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Catan: Dice GameEnglish language edition of Catan: Das WürfelspielList Price: $15.00
  
from 2 customer reviews
Product Awards:
Games Magazine Awards
Best Family Game Nominee, 2009
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Discover, explore, and settle Catan anywhere and anytime... even all by yourself! The Catan Dice Game is the perfect portable adventure experience. Play it in only 15-30 minutes! It's a great casual introduction to the world of Catan. With 6 colorful, embossed wooden dice and your scoring map, you can roll -- and risk -- your way to victory. So get ready to toss! Challenge the odds and discover a fresh way to master Catan!
I've played this game several times now and have been repeatedly struck by how much game is packed into this little box and at such a modest price. It is easily worth the money.
The strategies for winning, however, are subtle, contrary to the review I see below. The main thing is that your strategy will vary depending on what you have previously rolled. And then, based on your particular path, you will try to roll for certain things and not for others. It rapidly pulls in some statistics that are context-dependent and stretch even this ex-physicist's brain.
Of course, this is not a big game with tons of different strategies. But I have given it 4.5 stars because it is so easily worth the money.
I'm a big Catan fan, but not sure this game earns its "Catan" branding.
It's really not much more than Yahtzee with Catan resources on the die faces instead of numbers (the sixth side is gold, which you can use to "buy" any other resource at a rate of 2:1).
Instead of a Yahtzee scorecard, you have a simple map (which basically amounts to 6 Catan board game hexes) of roads, settlements, cities, and knights to fill in as you get the rolls needed for each. Although there is some variabilty in the path you take, it has fairly linear progression. Once you play it for a while, you realize that there's a way to progress that makes the most sense; e.g. best to get knights and roads early, which will open up your options later.
You have 6 dice total that you roll. You get 3 chances to roll the dice, where you're able to set aside any dice that show the faces you want to keep (like Yahtzee).
the six sides of the dice are:
1 = wood
2 = brick
3 = wool
4 = wheat
5 = ore
6 = gold
Hence you need:
1,2 for a road
1,2,3,4 for a settlement
3,4,5 for a knight
4,4,5,5,5 for a city
e.g.:
a roll of 1,1,2,2,X,X would allow you to fill in 2 roads on the map (like a Yahtzee 2 pair)
a roll of 1,2,3,4,5,X gets you a road and a knight (like a Yahtzee straight)
a roll of 4,4,5,5,5,X gets you a city (like a Yahtzee full house)
a roll of 4,4,5,5,6,6 could also get you a city, because you can use the 2 gold (6's) to buy 1 ore (5's)
There are 6 knights that can be built at any time, but in a preset order, which may be used as "jokers". Each of the 6 knights represent a different resource that you can swap out for one die. Each joker can only be used once during a game.
The object of the game is to get the most points. Each road you build is worth 1 point. Settlements, cities and knights are worth progressively more points, where cities are the big points.
