Simply Catan – Review

Simply Catan was first published in 2006 by SimplyFun and is designed by Klaus Teuber. The mission statement of the publisher, SimplyFun is: “To promote the importance of play and create lifelong memories that enhance the quality of life for our Consultants, customers and employees.” (Originally posted on BoardGame-Reviews.com)

Simply Catan:

• Designed by: Klaus Teuber
• Published by: SimplyFun
• Number of players: 2-4
• Playing time: 30 min
• Player ages: 6+

A Quick Overview

The island of Catan is not yet settled and players take on the role to become the most dominant settler. By acquiring resources such as wood, brick, wheat, wool and ore, players can build towns, develop cities and purchase armies!

Resources are acquired by rolling dice and then bartering or trading them with other players. The player with the most points at the end of the game is declared the winner.

Game Play

On a player’s turn, dice are rolled to determine which cities/town will produce resources which are represented by cards. Players then take these resources and then attempt to trade them with other players in order to convert the resources into needed victory points (VPs).

Players can choose to build towns (worth 1 VP), upgrade existing towns to cities (worth 2 VPs), build roads (longest road is worth 2 VP) and armies (largest army is worth 2 VP) by exchanging a certain combination of resources for these items.

If a player has 7 or more victory points (10 VP for the “advanced” game) at the end of their turn, they win the game.

Observations

I don’t like “Settlers of Catan” nor do I like this game.

Simply Catan is a re-implementation of the original “Settlers of Catan” published by Mayfair which is now in its 4th edition.

Simply Catan is essentially Catan with some streamlining. For instance, Simply Catan provides two sets of rules; a “Basic” and an “Advanced”. The “Basic” game plays to 7 VPs and omits the use of the “Largest Army” and development cards.

If you play with the “Advanced” rules, you are playing “Settlers of Catan”.

Though the box says that the game will play in about 30 min, I have found that this is not the case. A game will last about an hour or longer. As for introducing this game to a six year old, I am not sure that it would work.

I played this game with an 11 year old and a 13 year old and one of the comments I heard was, “This is the worst game ever.” I don’t agree with their statement but I have played other games within this timeframe that I found more satisfactory.

The kids found it boring and didn’t enjoy the trading, moving the robber or rolling the dice. Mind you, these kids have played other games prior to playing this and they know how to get around games.

What I liked about Simply Catan was that setup was much faster; the board was very pretty and everything was laid out quite nicely. The playing pieces were nice plastic models of bridges, cities and towns.

If you don’t already own Catan and you would like a flashier version of the game, then I would highly recommend this game for its pleasing production.

Happy gaming.