Klaus Teuber’s fortune-building game requires finely honed negotiation skills, a passing knowledge of probability and, in some cases, card counting.
When your journalistic beat consists of providing helpful tips on how to win games, people naturally assume that you are an expert at playing them. That’s not always true, but I like to think that I make up for it with moxie and a reasonably consistent positive attitude.
That is why I would like to get the following confession out of the way: I have played Catan, the civilization-building strategy game, in real life only once — and I honestly think it was because my editorial director felt sorry for me. Catan was first published in 1995, but I never got around to playing it, so she kindly brought the base set to the office and showed me and a few other Catan-deprived colleagues how to play.
Klaus Teuber, a German game designer who died in April, created the game, which is easy enough to learn. A total of 10 points are needed to win, but since you begin with a point for each of your two initial settlements, you’re really playing for eight points.
I managed to emerge from that first game with a grand total of two points. But it was enough to trigger an intense interest in learning more, so I spoke to some experienced Catan players about their strategies.
If you can’t figure out how to become a resource mogul, you’ll love my first tip, straight from the experts’ mouths.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
