50 Fun Facts About Catan

Who designed Catan?

Klaus Teuber began inventing games in the early 1980s to unwind from a stressful day job; Catan sold so well that in 2002 he founded his own company, Catan GmbH, to look after it.

Catan helped spread which style of board game worldwide?

Eurogames favour trading and building over knocking rivals out, so every player stays in until the end; Catan was one of the first to become popular beyond the continent where the style grew up.

Each player begins a standard game of Catan with two settlements and two of what?

Roads: each starting settlement comes with one, and because every later settlement must connect to your own road network, where those first two point decides where you can expand.

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 Catan originally sold?

The Settlers of Catan was the name on the box for two decades; the whole line was rebranded as plain Catan in 2015, when the fifth edition marked the game's 20th anniversary.

How many victory points does a player need to win the base game of Catan?

10 points wins; because victory point cards stay hidden until then, a player who seems stuck on eight can suddenly reveal two and end the game.

Catan's 'distance rule' rules out a new settlement in which spot?

Right beside another building: the three neighbouring spots must all be empty, whoever owns them, so on a crowded island many places can never be settled.

A road in Catan costs which two resources?

Brick and lumber build a road, and a settlement needs the same two plus wool and grain, which is why a player cut off from either one struggles to expand.

In Catan, which land type produces brick?

Hills produce brick, and no settlement can be founded without it, so a player with no hill hex has to trade for it from the very first turn.

Catan cities cost two grain and three what?

Ore pays for the late game: a city takes three and every development card takes one, so a player with no mountain hex usually has to trade for it.

Which two numbers on Catan's tokens are printed in red?

6 and 8 can each be rolled five ways with two dice, more than any other number that has a token, so the hexes that carry them pay out most often.

Where does the robber start a game of Catan?

On the desert, the only land hex with no number token; the robber waits there until a roll sets it loose or a player moves it with a knight card.

In Catan, rolling which number forces the robber to move?

7 is the most likely total on two dice, yet no hex carries that number: instead of paying out resources, the roll sets the robber loose.

A robber roll makes Catan players holding eight or more cards do what?

Discard half, rounded down, so a hand of nine loses four; the rule makes hoarding cards risky and pushes players to build or trade before their hands grow.

In Catan, a player with no harbour may trade resources with the bank at what ratio?

Four to one is the bank's standing offer: any four matching cards buy one card of your choice, a poor rate that makes harbours and deals with other players worth chasing.

A Catan city replaces what?

Your own settlement is swapped for the city piece, which then collects two resource cards instead of one and counts two victory points; the settlement goes back to your supply to be built again.

In Catan, the first player to play three knight cards claims which two-point bonus?

Largest Army goes to the first player with three knights face up and is worth two victory points, but it changes hands as soon as a rival has played more.

While the robber stands on a hex in Catan, what happens to that hex?

It produces no resources: settlements and cities around the blocked hex collect nothing when its number is rolled, so a well-placed robber can shut off a rival's best supply of cards.

Which development card in Catan lets you take any two resource cards from the bank?

Year of Plenty lets you take any two resource cards from the bank and build with them in the same turn, so it often supplies the exact pair missing for a city or settlement.

Before Catan's success let him design games full-time, its creator spent years in which profession?

Dental technician: he worked in his father's dental laboratory and began designing games in the early 1980s as an escape from its stresses, long before Catan freed him to stop.

What does Catan's five-to-six-player extension add besides pieces?

An extra building phase follows each player's turn, in which everyone else may build, so that players can take part in the game outside their own turn.

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

Seafarers lets players build ships to reach new islands; its ideas were part of the original design before the game was simplified for release, so the two combined are probably the closest to what Catan began as.

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

Gold fields, called gold rivers in some editions, pay a neighbouring settlement one resource of its owner's choice and a city two, so one good roll can supply exactly what a player lacks.

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

Coin comes from cities beside mountains, as paper comes from forests and cloth from pastures; players spend the three commodities on city improvements that unlock new powers.

Which 2008 Catan expansion includes the official two-player variant?

Traders & Barbarians bundles new scenarios with smaller variants, among them Catan for Two, which adds two neutral players so that a pair can play the full game.

Which games group took over the English-language Catan line from Mayfair Games in 2016?

Asmodee created a new subsidiary, Catan Studio, to hold the English-language rights, and Mayfair's chief executive, Pete Fenlon, left to run it.

