Catan for Christmas....is it worth it?

[Melissa]

We might be working on growing our 'stache, but our extended family is not.  Everyone wants to know what to get the kids for Christmas.  Even my kids will tell you that they don't want much-a couple of books and a basketball hoop for outside.  If I don't tell my family something they will end up getting more plastic junk for Christmas that none of us wants.

We do love to play games as a family and I heard that Catan was a fun game to play.  I also know they have expansion packs, so I know I could add those to the list as well.  Has anyone else played this game with kids?  And how much does everyone enjoy it? 

(Our kids are 13, 12, and 10 if that makes any difference)

If there are any other fun, challenging games out there that you enjoy playing I would love to hear about them as well.

[arebelspy]

Settlers is a fun game, yes.  Kids ages are about right, depends on how much they like games and strategy.

Another basic one they might enjoy is Ticket to Ride.

I prefer Dominion, but it may be a little more advanced (say, in 2-3 years, once they're all 13-16?)

[James]

We love Settlers of Catan, I think my oldest start playing it around 10, your kids should certainly enjoy it.  Thanks for the reminder, we haven't played that in a while.

[palvar]

Go for it - it's a great game.

[galaxie]

Settlers is a fun game, yes.  Kids ages are about right, depends on how much they like games and strategy.

Another basic one they might enjoy is Ticket to Ride.

I prefer Dominion, but it may be a little more advanced (say, in 2-3 years, once they're all 13-16?)

I agree with all of these things.  I own Settlers (and a lot of the expansions) and gave it to my parents and at least one brother in recent Christmases.  It's a great game.  The 5-6 player expansion is really worthwhile, even if you don't bother with Seafarers or Cities & Knights.  Ticket to Ride and Dominion are on my own wish list right now - great games I've enjoyed at other people's houses.

[Taylor]

I love Settlers, but we played it so much we got sick of it. We recent got the game Puerto Rico and it's great! Kinda like a very intricate version of Settlers.

[igthebold]

Another fun game is Carcassonne and some of its expansion packs. We play that a lot.

Also, for smaller children, Eleminis is a lot of fun (think Uno meets Paper Rock Scissors).

For sheer hilarity, try Kill Doctor Lucky. They apparently have a fancy schmancy version now, but you can print your own here: http://www.cheapass.com/freegames/kdl

[Erica/NWEdible]

Yes. Catan is Great. Agricola is like Grown Up Catan. Ticket to Ride is great too - train building game. We also like Blockus and Rollit, which are, respectively, kinda like Tetris and Othello. I think family games are the best!

[AmbystomaOpacum]

If you get Ticket To Ride, I would recommend the Europe map. It adds a feature which makes the game feel a little less like you can get stuck with nothing to do.

Also, see BoardGameGeek.com

[gdborton]

Surprised no one threw this out yet... the original Catan is 2-4 players, and you have 3 children.  The expansion is $20 (last I looked) so factor that in if you, your SO, and all your kids want to play.

Also I have a love hate relationship with it, people you play with can easily take you from the lead to basically not playing at all via collusion.

[spider1204]

Also I have a love hate relationship with it, people you play with can easily take you from the lead to basically not playing at all via collusion.

I actually think of that as a feature of the game design that allows everyone to keep the leader from running away with the game like they would in Risk or Monopoly.  Also, I agree with the Ticket to Ride and Dominion recommendations as well.

@Arebelspy, You ever play on Isotropic?

[arebelspy]

Also I have a love hate relationship with it, people you play with can easily take you from the lead to basically not playing at all via collusion.

I actually think of that as a feature of the game design that allows everyone to keep the leader from running away with the game like they would in Risk or Monopoly.  Also, I agree with the Ticket to Ride and Dominion recommendations as well.

Also, if you're good enough, it really doesn't make a difference.  Unless they shut off all trade (and sometimes even then you can outpower them), if they just trade what they think is in their best interest, the robber/soldier isn't enough to stop you if you're sufficiently better than the other players.  I generally have everyone target me the whole game, it just acts as a small handicap.

@Arebelspy, You ever play on Isotropic?

No, never heard of it.  Just found it via Google. Thanks!

For anyone else wondering what it is: http://dominion.isotropic.org

[sol]

Also, if you're good enough, it really doesn't make a difference.  Unless they shut off all trade

Shutting off all trade is standard practice with my Settlers crowd for anybody who is more than one point ahead.  Settlers is much more about strategically managing people's perceptions than it is about strategically managing the board.

Self interested players might be tempted to trade with a leader if they thought there was any benefit in coming in second instead of third, but we play to win.  Since trading with a leader who has 6 or more points means you're pretty much guaranteed to lose, we generally don't do it.  It makes it pretty tough to run away with it unless you get lucky up front, which basically means we can now predict the winner about 75% of time before the first full turn, as soon as the starting positions are chosen.  At that point it becomes less fun.  Why bother to play when the whole game is basically decided by how the board deals and what your initial placement order is?

[arebelspy]

Also, if you're good enough, it really doesn't make a difference.  Unless they shut off all trade

Shutting off all trade is standard practice with my Settlers crowd for anybody who is more than one point ahead.  Settlers is much more about strategically managing people's perceptions than it is about strategically managing the board.

Self interested players might be tempted to trade with a leader if they thought there was any benefit in coming in second instead of third, but we play to win.  Since trading with a leader who has 6 or more points means you're pretty much guaranteed to lose, we generally don't do it.  It makes it pretty tough to run away with it unless you get lucky up front, which basically means we can now predict the winner about 75% of time before the first full turn, as soon as the starting positions are chosen.  At that point it becomes less fun.  Why bother to play when the whole game is basically decided by how the board deals and what your initial placement order is?

