Settlers of Catan!

Have you played it? Once again we learned of this game through the Five in a Row forum. Lots of families are playing this game and let me tell you...it is worth it!

Since my original post on this game, we have acquired the two expansion sets. Knights and Cities of Catan (pictured here) is a wonderfully complicated addition to the game. You have to defend your cities with knights against barbarians from foreign shores. You also get to earn commodities such as cloth, coin, and paper made from the original resources ore, wool, and timber. E, our oldest, begs to play this game almost everyday. I love to play and I love to win!

The other expansion set is Seafarers of Catan and our 5yo loves this addition as he loves all things sea related including pirates. In this version you get to set out of Catan to visit other islands to settle there, but you have to watch out for pirates in addition to the land robber! Both extra sets require the use of the original Catan hexagons and pieces. Considering the boats, roads, cities, settlements, ships, dice, etc and extensive game board hexes that have to be stored we thought we'd share our system.

Part of setting up the game is sorting out the colored game pieces of which there are many especially if you play Settlers, Seafareres, AND knights and cities at the same time! So, we set out to simplify the task. I found the perfect storage boxes at Target in the adult craft section to hold the colored game pieces. Each color gets its own and we'll need one more for the dice and the bad guys and other misc wood pieces from Knights and Cities. I found a plastic storage box just the right size to store the separate boxes plus all the game board pieces, cards, misc board pieces and the directions. Our Catan kingdom is all in one now. Since so many of you play, here's an idea for you. It's working out great! Set up is so much quicker now.