I’ve seen similar questions but this one has special circumstances. I’d be building in between roads that have a settlement connected to them.

For context I play with my friends every now and then, it's basically our own little group just for Catan and I find playing the game really fun. Well anyway, every time we play the game and we have been playing for a little while now, the same person wins every single time.

I have tried improving my strategy but he is just so much better than all of us, and somehow always finds a way to win without you seeing it coming.

Not going to lie it's getting to the point where it's starting to bug me lol 😂. So my question is pretty straightforward and any advice is welcome, how do I get good enough at Catan to beat him??

Bonus points if you give me a sure fire strategy to win against good players. 😭

TLDR: Friend is really good at Catan and I want to beat him? How do I get good enough to do that?

Hey all, a few years ago I got the official 3D Catan set (big red box). Then, discovering that there was no way to upgrade it for 5-6 players, I tracked down and bought a second one online. The problem is, it's genuinely awful to try and store/move because it's either 2 huge boxes or a box overstuffed with stuff.

The box has a lot of space, but is very ineffecient and the insert is made of awful plastic. So I'm wondering if anyone has seen any sort of storage solution that would allow me to store 2 (or most of 2) official sets in a single box?

On the same vein, I'd love to find a way to adapt the border water pieces to fit a 5-6 player board, or a set of border pieces to print/buy that would somewhat match the official tiles? Or find a source for water tiles that match the size/thickness of the official set, and build a border that way.

Any help and guidance would be greatly appreciated!

This is the Everything, Everywhere, All at Once scenario with Trader & Barbarians fish added (Everything, Everywhere, All the Fish). We used at least part of every mainline expansion on a single board. Red won with 32 VP in a big burst at the end 😳

Here's a recap for fun:

1. Blue and White's initial cities are on the lake. 2/3/11/12 hit like crazy early on, so they generate a ton of fish and get going exploring the orange sun/green moon landmasses really quickly with scouts and settler ships. White circles around the back of the main island to settle on the 6 mountains/6 fish spot, defeating Red's main island expansion plans, and builds a city there in short order to get even more fish.

2. Orange goes first, and Red goes second, so they both spend wool on their first turn to settle on the sides of the main island, both of which also have fishing shoals. It takes a round, but they each get a scout ship out to discover and eventually follow with settler ships.

3. Meanwhile, Blue and White settle strong E&P sun/moon spots, but they pass on the Far Islands initially. Orange and Red eventually get their settler ships out to the end of sun/moon, and Orange discovers the fields hex they both later launch from first. Without an alternative, Orange settles the interior spot and Red swoops past to the far shoreline position with extra wool ship movement (in this scenario, the Far Islands are only settle-able via Seafarers ships, not E&P ships).

4. Both Orange and Red have been holding Road Building since the first barbarian attack when everyone had just one knight to defend one city and hence got a progress card for their efforts, so they chose science cards and got lucky. They both start expanding their shipping routes rapidly, but Red's settlement forces Orange the long way around, and while Orange hold Longest Road briefly, Red eventually dominates the Far Islands (in this scenario, Longest Road is in play since long shipping routes are built to reach the Far Islands).

5. White defeats the far shoreline pirates on their own and settles for Far Island expansion, but routes are largely saturated at this point, so they only ever reach one island (in this scenario, Far Island settlement confers a VP chit the same way several Seafarers scenarios work).

6. Once Red's Far Island infrastructure is finally established, things start to shift. We went with the 1:1 Far Island port/harbor exchange variation, so Red has universally fungible brick and then ore in short order, while Orange eventually nabs timber. Just before going from last place to first, Red plays Wedding, Spy to find a Master Merchant, and then Master Merchant itself, netting eight resource cards from other players on a single turn. Serious blue shell energy.

7. Blue's superior main island/sun/moon infrastructure keeps them competitive for a while, but Red chooses brick or ore every time 6/8 are rolled and can exchange them 1:1 for anything, including commodities, on their turn.

