“No, it can’t be!” you murmur, “I thought I would never lose again”. It has finally happened – you lost at Catan. After a long winning streak, you have finally met another player who read “How to Annihilate your Foes in Catan”… and lost. You are going to need some new, more advanced tactics to defeat your foe – who is now your nemesis. Well, fortunately for you, this article walks you through some of the deeper, harder, and overall more complex tactics, that should give you the confidence to demand a rematch.
An Introduction
Lots of the more complex tactics in Catan come from comparing the characteristics of holding cards in your hands, compared to when they have been played. It is important to consider how a card currently in your hand can be stolen, and how spending a card on a specific build is permanent. When is it worth maintain flexibility, and when is it worth committing to a plan? Also, what cards could your opponent hold, and how could this impact your decisions?
Padding your Hand
When you play Catan, you will often find that there is one or two resources that you always seem to be short of, whether you aren’t neighbouring many hexes of that type, or that resources has been blocked, or even just that your dice aren’t rolling the right way. What’s more, your opponent will also be in the same situation. Therefore, keeping track of the resources that they are desperately in need of (which also requires you to guess at their plan and what they want to build next) is crucial. You want to prevent them having this resource at all costs.
This is where this tactic comes in. If you have been gearing up, collecting resources to surprise your opponent with the next phase of your plan, and you have all the cards you need and more, it turns out your best tactic may be to… do nothing. Of course, if you are over the card limit, it is important to spend resources to avoid the risk of having to discard cards, you should still build, but otherwise, building can sometimes not be the best option.
Let’s say you have the following hand:
3x Ore 2x Wheat 1x Sheep
Let’s also say that your opponent is in desperate need of sheep; you have blocked their one and only pasture tile for the entire game.
At the moment, your opponent has a 1 in 6 chance of stealing the sheep when rolling a 7 or using a knight, while if you buy the city, they have a 100% chance. So, if a 7 hasn’t rolled in a while, or your opponent is holding a knight, it might be a good idea to either hold off and buy the city when you have more cards, or instead buy a dev card.
Commitment
Padding your hand is one reason to keep hold of your cards, but isn’t the only one. It is also beneficial to hold onto your cards until you can complete the entirety of your plan (within reason). This is beneficial for two reasons:
You keep your intentions a secret.
You maintain flexibility.
We already saw this briefly in the ‘plough’ section, where we held the cards for a single road, and only built when we could build both roads. Not only does this mean we caught our opponent by surprise, but it also means that if they block off this option, we have not already wasted a road.
Another tactic that appears throughout the game is holding cards until you can ‘road settle’, that is, place a road and a settlement at the same time. Once again, this allows us to wait until the last moment, observing our opponents moves and intentions before deciding where we want to build the next settlement.
Sometimes, it is better to commit to building as soon as you have the cards. For example, the resources for a city are hard to come by, requiring two wheat (the most versatile and hence in demand resource in the game), and three rocks (of which there are only 3 tiles producing it). This makes them very difficult to build, and since they free up a settlement to use elsewhere, they should almost always be played immediately, before you lose one of the cards required.
Road Steal
While there are lots of ways to secure the win in Catan, one of the most unassuming yet powerful moves uses stealing the road to secure the victory. Lots of players forget to keep track of the length of the roads on the board, especially if they seem to be dominating that part of the game. This provides a brilliant opportunity to sneak the win from your opponent.
This move requires you to be able to build several roads in a single turn, which is made easier if you have a road builder dev card. Simply, it means that you build just enough roads to take road from your opponent to steal the road from your opponent. Since this comes at the end of the game, it allows you to spend any and all resources that you have been saving up, so your opponent won’t expect it, as if play was to continue, the move would put you in a weak position. This move becomes more powerful the more roads behind you are, as it becomes more and more unexpected.
This move, paired with a settle or city allows you to start the turn on 12 points, and end on a winning 15.
Conclusion
Now you have absorbed the more complex, thoughtful and deeper tactics and strategies, it is time to demand that rematch. I guarantee (or your money back) that you will now obliterate your nemesis.
However, if you decide this isn’t enough, I advise watching the pros play online. My personal recommendation is DudeNolann on YouTube (www.youtube.com/@DudeNolann) who explains his thought process aloud.
The best way to learn though, is through experience, so I decree: Go forth and settle!
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