Catan
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50 free Catan trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Catan, once The Settlers of Catan, is the game that taught a generation outside Germany what a Eurogame was. Klaus Teuber's island of hexes came out from Kosmos in 1995, won the Spiel des Jahres that year and has since sold more than 32 million copies in 40 languages, with a film and TV universe now in development at Netflix. These 50 questions cover the rules, the history and the sprawl around it: which hex makes which resource, what a 7 does, how many cards force a discard, the five development cards, the 4:1 bank trade and the ports, then the expansions from Seafarers to Explorers & Pirates, the spin-offs from Starfarers to Catan Junior and Star Trek Catan, the novel, the documentary, the short film and the World Championship that alternates between Germany and the United States. Easy questions cover the designer, the resources and the robber; the expert tier asks about the robber's colour change, the first historical scenario pack, the 2005 collector's edition and the Teuber game that inherited Catan's unused mechanics. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation. Play it solo or print it for game night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who designed Catan?
Klaus Teuber
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.
Q 02Catan helped spread which style of board game worldwide?
Eurogames
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.
Q 03Each player begins a standard game of Catan with two settlements and two of what?
Roads
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.
Q 04Which company first published the game?
Kosmos
Its full name is Franckh-Kosmos Verlag; Mayfair later handled the English editions for years.
Q 05Under what longer name was Catan originally sold?
The Settlers of Catan
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.
Q 06How many victory points does a player need to win the base game of Catan?
10
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.
Q 07Catan's 'distance rule' rules out a new settlement in which spot?
Right beside another building
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.
Q 08A road in Catan costs which two resources?
Brick and lumber
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.
Q 09In Catan, which land type produces brick?
Hills
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.
Q 10Catan cities cost two grain and three what?
Ore
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.
Q 11Which two numbers on Catan's tokens are printed in red?
6 and 8
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.
Q 12Where does the robber start a game of Catan?
On the desert
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.
Q 13In Catan, rolling which number forces the robber to move?
7
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.
Q 21What does Catan's five-to-six-player extension add besides pieces?
An extra building phase
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.
Q 22What was the first Catan expansion, adding ships and exploration, in 1997?
Seafarers
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.
Q 23The 1997 ships expansion for Catan added hexes producing what, which lets a player take any resource?
Gold
Q 14A robber roll makes Catan players holding eight or more cards do what?
Discard half
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.
Q 15In Catan, a player with no harbour may trade resources with the bank at what ratio?
Four to one
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.
Q 16A Catan city replaces what?
Your own settlement
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.
Q 17In Catan, the first player to play three knight cards claims which two-point bonus?
Largest Army
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.
Q 18While the robber stands on a hex in Catan, what happens to that hex?
It produces no resources
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.
Q 19Which development card in Catan lets you take any two resource cards from the bank?
Year of Plenty
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.
Q 20Before Catan's success let him design games full-time, its creator spent years in which profession?
Dental technician
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.
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.
Q 24Catan: Cities & Knights adds three commodities: paper, cloth and what?
Coin
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.
Q 25Which 2008 Catan expansion includes the official two-player variant?
Traders & Barbarians
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.
Q 26Which games group took over the English-language Catan line from Mayfair Games in 2016?
Asmodee
Asmodee created a new subsidiary, Catan Studio, to hold the English-language rights, and Mayfair's chief executive, Pete Fenlon, left to run it.
Q 27In Catan: Cities & Knights, the first player to reach the fourth level of a city improvement gains what?
A metropolis
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.
Q 28In older editions of Catan, the knight development card went by what name?
Soldier
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.
Q 29Which Catan spin-off is designed strictly for two players?
Rivals for Catan
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.
Q 30Which 1999 spin-off took Catan into space with spaceships and spaceports?
Starfarers of Catan
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.