To begin the game, we build the game board using hexagonal terrain tiles. CATAN is born - a beautiful island with mountains, pastures, hills, fields, and forests, surrounded by the sea. Each of us places two small houses on spaces where three terrain hexes meet. They are our starting settlements. And so it begins. I roll two dice. An “11”! Each terrain hex is marked with a die roll number. Each player who owns a settlement adjacent to a terrain hex marked with the number rolled receives a resource produced by this hex. Hills produce brick, forests produce lumber, mountains produce ore, fields produce grain, and pastures produce wool. We use these resources to expand across CATAN: we build roads and new settlements, or we upgrade our existing settlements to cities. For example, a road costs 1 brick and 1 lumber. If we do not have the necessary resources, we can acquire them by trading with our opponents. Each settlement is worth 1 victory point and each city is worth 2 victory points. If you expand cleverly, you may be the first player to reach 10 victory points and thus win the game!
