The board game Settlers of Catan is one of, if not the most successful board game of the last thirty years. I won’t spend too much time gushing over it, since if you aren’t into Settlers you probably never even clicked on this link! Over the last few years, I have developed and refined a set of rules for a two-player version. I originally took this and refined it over the course of at least 100 games.
Why it’s better than a four player version
- Speed: An average two player game with my rules takes 35-40 minutes, allowing you to play an entire “best of three” series in the span of a one normal four player game. Settlers of Catan games tend to end with a desire for a rematch. This satisfies that perfectly.
- More strategy: As with all two player games, strategy in this format becomes as much about understanding your player’s position and damaging their plans as it is about your needs. Building a settlement at a juicy location becomes much more important as your win is directly their loss (a surprise Road Building card can be particularly powerful here). In contrast, a four player game is much more about building on your own, without much regard for what your opponents are doing.
- More action: With significantly more development cards in play, there are more surprises, twists and turns.
- Convenience: particularly between couples, but also friends, it’s a lot easier to assemble a game when it only requires two players. Also, the entire game fits in a normal Ziploc bag.
The Rules
All normal rules apply, except:
- Board setup:
- Three each of wheat, wood, sheep, and brick, two of ore, and no desert. This should be formed in a diamond shape.
- Lots of ports (two 3:1 ports, one each of brick, wheat, wood and sheep ports).
- The following odds discs: Two 8’s, One 6, Two 5’s, Two 9’s, Two 10’s, Two 4’s, One 3, One 11, One 2.
- Note that there is only a “2” hexagon, and no 12. However, both 2 and 12 rolls count for the “2” hexagon. 2/12 thus has the same odds as 3 and 11. This improves game speed ever so slightly as there are fewer dead zones.
- No intersection has a combined sum greater than 11. This is to prevent one “superlocation” from being taken by the first player.
- No trading is allowed. You might think this ruins the game as trading is part of the fun. I disagree. Trading slows down the game significantly, particularly with novice players who linger, hoping for a trade that clearly isn’t happening. No trading also forces you to be more resourceful yourself, increasing the importance of diverse settlement locations, ports, and requiring the “4 for 1” trade more often. It’s quite refreshing to roll, act, and hand over the dice immediately. The pace of the game is much better.
- You get a development card every time the other player scores a point from a settlement or city, up until they hit six points total. Since everyone starts with two points, that means you can get up to four total “free” development cards. You do not get one for the other person claiming the largest army or longest road. This serves as a balancing mechanism because I noticed that the player who got their third settlement first often quickly ran away with the game. It also makes the game MUCH more fun as there are more exciting cards being played.
- The robber only blocks you for one blocking roll. I noticed that allowing the robber to linger over someone’s only Brick tile, for example, until a seven rolls again (or Knight is played) is devastating in a two player format. For example, a 7 is rolled, the other player takes a card of yours and blocks your 5 Brick. On the next roll, a 5 is rolled. You don’t get the brick (it was blocked), but the robber is removed.
- Longest road requires seven roads, the Largest army requires five cards and each are worth only one point. I noticed that these special points, when worth the normal two points, were unusually correlated with that person winning. We downplayed them a bit.
- The player who selects their settlements first and fourth gets an extra card at the beginning. This rule is still in flux. I have noticed that going 2nd+3rd won slightly more often because it allowed you to complete your placement strategy unabated (“I got the 8 on Sheep, the 5 on Sheep, AND the Sheep port, boom!”). The current rule is that the person who selects first gets to choose one card for his/her first settlement (has to be one of the cards the settlement is adjacent to), as well as the standard three cards for his/her second settlement. So, at the beginning of the game, the 1st/4th person typically has four total cards in her hand, whereas player 2nd/3rd has three cards. It’s possible that two extra cards is ideal (five vs three cards to start the game). This requires more testing but I’d recommend only one extra card for now.
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