Cataan

Pronounced (unfortunately in my belief): Cu (as in cuff) - tan (as in unnaturally orange).

In my world, it would be pronounced more like the first part of the word katana, because I think that is more distinguished and cool-sounding.

Cataan is an imaginary island that is the setting for a board game I've become addicted to over the summer. In this game, you (and two or three others) play a group of settlers who have just come to the island and are trying to take advantage of all of the opportunity in this resource-rich land. You compete against your fellow man to try and earn ten "victory points" by using the resources you are harvesting to build additional settlements, cities, and roads. Doing this allows you to harvest different types of resources and more of them and contributes to a snowball effect which will hopefully carry you to victory. The game is astutely titled, "Settlers of Cataan."

There are five different resources, wood, brick, wheat, sheep, and ore, and they are used in various combinations to build or buy different things. One of the hallmarks of this game (and why it is so awesome) is that the game board itself is different every time. Not only are resources in different locations, but they also have different values. This means that there are no hard-and-fast strategies or methods of play, because what works great one time may not work so great the next.

The other hallmark of this game, and probably its greatest feature, is the trading element. You can always trade with the bank (for a very bad deal), but you can also trade with your fellow players, which is much more interesting. Bartering can get pretty fierce and the judicious application of politics can edge you that much closer to victory.

All of these things serve to disguise the true nature of the game: math. It is fundamentally built on the principles of probability and ratio. It is very deceitful like that, and I find it utterly fascinating.

Victory can be achieved through strategy, luck, or politics, but it is usually the combination of all three that carries someone past the ten point marker. It's an easy game to pick up, and is completable in one to two hours, so it is a perfect balance between the casual players and the more hardcore ones.

In non-Cataan thoughts, I'm almost done with Prey. I would have been done last night had exhaustion not caught up with me. Probably a post forthcoming about it. Suffice to say, it is quite good.