Frustrated by a desire for Catan and there being only 2 of us around to play, we devised a new set of rules for Settlers of Catan that works great with only 2. This is a work in progress, but here are the rules so far:
- you put up 1 settlement + 2 roads during setup – which means this is done x2 for each player at setup
- you have to build OFF of other players on the board – they have to expand from each other, they cannot start on their own somewhere.
- inverse resource numbers:
- when a number comes that NOBODY has, EVERYBODY gets it
- when a number comes that one person has ONLY that person gets it
- when a number comes that BOTH people have, BOTH people on that resource get it
- rolling a seven or playing a knight:
- steal from somebody else
- but the knight does not block resources from anybody
- longest road is 6, not 5
- since you have to build off everybody else, you can build on the end of anybody else’s road or in the middle of their road, as long as it’s 2 roads away from any settlements or cities, and that counts towards blocking off or destroying a longest road
- cities are good for 2 points, but not 2 resources
- having 2 settlements on the same resource tile doesn’t give you any additional resources – e.g. if you have 2 settlements on ore on a 6, and a 6 is rolled, you still jet get 1 resource
- instead of trading 4 cards for any card, it’s 3
- 3:1 mystery ports become 2:1
- 2:1 specific ports become 1:1