Catan vs Food Chain Magnate

I actually thought it was boring at first as I didn't have a clear grasp of the mechanics yet. After re-reading the rules and playing games a couple more times I slowly came to realize this game is deep in strategy, and even if you're dealt the same set of cards you can approach the game from different angles.

**Food Chain Magnate** where you're practically guaranteed to ruin any chance you have at winning in the first two or three turns unless you've played the game multiple times.

Get the extension if you want five or six players. The game involves the strategic gathering of resources and trading with opponents. Instead of traveling across a board to reach the end or a certain destination, Settlers of Catan involves building roads and settlements which eventually lead you to victory.

Early on, an exile obtained it, and even became the usurper (so in a position to win), but the Chancellor just manged to scrape enough favour (coin) to buy it back. Then, there was so much favour on it, the exile never managed to get enough favour/warbands to fight for it or recover it. After the recovery a citizen made a play for the successor goal (Darkest Secret Banner), and got it, and even was in position to win with the 5th round roll, but the dice didn't fall for them. Then the Chancellor took it away from them, and essentially after failed campaigns both the exile and the citizen struggled to get any kind of resources together

If you like strategy games, you will like this. The only reason I gave it 4 stars is there are often times where it is not going well for at least one person in the game and this can be VERY frustrating. If your family is overly competitive, you may want to consider a different game.

However, the amount of decisions, brain burning and depth of the game are incredible. This is tipically said to be something that *Splotter* does very well.

Good, but half of the pieces had some black stuff on them that wouldn't come off. We didn't know what it was and even cleaned them in a bleach solution. Still stained. But other than that everything was perfect!

Great Western Trail - We may end up buying the new version just because of wear and tear on my current set

Ever version of Catan has gotten worse and worse in my opinion. And not just the board pieces. Renaming the soldier to knight after already having a different knight piece with a different mechanism of play in Cities & Knights expansion was such a poor decision.

* Should designers be more aware of this problem and take better steps to deal with it? Is it lazy to just let the games play differently at different player counts?

We're not exactly dummies in my house but we couldn't figure out after two nights the rules of the game. My brother and his wife enjoy the game so much that we gave it a try. It's in the garage to go off with the next load to Goodwill. Hopefully to a family smarter than us will get it

Edit: swapped yes and no accidentally. Should not be on the Internet when it's well past the time to go to bed.

I love it! It looks true to the natural theme of Catan and doesn't go too far out. Quality looks fantastic as well!

I’ve long been waiting for a **running a store/stall** simulation game like the good old PC game **Lemonade Tycoon**. Of course, **Food Chain Magnate** might seem like it but I personally don’t find the design elegant enough. I think the mechanisms like card play, hand management and deck building don’t quite suit this theme.

As for the game itself, Catan offers a great balance between strategy and competitive gameplay. While luck is almost always a factor in boardgames and Catan is not the exception (dice rolling involved), the game feels more guided and affected by your strategy and decisions rather than by luck, which is good, since this makes the game more compelling and adds weight to the decisions that you make throughout the game. There is also a trading component that allows you to interact with the other players, which is great for stirring some fun arguments and debates. While this game has a competitive approach, it doesn't pit the players against each others through direct confrontation (which is welcomed if you are not looking for an aggressive game where everyone ends up mad at each other), it plays more like a race in which you need to focus on your strategy while keeping watch of the opponents and overall it is extremely fun

I think that all these weights are actually pretty spot on, although the reason I love these 3 so dearly is that the weight is apparent when learning, but not really when playing.