Written by Kiara Tay
Illustrated by Sylvain Chan
If you’ve ever rolled a die and collected resources on a hexagon-filled board, you’re in the company of 20 million people worldwide who play Catan. Often, it’s a casual game that gets brought out after dinner, which culminates in a few heated trades and more than a few grumbles about the die being “rigged” in the winner’s favour. Beyond the casual surface, however, lies a burgeoning competitive ecosystem built on calculated table talk, detailed positional analysis, and high-profile tournaments.
For those uninitiated, Catan is a game of strategy, luck, and trade where players compete to build settlements on a resource-rich board. Each turn, dice rolls determine which tiles produce resources, such as ore or wheat. To win, you must attain 10 victory points, which may be achieved either by buying development cards with your resources, building settlements and upgrading them to cities, or having certain accomplishments like having the ‘longest road’ or ‘largest army’.
Here, I’m sure you’re wondering: How can a die-based game be played at the competitive level?
According to Drew Elliott (better known as DandyDrew on YouTube), the 2024 USA Catan Champion, “Catan is a lot like poker. You can get a great hand, and you get a bad hand, or you can get a good draw and a bad draw and everything in between. I personally think it’s 80% skill and 20% luck. The best players consistently play well, they consistently win and take down big events and tournaments”. And the people running Catan agree. When asked for comment, Benjamin Teuber, CEO of Catan GmbH, tells me he wishes more people appreciated the skill-based aspect of the game. “People who do not play as much,” he notes, “often overestimate the role of the dice”.
And it’s true: time and time again, the same few names appear at the Catan World Championships. So what does it take to be one such player?
Top players like Drew have crowned a few ‘meta’ strategies, usually focusing on different types of achievements and victory cards. When Drew started playing Catan more seriously, the first strategy he picked up was the “Ore-Wheat-Sheep” strategy – a method I personally discovered through his videos. This strategy relies on choosing settlements focused on these three resources and obtaining as many victory cards as possible; it can often surprise amateur players who typically focus on getting a balance of resources.
Beyond strategic knowledge, Drew credits his background as a chess player for honing his analytical skills and making quick decisions under pressure. Clearly, this had given him an early edge. Within eight months of playing Catan, he was already being regularly invited to private games with established Catan players. When he is not editing Catan videos or participating in tournaments, Drew is also a full-time owner of his own sales business, which he also cites as a driving force for his success. “In Catan, there’s this analytical, strategic side similar to chess, but then there’s also some aspects of the game that are heavily based on your social skills, your ability to talk with the table, to negotiate deals. I already had a lot of those skills from a business perspective growing up and being an entrepreneur. I was winning a lot of games just off of that element alone”.
I was also surprised to learn from Drew that there was a stark cultural divide between European and American tournaments. The European style is individual-focused and non-combative: “Everyone tries to find the best setup on placements and let the dice dictate the game.” On the other hand, the American style game is much more proactive: “A lot of table talk, and it adds a different strategic depth [through increased negotiations]”. The best Catan players are not only masters of knowledge and social skills but also of adaptability.
So, the next time someone dismisses your Catan win as “lucky”, you can rest easy knowing that strategy was a bigger component of your victory than people may think. Also, if you’re ever itching to take your Catan play to the next level or just really want to destroy your friends at game night, check out DandyDrew on YouTube (it works, I’ve tried it!).
