 put it, seat 4’s two picks are one decision. During study and the first three windows, build two or three candidate pairs. Each pair should pass the five checks together. When your window opens, strike any pair that lost a spot, take the best survivor, and spend your time aiming both roads at open space, since seats 3, 2, and 1 still place after you.

What if your whole list is gone?

It happens, most often to seat 1 on the last pick. Do not start a fresh read of the whole board. Use a two-question fallback:

1. Which resource am I missing most? Usually brick, wood, or ore.
2. Which open corner gives me that resource on the most pips?

Take it. A fast, decent pick beats a perfect pick made with five seconds left and a shaky hand. The rules page does not spell out what happens if your time runs out, so ask the judge at the start of the day, and plan never to find out.

Does the clock make you worse?

A little, at first. Then it makes you better. Most players with unlimited time do not use it well. They circle the same three spots and second-guess themselves. A routine and a ranked list do the same work in less time, and the habit carries back to your home games, where your friends will thank you for it.

Try it this week

Your drill: practice openings with a two-minute timer until the routine feels automatic.

1. Set up a random board. Shuffle the hexes and number discs the way you would for a game, as in Lesson 2.
2. Run a timed map study. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Write your ranked shortlist of five or six corners, each with a road direction.
3. Play all four seats yourself. Make all eight picks in snake order, with a 2-minute timer per single pick and 3 minutes for seat 4’s double. Use strike, settle, steer, set every time.
4. Review without the clock. When you finish, look at all eight picks with no timer. Mark any you would change, and why.
5. Repeat on three more boards this week. Track how many picks you would change each time. Aim to get it down to one or none.
6. Try it at a real table. In your next home game, ask the group to try the 2-minute rule for setup. Most tables like how fast the game starts.