In Catan: Cities & Knights, the first player to reach the fourth level of a city improvement gains what?

A metropolis is worth four victory points instead of a city's two, but a rival who finishes that improvement track first takes the piece away.

In older editions of Catan, the knight development card went by what name?

Soldier was the old name; newer printings call the card a Knight, but its job is unchanged: it moves the robber, and it stays face up in front of you once played.

Which Catan spin-off is designed strictly for two players?

Rivals for Catan is a 2010 revision of the 1996 Catan Card Game, reworked to be easier to learn: players start with a short introductory game and add themed card sets later.

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

Starfarers of Catan kept the production, trading and building of the original but sent players out to colonise distant planets; Starship Catan, a two-player card game, followed in 2001.

Which people's voyages gave Catan's designer the idea for the game?

Vikings: he had been reading about their discovery of Iceland and wondered what explorers would do on reaching an island with no one on it, then spent four years turning the question into a game.

Which children's Catan replaces the robber with a milder 'Ghost Captain'?

Catan Junior casts the players as pirates building lairs across the islands, and its Ghost Captain, unlike the robber, never steals from anyone.

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

Star Trek Catan sends players to settle space for the Federation, gathering dilithium while fending off Klingons, with Captain Kirk and Mr Spock among the helper cards.

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

Brothers of the Night's Watch is the role: players develop the Gift, the land just south of the Wall, building settlements and keeps while recruiting guards to defend it.

Which official digital version of Catan, launched in 2017, runs across browsers, PCs, phones and tablets?

Catan Universe lets players on different devices share one game; it followed earlier official versions such as Catan Online World and the short-lived Catan Anytime, which closed in 2016.

Which top board game award did Catan win in 1995?

Spiel des Jahres, German for 'game of the year', is chosen by a jury of critics; Catan also topped that year's Deutscher Spiele Preis, which is decided by votes from shops, magazines and game clubs.

By 2025, roughly how many Catan games had been sold worldwide?

About 45 million: the publisher's count stood at 32 million in 2020 and passed 45 million by early 2025, so some 13 million more were sold in the five years after the game turned 25.

In Catan, a player who reaches the winning score during someone else's turn wins when?

On their own next turn: victory can only be claimed during your own turn, so a player lifted to the winning total by a rival's move must wait, and can still be beaten to it before then.

An optional deck of Catan event cards, first sold in 2005, evens out luck by replacing what?

The dice are set aside and a card is turned over each turn instead, which gives a less random spread of resource production over the course of a game.

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

Essen is home to the Internationale Spieltage fair, which hosted the championship in its early years; in 2008 it crossed the Atlantic for the first time, to Gen Con in Indianapolis.

In Catan, when can you first play a knight card you have just bought?

On a later turn: a development card can't be played in the turn it was bought, with one exception, a victory point card that wins you the game on the spot.

During your turn in Catan, with whom may the other players trade resource cards?

Only with you: the player whose turn it is must be part of every trade, so two rivals can't swap cards between themselves, though they are free to make you offers and counter-offers.

Which streamer announced in 2025 that it would turn Catan into films and series?

Netflix is developing films, series and unscripted shows set in the world of Catan, in both live action and animation, the board game's first official screen adaptations.

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

Niantic, the studio behind Pokémon Go, shut the location-based game down after a year in early access, so it never received a full release.

In Catan's standard setup, your starting resource cards come from the hexes around which settlement?

Your second settlement pays one card for each hex it touches, so the second placement decides your opening hand, and a spot on the coast, touching fewer hexes, starts you with fewer cards.

In Catan's setup, the player who places the very first settlement places their other one in which position?

Last: the second round of placement runs in reverse order, so the player with first pick of the board must then wait for everyone else to choose twice.

In Catan, after moving the robber, what may you steal from a player with a settlement beside it?

One random resource card: the victim holds their hand face down and you draw blind, so the theft may bring exactly the card you needed or one you can't use.

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

Environmental issues drive the rules: oil boosts production, but using too much brings pollution and coastal flooding, and players can earn points by taking oil out of the game.

Where on Catan's board are settlements built?

On a corner where hexes meet, so that one well-placed settlement can collect resources from three different hexes at once.

Under Catan's set-up for beginners, who takes the first turn?

The oldest player goes first in the beginners' set-up, which fixes every starting position in advance; once players choose their own spots, the highest roll decides who starts instead.