Wood for Sheep: Catan by Klaus Teuber
I’ve played a lot of Catan over the years, since friends in San Diego introduced me to it (back when it was called Settlers of Catan). I think it’s my favorite board game. It seems to be a widely liked one, so it may not be new to a lot of people reading this review. But if I’m going to talk about games, I think it certainly deserves inclusion.
Catan is mainly a game of economic development. The primary thing players do is to establish villages, roads, and cities on a fictitious large island or small continent. Their scores are primarily based on how many settlements they have on the board, though there are other ways to pick up points. There’s a small nod to violence in the form of the “robber,” an object that looks like a stylized pawn in chess and moves about the board from time to time, and in the ability of players to acquire “knights” that can compel the robber to go somewhere else; but at most this is a model of border raids or irregular war — no one ever takes over another player’s land or cities.
