My strategy for playing Settlers of Catan
My general strategy for playing Settlers of Catan is to take my unused road, settlement, and city tokens and try to build a robot out of them.
I have yet to win with this strategy, but I like it nevertheless.
(I don’t buy many development cards because I haven’t figured out how to use them to build a robot.)
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Wouldn’t buying development cards be better for this strategy, because if you bought a road, that’s one less road for your robot?
No wonder this strategy doesn’t work!
When playing in college (which is almost 20 years ago now, yikes), the story amongst our group was that the original rules (in German) explicitly encouraged players to build things and play with their unused wooden pieces while awaiting their turn, but that this wasn’t explicitly addressed in the English translation. (I don’t know German and don’t know how true this story is, though, or if I or others are conflating memories with some other game. I couldn’t find a reference in some quick online searching just now.)
I don’t know about the original German rules, but the current rules say “Seine übrigen Spielfiguren legt jeder Spieler vor sich ab.” = “Each player places the unused pieces in front of him.”
It looks like it *could* be a fun game. Except that the 6 year old forces you to play and then cries whenever you make a move that may make her lose.
I was hoping for a real strategy. I will say I often start a game by building Stonehenge with my roads. Then if someone bumps the table and knocks it down, I usually win.
I have always been partial to a strategy of build on all of the grain hexes and get a grain near-monopoly. It isn’t really very effective, but I get to play act being a robber baron and can pretend that I have the nations food supply in my grip.