What Is Catan? The Game That Started the Modern Board Game Boom

Maybe you played Catan once at a friend’s house. Someone handed you a pile of sheep, the rules came out in pieces between bites of pizza, and by the end you were hooked and a little lost at the same time. That is exactly where this course starts.

Road to the Catan Championship is 40 free lessons, in six levels, that take you from opening the box to understanding what it takes to win a National Championship. Level 0 has one goal: set up and finish a game without reaching for the rulebook. This first lesson is the map. What the game is, where it came from, and the single goal every game shares.

Prefer to watch first? Watch It Played teaches the rules on video in its Catan How To Play video. Watch it, then come back here: the next four lessons walk the same rules in writing, one step at a time.

What is Catan, in plain words?

Catan is a board game for three or four players (expansions add more seats). The board is an island made of hexagon tiles. Each tile is a kind of land, like forest or mountains, and each one produces a resource, like wood or ore.

Every turn, someone rolls two dice. Tiles with that number produce, and anyone with a settlement or city touching those tiles collects cards. You spend those cards to build:

• Roads to reach new land
• Settlements to collect from more tiles
• Cities to collect double from the tiles you already touch
• Development cards for surprises, like knights and hidden points

You will almost never roll exactly what you need. So you trade. Trading is the heart of Catan. Half the game happens on the board, and the other half happens across the table in offers like “I’ll give you two wheat for one brick.”

Where did Catan come from?

Catan began as a hobby. Klaus Teuber ran a dental lab near Darmstadt, Germany, and designed games in his spare time. He had already won major German design awards before he built a game about settling a new island.

Kosmos published it in 1995 as Die Siedler von Catan (The Settlers of Catan). The first print run of 5,000 copies sold out fast, and the game sold about 400,000 copies in its first year. It won the 1995 Spiel des Jahres, Germany’s Game of the Year, the most famous award in board games.

The English story came next:

Today Catan has sold more than 40 million copies. Teuber’s family company, Catan GmbH, still guides the game. For the longer version of this history, plus how the competitive ladder works, read I Came to Cube. I’m Staying for Catan., the article this course grew out of.

Why did Catan become everyone’s first “real” board game?

For a lot of players, Catan was the first board game that was not Monopoly, Risk, or Scrabble. A few design choices explain why it stuck:

• Nobody gets knocked out. In Monopoly, a player can go broke in the first hour and sit out. In Catan, everyone plays to the end.
• The board changes. The tiles get shuffled, so every game is a new puzzle. You cannot memorize a single best move.
• You are busy on other people’s turns. Every roll can pay you, and anyone can offer you a trade. There is very little waiting around.
• Scores stay close. Most games end with several players within a few points of the winner, so the last ten minutes feel tense in a good way.
• Luck and skill share the table. The dice keep new players in the game. Over many games, though, better players win more often. That is why tournaments exist.

That mix made Catan a gateway: the game that leads people into the wider hobby. If you are choosing between the two most famous gateway games, our Catan vs Ticket to Ride comparison lays out the differences.

How do you win at Catan?

The goal is simple to say: be the first player to reach 10 victory points, on your own turn.

Points come from a short list. Each settlement is worth 1. Each city is worth 2. Two special bonus tiles are worth 2 each, one for the longest continuous road and one for the biggest army of knights. A few development cards are worth 1 point each, and they stay hidden until you reveal them to win.

You do not need to memorize any of that today. Lesson 5 covers every way to reach 10. What matters now is the shape of the game:

1. Your starting spots decide what you collect.
2. What you collect decides what you can build.
3. What you build earns points and grows your income.
4. Trading fills the gaps in between.

Everything in this course, from your first setup to championship play, is a deeper look at one of those four steps.

Which edition should you learn?

Any edition teaches the game. The core rules have barely changed since 1995. If you already own a copy, use it.

That said, official tournaments now play by the CATAN 6th Edition English rules, published in 2025, so this course uses 6th Edition words. The 6th Edition kept the mechanics and renamed a few things. If your box is older, here is the translation:

Older and newer pieces can even share a table, though the card backs no longer match between editions.

Where does this course go from here?

Here is the whole road, level by level:

You do not have to want a trophy to get something out of this. Most people who take Catan a little more seriously simply have better game nights: fewer rules arguments, faster turns, and closer games. The game is the reason. The people are the point.

Try it this week

Your drill this week is to get a game on the table. You do not need to be good yet. You just need a copy and a few people.

1. Find a copy. Check your own shelf first, then ask friends and family. Catan is one of the most common games in American closets. Many public libraries lend board games too.
2. Or find a table that already has one. Board game cafés, game stores, and library game nights often keep Catan on hand. If you are in central Indiana, our guide to Indianapolis game nights is a good place to start.
3. Or host. Invite two or three people for a weeknight game. Our guide on how to host a game night covers the snacks, the seating, and the invite.
4. Play one game, start to finish. Let someone who knows the rules teach, or work through the rulebook together. Do not worry about strategy.
5. Write down one question the game left you with. Odds are good a lesson in Level 0 answers it.