Picture the scene. Game night is drawing to a close; only you and your friend remain, having won three games each, the candles are burning at a flicker – it's time for the decider. Your friend pulls out the last game: Catan. “Yes!” they exclaim, while you groan - you don’t know how to win this one.

Well, after analysing many ranked 1v1 Catan games, I know that I will never be in this situation, and if you read to the end, I guarantee you the next time the Catan board comes out, you too will be licking your lips, already anticipating the win.

Catan is a unique, award winning game, where players build settlements on an imaginary island, collect resources, aiming to gain Victory Points in order to beat out their opponent. If you don’t know how to play Catan, I recommend playing or watching at least one game before reading the rest of this article, so you can understand the strategies I describe.

The strategies for Catan can vary wildly depending on the number of players, setup, and expansion packs being used. Ranked 1v1 Catan is played with two players on the original Catan board, using a fully randomised setup, and is first to 15 victory points (VPs).

The first, and arguably most important choice to make in Catan, is where to place your first two settlements, as this decides the entire direction of your game. There are three considerations to make before deciding where to place these incredibly consequential settlements.

Resources

Resources in Catan can be vaguely split into two categories:

· Early game building materials

· Late game development materials

Early game materials consist of wood and bricks, as these are used to build roads and settlements - essential for driving up production of resources, but they lose effect over the course of the game, as they don’t allow you to buy development (dev) cards or cities (the main methods of gaining victory points once most of your settlements are placed). In comparison, materials such as wheat and rock are essential for upgrading settlements to cities and for buying dev cards.

When placing your first settlements, it is good to have a balance of different resources, so that you can both build and buy dev cards at the beginning of the game. The strongest strategies, though, make use of ports.

Ports

Ports are places on the edge of the map that upgrade the default exchange rate of cards from 4:1 to 3:1 or 2:1, where 2:1 only permits trading 2 of a specific resource for 1 of any resource. The latter port can become very powerful when paired with a strong initial plan.

When looking to place your first settlement, look to see if a resource has multiple high number tokens, and whose hexes are close to the corresponding 2:1 port. If you spot such a resource, try to place both of your settlements on these frequently rolled tiles. Then, as soon as the game starts, make a break for that port! When you get there, your worries over having an imbalanced resource production will disappear, as you now have lots of a specific resource, and the ability to trade it easily.

Longest Road

The final consideration is how easy your two settlements would be to connect. To win a 15 VP game, it is very important to hold at least one of the largest army or longest road cards. Therefore, at the start of the game, map out your potential routes and how you may be able to connect your initial settlements, as without both of the roads in your network, you can never safely secure the longest road card.

Dirty Tactics

So far, we have only discussed very defensive strategies, mitigating the damage that the other player may cause. But don’t forget you can also pull sneaky moves to devastate your opponent’s plan – game night is in the balance after all!

One way we can achieve this is using a sneaky road building technique called a “plough”. This tactic comes into play if your opponent is pointing to an intersection one edge away from one of your settlements. Due to your settlement blocking one of the two outgoing edges, you can guarantee where your opponent intends to go. Great! We know their plan, now let’s ruin it by placing that road before they get the opportunity. However, the magic of the plough is its deceptive secrecy. Over time, collect the resources for one road, but do not place it! Instead, wait until you have the second road… then place both at once. Now sit and watch as your opponent groans, their plan ruined, at least one road wasted.

Knights

Continuing with the aggressive tactics, proper use of knights is one of the most essential tactics to winning a highly competitive 1v1 game. Knights are dev cards that can move the robber to block a hex from producing any resources, while also counting towards winning 2 VPs from the largest army card.

Getting Ahead

The key concept with knights is that it is important to get ahead, always having more knights than your opponent. This means that whenever your opponent plays a knight and moves the robber, you can move it back to the place it came from straight away. If your opponent is dependent on a specific hex, either because it is a high producer for their port, or because it is their only hex of that type, you can therefore block them from that hex for the entire game! Hah, take that!

Also, the largest army card cannot be shared; if both players have played the same number of cards, it goes to the player who got to that number first. Therefore, if you are behind, it makes it even harder to catch up… so don’t get behind in the first place.

Staying Calm

I have now explained some of the core tactics that you can use to annihilate your foe, but I haven’t discussed what to do if it's not going so well, and loss seems imminent. All I will say about this is: stay calm. Lots of the tactics I’ve discussed may make you feel at a disadvantage at the start of the game, but that’s because they are slow burners – by the end of the game you will be easily outshining your foe. Also, Catan is a very well designed and balanced game, so the outcome of games usually lie on a knife edge. All it takes is for the dice to roll your way, and before you know it you are back in the game, stealing Longest Road and Largest Army from your opponent, flipping the score line from 4 – 9 down to 8 – 5 up.

Now you know how to annihilate your foes, go forth and settle! However, be weary – whilst you can beat your foes, your nemesis may also know these tactics. If this is the case, make sure to check out the sequel to this article: “How to obliterate your nemesis in Catan”...

How to Annihilate your Foes in 1v1 Catan