Yup.  I stopped playing Settlers a few years ago due to these reasons (well moreso the fact that unless I play with hardcore players like yourself, I nearly always win regardless of board placement and dice rolls.. game doesn't become as fun at that point.)  If I had a group like yours though, I'd be in the same situation.

For the OP, and more casual players, it's quite a fun game, IMO.

I'm not a fan of Ticket to Ride due to strategy, but enjoy Dominion as I used to play CCGs, and deck building was my favorite part of that, and Dominion is deck optimization, more or less.

I've heard good things about Puerto Rico and Carcassone, but don't have enough game playing friends locally to do much gaming anymore.  My local friends prefer more "party" games like "Apples to Apples" or, at best, Taboo or Cranium.  Oh well.

[Melissa]

Thanks for all the helpful suggestions.  I know that eventually my kids will figure out that they can predict the winner pretty early in the game, but I figure that will take them months (or more if they aren't paying enough attention). 

I appreciate the suggestions for the other games as well.  I think my youngest will like Ticket to Ride, so I will add that one to the list as well.  They still like Monopoly, but I am always the unlucky one with small rolls right out of the gate (which means everything is usually bought by the time I get there) so I play for their amusement.  Our family also still likes Apples to Apples and I have to say that it's still a great game to play with a large group of people (even if the kids don't know any of the old actors)

[Vahla]

I love Settlers, but we played it so much we got sick of it. We recent got the game Puerto Rico and it's great! Kinda like a very intricate version of Settlers.

Hah, Settlers is great but the same thing happened to my gaming group.  We played so often we ran out of weird rules to make up to change the game play.  Wouldn't mind trying Puerto Rico some time.

Very fun game though, definitely recommend it.

[adam]

I introduced my wife to games with Catan, and then Carcassone.  We want to get Ticket to Ride next.  We're playing more Carcassone now because you can effectively play two players where Catan just needs 3-4.  I always hear these three mentioned before any others when it comes to getting into board games these days, I don't think you can lose with any of them really.

[sherr]

All the games mentioned here are good. boardgamegeek.com is an excellent resource for finding good games. They even have a ranked list of family games. Most of the games listed here are in the top 20.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/familygames/browse/boardgame?sort=rank&rankobjecttype=family&rankobjectid=5499&rank=1#1

You should pay attention to the minimum age recommendations on the games as the 10 y.o. might have trouble keeping up with the strategy on some of them, but you pretty much can't go wrong if something is sufficiently high on that list.

[Richard3]

Dominion is brilliant. It gets complex though if you start playing with all the expansion packs.

If anyone is on isotropic, I'm Angry Rabbit there.


My old gaming group used to have a lot of fun with the Game of Thrones card game, although that's probably more for teenage gamers (and we all loved the books).

[strider3700]

Cards against humanity if you're all adults and hell bound anyways.
http://cardsagainsthumanity.com/
Few things make me laugh as much as this game

bonus MMM points you can DL it for free and print the cards yourself.

[spider1204]

Dominion is really great, I'm Kikkoman on there, yes like the soy sauce, I'll keep an eye out for ya.

[Melissa]

We ended up getting the kids Catan for Christmas.  We held off on the expansion pack, thinking one of us might have to help our 10 year old.  Boy were we wrong!  She caught on quick and the three kids are already 'tweaking' the rules to make the game more interesting.

All of the other games people mentioned here went on our wish list.  Now the kids have things to ask the relatives for when they insist on buying gifts.

[Welmoed]

My son gave my daughter Settlers of Catan for Christmas this year and we have LOVED playing it. My husband isn't into board games of any type (sob!) but my kids (21 and 23) and I play a few times a week.
He gave me a card game called Fluxx, which I also highly recommend. The games can sometimes last just a few minutes, or they can go on for half an hour or more. There are a few "themed" variations, such as Space Fluxx, which is SciFi themed, but we didn't like that one as much. There's also a Monty Python themed game one of them played that is quite fun if you're a Python fan.
Bananagrams is also a household favorite, and it encourages vocabulary growth. It's also much faster than Scrabble, and there's no waiting for a slowpoke to finish a turn.

[Chris Pascale]

With Christmas coming up, I'll bump this up to say this is an okay game.

Some other fun games are "Secret Hitler" (appropriate for all ages) and "Red Flags" (for adults).

I included Red Flags as part of a dinner party last Friday, and it made for a fun interlude between dinner and dessert.

[Ron Scott]

We might be working on growing our 'stache, but our extended family is not.  Everyone wants to know what to get the kids for Christmas.

Humbug

[neo von retorch]

If anyone's interested, we have a much bigger thread listing and describing a great variety of board games:

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/off-topic/board-games-what-are-you-playing/

[englishteacheralex]

There is now Settlers of Catan Jr for younger kids. We play quite a bit with our 6 and 9 year olds. My husband actually prefers it to regular Catan because the game goes faster. We are not hardcore Catan players and I didn't know it was possible to get bored of the game and be able to predict the winner...this thread was interesting, despite its age.

At our house, regular Catan is played with a couple of G&Ts after dinner at our dinner parties, and I regard the game as a pretense to chat and haze my friends. Was not aware people could be so hard core about it.

[dividendman]

You can also get them to try colonist.io online for free to see if they like it.

[Dreamer40]

At our house, regular Catan is played with a couple of G&Ts after dinner at our dinner parties, and I regard the game as a pretense to chat and haze my friends. Was not aware people could be so hard core about it.

This is the only way I like to play it. It’s not much fun if there’s a hardcore gamer in the group. Better when we can just have some drinks, take snack breaks, and joke way too much about trading wood. Somebody will inevitably get hopelessly behind on points and start getting bored if the game is too serious and they can’t possibly win.