Catan (6th Edition) Review – The Game That Started It All, Again

Disclaimer: Catan was provided for free by VR Distribution, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

Welp, turns out I’ve been deadnaming Settlers of Catan for over a decade. Who knew? Well, apparently everyone but me. The classic board game dropped the “Settlers” back in 2015 and officially rebranded as just Catan. And I’ve only just caught up – just in time to check out the shiny new 6th Edition from Catan Studio.

How to play

In Catan, you’re racing to be the first player to hit 10 victory points. To get there, you’ll roll dice, gather resources, and wheel and deal with your neighbours. All while building your way across the hex-filled island like some sort of rustic real estate mogul.

Each turn starts with someone rolling two six-sided dice, giving a number between 2 and 12. This number corresponds to a tile on the map, and if you’ve got a settlement bordering that tile, you just scored big, collecting one matching resource from the bank. Got a city next to it instead? Even better: you get two.

Now, the one big caveat here is when someone rolls a 7. Everyone with more than seven cards has to discard half of their cards. Then the robber activates. The player who rolled gets to place the robber token on any tile and steal a resource card from someone with a neighbouring building. They also shut that tile down so no one can collect resources from it until the robber moves again. Rude.

Once the dice have blessed (or betrayed) everyone, it’s time to trade and build.

Your turn may now devolve into Wall Street: Sheep Edition, with players shouting out offers, counteroffers, and borderline emotional blackmail just to get a brick. Or it might turn into disparaging silence as everyone shuts up shop and refuses to deal. Either way, this is also when you spend your collected (or traded) resources to build roads, settlements, cities, or snag a mysterious development card.

Settlements are worth 1 point, and cities are worth 2, but you can’t just plop them down anywhere. Each new settlement must be at least two road lengths away from the nearest one, which means you’ll need to bounce between network-building and construction.

And if you manage to build five continuous roads? Boom. You claim the Longest Road card for an instant 2 points. But don’t get too comfy. Someone else can steal it by building an even longer one. Thus, the Road Wars begin.

Development cards are a bit of a gamble, offering all sorts of surprises:

• Knights, which help you block resources and build your army
• Victory points, sneakily tucked away
• And the dreaded Monopoly card, which is just plain evil (and brilliant). When played, you name a resource and every player must give you all of that type. For full dark side energy, trade away your stash of that resource first… then reclaim it all like a true Catan villain.

Like the Longest Road, there’s also a Largest Army card, awarded to the first player to play three knight cards. Another tidy 2 points up for grabs.

Play continues around the table until someone hits 10 points and wins the game, claiming Catan for themselves and guaranteeing that no one will trade with them ever again.

What’s new in the 6th Edition?

I wouldn’t go so far as to call this a deluxe edition, but it’s definitely a step up. Think of it as a pristine edition, and for an extra ten bucks on the price tag, I think it’s worth it.

The updated card and box artwork give it a fresh, modern feel while still keeping that classic Catan charm. The tiles feel sturdier than the previous version I owned, and once placed on the map, they fit together as snug as two bugs in a rug. That might be a little too snug on first play, but I imagine they’ll loosen up to the perfect fit with a bit of wear. Either way, once they’re in place, they don’t budge.

As if that weren’t enough, each player gets their own dedicated box of components. You also get a pair of card holders that store all the resource cards and pack away cleanly. Throw in clear instructions and labelled compartments for everything, and it’s hard to imagine how they could make setup any smoother.

Finally, the custom dice look great in the red and yellow Catan colours. When you roll a one, the word “Catan” shows up instead of a pip. A cute touch, even if it won’t help your odds.

Now look, I’ll admit I’ve fallen a bit out of love with Catan since I first played it over fifteen years ago. But if I were still playing regularly, I’d absolutely upgrade to this edition. I’ve talked before about why I like upgrading to newer versions, and this is exactly why: it may not be deluxe, but it’s polished, thoughtful, and I think any long-time Catan fan would be happy with the upgrade.

My love-hate relationship with Catan

Opening the box, I could practically smell the nostalgia wafting off the pieces. Like many, Catan was one of the first games that launched me into the board gaming hobby over a decade ago. I must’ve played it close to a hundred times. But these days? It just doesn’t stack up against more recent board games.

That’s not really Catan’s fault though.

…On second thought, maybe it is. So many games today owe their success, both in terms of design and popularity, to Catan. It introduced a whole wave of players and designers to the world of modern board gaming, and it’s still doing that today. You can see its DNA everywhere, with its mechanics broken down and rebuilt into new and shinier experiences.

So yeah, playing Catan after fifteen years of board gaming, it’s starting to show its age. But it’s like watching an old movie that feels packed with clichés, only to realise this was the movie that invented (or at least popularised) them. Even though it feels dated, at the time, it was ahead of the curve.

But why does it feel so dated now? Well, because so much of Catan’s outcome hinges on luck or the whims of other players. And while that’s true of a lot of games, it’s more true here.

Place your starting settlements poorly (or get blocked by others), and you might as well pack it in before the first dice roll. If no one wants to trade with you—maybe because you won the last game, or maybe because you accidentally double-dipped your last chip—you can get locked out of resources, and effectively, out of the game.

So sometimes you hit long stretches where you can’t do anything except sit and watch.

But here’s the thing: despite its heavy reliance on luck and its tendency to remove player agency, Catan still does a lot right. It introduces players to key modern mechanics like set collection, trading, and route building. There’s real strategy in there, but it’s light enough to teach quickly and finish in under an hour.

So yeah, I’m conflicted. Compared to today’s heavy hitters, Catan ranks a lot lower, which is where I’ve put it. But if you’d asked me ten years ago? Easy 4 or 5 out of 5. Still, at this point, Catan is a rite of passage – everyone should play it at least once. And with the 6th Edition, it’s a very polished rite of passage at that.