Catan Dice Game Review

 
An inexpensive game that I decided to try recently was the Catan Dice Game.

For all of you that were complaining that The Settlers of Catan didn't have nearly enough dice rolling (oh, wait, I haven't ever heard that), Mayfair games has finally fixed that problem. In the Catan dice game (which can be played either solo or with friends all competing for the highest score), each round consists of players rolling the dice trying to build various items. The things that can be built include settlements, cities, roads, and knights. And, like in the original Settlers game, each of the settlements, cities and knights must be connected via roads. On each turn, you have three total rolls, and you can keep any number of dice from one roll to the next. At the end of 15 turns, whoever has the highest score wins (or in solo play, you attempt to defeat your previous high scores).

The Catan Dice Game is essentially a theme based Yahtzee. The only difference is that instead of having certain things that you could only use once, you have several different things that you need to roll repeatedly (like the combination for roads). In fact, you will be building tons and tons of roads - if you don't build the roads, then you won't be able to build any of the other items (because you won't have them connected, just like in the original Catan).

With that said, there are a couple of useful changes to the Catan Dice Game that distinguish it from Yahtzee.   First of all, the knights act as a "resource joker" which allows a one-time per game resource change - this gives the player some decision making as to whether they should build the knights, and when they should use the resources.  The other change is that there are "gold" resources - if you roll two gold, then you can trade that in for any resource of your choosing.  Those are really the only useful differences from any other die rolling game.

It is hard for me to write a pro and con section for this game, because it is such a simple game. How much can you say about rolling dice? It is useful for when you have a few minutes to spend and not much else to do. It is also useful that it requires very little concentration, and thus can be played while watching television, or during most anything else, but aside from that, there's not much else to say.

Overall, I give the Catan Dice Game a 6.0/10. I didn't expect to like the game very much, but it was more fun than I expected (I didn't expect much). I think it's about on par with Zombie Dice (which for some reason I gave a 6.5 to. Who knows what I was thinking that day - I told you that I might change my mind about my reviews) or Yahtzee. When you're in the mood to throw dice, most any of them will work - pick your favorite theme, and go with from there.

If you like dice games, you might also check out Liar's Dice, Martian Dice, and Cookie Fu.