Catan: On the Road

Inspired by the classic Catan, this On the Road variant sacrifices some elements in favour of portability: whilst the game does contain roads, the name refers to the fact it packs into a tiny box, because everything is made up of cards.

Players begin with two: a Settlement and a Road. You also have two randomly dealt Resource cards (the resources are brick, wood, wheat, sheep, ore) and on every players turn all players harvest: taking a card off the top of the resource deck and adding to their hand. The next phase is trading, where the active player can do one trade with someone else, and that someone else gets a bonus resource from the deck for taking part.

Then the player can build, spending resources to take a card from an available array (always five) on the table. You might build more roads or settlements, upgrade a settlement to a City or even a city to a Metropolis, both of which permit you to draw additional resources on your turn.

The goal is to be the first player to reach seven points. Settlements are worth a point, cities two and a metropolis three. If you have the most roads (and at least three) the Longest Road is worth 2 points, and roads also improve your basic 4-for-1 exchange rate when building (for example, pay four sheep in lieu of a brick), potentially to as powerful as 1-for-1. If you build Knights they will potentially get you the Largest Army (2 points) and also offer some protection from the Robber.

Ah, the robber! Whenever anyone builds a settlement, and Event card is drawn. Sometimes this will be beneficial to one or all, for example extra resources. Other times it may be the Robber, who will punish those with more than seven resource cards, taking half away. The game continues until one player reaches seven points, and that player instantly wins.