Game Overview

The island of Catan lies before you. The isle consists of 19 terrain tiles surrounded by ocean. Your goal is to settle on Catan, and expand your territory until it becomes the largest and most glorious in Catan.
There are six productive terrain types and one desert on Catan. Each terrain hex produces a different type of resource (The desert produces nothing). Each resource you receive is represented by a card. Here's what each terrain produces:
- Hills - Produce Brick
- Forest - Produces Lumber
- Mountains - Produce Ore
- Fields - Produce Grain
- Pasture - Produces Wool
- Desert - Produces Nothing
You begin the game with 2 settlements and 2 roads. Each settlement is worth 1 victory point. You therefore begin the game with 2 victory points! The first player to acquire 10 victory points on their turn wins the game.
To gain more victory points, you must build new roads and settlements and upgrade your settlements to cities. Each city is worth 2 victory points. To build or upgrade, you need to acquire resources.
To acquire resources? It's simple. Each turn, you roll 2 dice to determine which terrain hexes produce resources. Each terrain tile is marked with a round number token. If, for example, a "10" is rolled, all terrain hexes with a "10" number token produce resources.
You only collect resources if you own a settlement or city bordering these terrain hexes. In the illustration, the red settlement [A] borders the "10" mountains and some settlement [B] borders the "10" hills. If a "10" is rolled, the red player receives 1 ore card and the orange player receives 1 brick card.
Since the settlements and cities usually border on 2-3 terrain types, they can "harvest" up to 3 different resources based on the dice roll. Here, the white settlement [C] borders on forest, mountains, and pasture. A settlement at [D] would only harvest the production from 2 terrain hexes (hills and mountains). Finally, a settlement at [E] would only harvest the production from 1 terrain hex (pasture). However [E] is also at a good harbor.
Since it's impossible for you to have settlements adjacent to all terrain hexes and number tokens, you may receive certain resources only at rare intervals—or never. This is tough, because building requires specific resource combinations.
For this reason, you can trade with other players. Make them an offer! A successful trade might yield you the build.
You can only build a new settlement on an unoccupied intersection if you have a road leading to that intersection and the nearest settlement is at least two intersections away.
Carefully consider where you build settlements. The numbers on the round tokens are depicted in varying sizes. They also have dots (pips) below the numbers. The taller the depicted number, and the more pips it has, the more likely that number is to be rolled. The red numbers (6 and 8) and the tallest numbers with the most pips, they are likely to be rolled most frequently. Bottom line: The more frequently a number is rolled, the more often the hexes with those numbers produce resources. You should consider settling on hexes that have good potential for production (i.e., 5 or 6 pips, not 6 and 8 vs. 2 and 12). However, these same high-producing hexes are often the primary target for the robber.