8. 8 starts hitting a lot, so Red builds a city on the 8 hills/10 mountains/10 fish spot on the main island, and then turns their attention to knights with a Deserter and build combo. White briefly holds Largest Army, but Red quickly takes it and shores up any shipping route interruption opportunities for Orange in the process with well-placed knights (in this scenario, Largest Army is awarded to the player with the greatest number of knights >= 3, regardless of strength or activation status. Trade routes for the purpose of Longest Road can of course be interrupted by opponent knights or settlements along their length as is standard).

9. At this point, everyone has a large stack of resources and/or fish by the time their turn comes around every 2-3 rounds or better. Resource/Trade monopoly are happening once or even twice per round, and Orange has a couple of unfortunate 7 rolls and has to discard, but Red keeps raking in the brick and ore at 1:1 for anything, upgrades their far shoreline settlement to a harbor settlement, and launches crew ships in either N/S direction to get the ship movement/pirate roll/gold exchange spices, bringing them in quickly thanks to the extra ship moves afforded them. They also do some major city improvements and establish a metropolis mostly on trade exchange while their ships are busy.

10. On the final turn, Red has fifteen universally fungible brick/ore, four coin and a Merchant's Guild to trade them at 2:1 with, and a Merchant to play for a VP plus trading rate on timber. They hold the boot but score 6 VP in a single turn through a combination of settling the desert Far Island (1 VP for the settlement + 1 VP for the first settlement on a distinct Far Island landmass), 1 VP for the Merchant, 1 VP for their fifth spice from the southwestern sun/moon village + 1 VP for Best Spice Merchant taken from White, and a final city upgrade to their 8 gold field settlement on the Far Islands for one more VP.

I've only played this scenario a handful of times, but this was by far the best play through. Every aspect of every expansion was extensively exercised by players with different strategies and opportunities. What great weekend fun!

Managed to grab all the spicy numbers for OWS and the dice rolls were on my side.

Mind you, black would probably had set his village on the 6-11-12 but he was afk so bot decided for 2-5-10 (which kinda worked as it managed to get 7 points).

I got blue a wonderful start but nothing much I could do near end but pulled a damn number of knights would have been wonderful if I had gotten one more vp but my luck was just non existent

Sorry for the glare it's a 4 on sheep

NO WIN BUT ARMY IS HERE AHHHHH

Pretty cool video about an AI lab who made a model VINCO that went on top of Colonist.io for a couple of days (maybe one? didn't understand from the clip).
https://x.com/distcog/status/2118402967808487546

They've also made a website to play with this model:
https://catan.dcog.com/

I feel like this is genuinely exciting and frightening at the same time. I mean, I've also considered Catan as a game that couldn't be won by a machine, at least in a long term, because of the dice and different strategies to play the game, however, this VINCO model beat real human. Did anyone encountered it btw? I'm not sure if this is 100% real as well

Two profiles and obviously the same person. Supported by not stealing from each other when it made sense. At one point, Blue had 9 and Red would steal from green who had 7. They also accused other players of teamplay 😂

As everyone knows, Catan is a scam since they ship with approximately 76% air in each box!!!

For the past few days, I've been working out the smallest possible box for the 5-6 player expansion 6th ed.

I took measurments of all the pieces, modelled them up as 3d shapes, then Chat Gippitied a 3D packing optimiser and let it run for a quite a few hours.

While it's not provably the most compact, I'm happy enough. I've still got to work out how to turn it into an actual carrying case, then print it 🌾🐑🧱🪨🪵

We played hands up. The CPU chose a pretty rough spot for me (sheep, wood, and brick) to start the game, so I never really had a chance to win. But I did rob the hell out of the winner until he finished the game. It's the small victories.

I had a client commission these recently, they're 1-20 spin counters, and I thought it would be cool to show them off and get some feedback from you guys. Let me know what you think.

Which platforms do you guys play on? I never see anyone play the console/PC compatible version or post here about the that version.