50 Fun Facts About Catan

Who designed the game?

His original design was a sprawling game of exploration; he and Kosmos spent 1993 to 1995 simplifying it.

In which year was the game first published?

It swept the 1995 awards: Spiel des Jahres, Deutscher Spiele Preis, the Essen Feather and the Meeples' Choice.

In which country was the game first published?

It became one of the first Eurogames to catch on outside Europe.

Which company first published the game?

Its full name is Franckh-Kosmos Verlag; Mayfair later handled the English editions for years.

Under what longer name was the game originally sold?

The line was rebranded to the single word for its 20th anniversary in 2015.

How many victory points does a player normally need to win?

Settlements score one, cities two, and bonuses come from the longest road and largest army.

The island is built from tiles of what shape?

They are laid out at random each game, though newer editions recommend a fixed beginner layout.

Which of these is NOT one of the five resources in the base game?

The five are wool, grain, lumber, brick and ore; older editions called them sheep, wheat, wood, brick and ore.

Which land type produces brick?

Forests give lumber, mountains ore, fields grain and pastures wool.

Mountains produce which resource?

Ore and grain together are what you need to upgrade a settlement into a city.

Pastures produce which resource?

The original German edition called it sheep, which is why players still say it.

Where does the robber token start the game?

The desert is the one land type that never produces anything, so parking the robber there costs nobody.

Rolling which number forces the robber to move?

The hex it lands on stops producing, and the mover may steal a card from a neighbouring player.

When a 7 is rolled, players holding at least how many resource cards must discard half?

Half rounded down: a player with nine cards loses four.

Without a port, players may trade resources with the bank at what ratio?

A generic port improves that to three to one and a specialised port to two to one.

How many victory points is a city worth?

A city also doubles production, taking two cards instead of one when its number is rolled.

The 'largest army' bonus goes to whoever has played the most of which card?

Playing one moves the robber as if a 7 were rolled, but without forcing anyone to discard.

Which development card lets you take all of one resource from every other player?

It is one of five development card types, alongside cards worth a straight victory point.

Which development card lets you pick up any two resource cards?

Road Building, by contrast, lets you lay two roads without paying for them.

How many different types of development card are there?

Victory point, knight, monopoly, road building and year of plenty.

The base game is designed for how many players?

A 1996 extension stretched it to six and added a building phase between turns.

What was the first expansion, adding ships and exploration, released in 1997?

Combined with the base game it is probably the closest thing to Teuber's original sprawling design.

The 1997 ships expansion added hexes producing what, which let a player take any resource?

It also introduced scenarios in which players explore an archipelago.

Cities & Knights adds three commodities: paper, cloth and what?

It also brought in city improvements and knights to fend off invaders.

Which 2008 expansion includes the official two-player variant?

It collects a number of smaller scenarios, some previously published elsewhere.

The Settlers of Catan was rebranded to the single word Catan for which anniversary?

That was 2015; the original game simply became Catan.

The 2005 tenth-anniversary collector's edition featured tiles and pieces that were what?

It bundled the base game with Cities & Knights.

In the 2007 fourth edition, the robber piece changed from black to what colour?

The same edition renamed the soldier development card the knight.

Who wrote the 2003 novel Die Siedler von Catan about Norse voyagers?

The historical novelist sent her Norsemen in search of the mythical island.

Which 1999 spin-off took the game into space with spaceships and spaceports?

It kept the dice-driven production, trading and building of the original.

The Catan Dice Game, released in 2007, is played with how many dice?

Each face shows a resource and you roll up to three times, scoring on a miniature island sheet.

In Catan Junior, the robber is replaced by which character?

The 2012 family version has a pirate theme, tiles instead of cards and simpler trading.

Which franchise got an official Catan spin-off from Mayfair in 2012?

It reused the base components with new names and folded in the Helpers of Catan cards as characters.

In A Game of Thrones Catan (2017), players take on which role?

They harvest the Gift, build keeps and help defend the Wall.

Catan: Dawn of Humankind (2022) has players leading what?

Tribes explore new continents and set up camps.

Which German game-of-the-year award did the game win in 1995?

It also took first place in the Deutscher Spiele Preis the same year.

By 2020, how many boxed sets had been sold worldwide?

That was across 40 languages and a family of publishers from Kosmos to Devir.

Which newspaper called Catan 'the board game of our time' in 2010?

Designer Richard Dansky called it 'a hardcore game and a light social pastime and everything in between'.

Which 2012 documentary about Catan's impact on American gaming featured its designer?

Teuber also appears in the later documentary Gamemaster with his sons Benjamin and Guido.

The first Catan World Championship was held in 2002 in which German city?

It was staged at the Internationale Spieltage fair every year until 2008, when it moved to Gen Con.

The postponed 2020 World Championship was eventually held in 2022 in which city?

Since 2008 the event has alternated every two years between the United States and Germany, Malta aside.

Which actress starred with Fran Kranz in the 2014 short film The Lord of Catan?

The two play a married couple whose game gets increasingly intense.

Which streamer acquired global film and TV rights to Catan in October 2025?

The plan covers live-action and animated projects, with Teuber's sons among the producers.

Which company cancelled its augmented-reality game Catan: World Explorers in 2021?

It spent a year in early access and was shut down without ever officially launching.

Which studio made the 2007 Xbox Live Arcade version of the game?

It was pulled from the service without notice in mid-2014 and never explained.

Unused ideas from the original design went into Entdecker and which other Teuber game?

Between 1993 and 1995 the big exploration design was pared down into the game we know.

The 1998 Historical Scenario pack re-enacted Alexander's empire and the building of what?

A second pack in 2001 covered the Great Wall and the Trojan War.

The free 2011 scenario Catan: Oil Springs was designed to draw attention to what?

Oil fields boost production but trigger disasters if overused; you can also remove oil from the game for points.

In the 2012 scenario Frenemies, players earn what for helping their opponents?

Moving the robber harmlessly or linking roads to a rival's network earns them, and the favours cut both ways.

A generic port lets a player trade with the bank at what ratio?

Specialised ports take two of a named resource for one of anything.