Never Forget Your Roots- Catan

Catan’s History

Catan, or as I’ll always know it, The Settlers of Catan, was first released in 1995 by Kosmos Games, designed by Klaus Teuber. That’s 30 years ago folks! The Billboard Top 100 #1 song of that same year was Gangsta’s Paradise and the top grossing movie at the box office was Batman Forever (I just threw up a little in my mouth typing that last part). You’re telling me Val Kilmer Batman beat Apollo 13? Come on America, you’re better than that!

Ok, I digress. I’m already falling into the same trap as those who judge Catan too harshly in hindsight.

Before Catan, the U.S. market was dominated by mass-market titles like Monopoly and Risk. Catan’s focus on resource management, trading, and competition without elimination offered something new: a more strategic yet still approachable experience that encouraged interaction and replayability.

Its success sparked a wave of interest in European design philosophies—emphasizing balanced mechanisms, shorter playtimes, and less randomness, which reshaped how many Americans viewed board gaming as a hobby. The game helped build a bridge from casual gaming to the modern hobby market. Catan was a cultural ambassador for Eurogames, paving the way for widespread acceptance of titles such as Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, and Pandemic, establishing the foundation for today’s thriving U.S. hobby board game industry.

Catan’s Place in My Gaming History

The game’s pedigree is clear, but I want to take you back to the year 2003. I was playing some occasional Axis and Allies and Risk, but the focus of my gaming had moved to Warhammer and Warhammer 40k. It was at our local gaming store (RIP to “The Warroom”) that I first saw and played Settlers of Catan. When I played it, I felt like I had more agency than in other games at the time, and the more we played it, the more we wanted to play it again. I don’t remember exactly where I sourced my own copy of the game, but I think it was at a small, dark comic shop where I had previously bought my Magic cards; long before the days of finding a game like this at Target and before online shopping was the norm.

I purchased it along with the Cities and Knights expansion (which I felt gave even more agency and improved the game) and played the game multiple times a week for what seems like years. It redefined what it meant for me to play games with friends. A&A or Risk would take hours upon hours- Catan was less than 2 hours. Catan felt more intimate–lower stakes, many more laughs, clinking bottles, and the fierce betrayals felt after someone traded away their ore stockpile only to monopoly it all back.

About 10 years later I started back into the hobby gaming space and began building the collection that visitors to my house now look at with awe (gamers) or apprehensive confusion (normies).

Family Memories

One of the first games that I purchased for my kids when they were 6-7 (ugh, I just shuddered when writing those two numbers- thanks Gen Z brain rot memes!) was Catan Junior, and both of my children LOVED it. For a period of time, we built many core gaming memories together using another game from the Catan family.

In many ways, I think this version is just as good as the original, and I’d probably actually prefer playing it to its predecessor, but that’s not the point of this blog.

The experience opened the door for me to share my own memories of playing “Settlers,” as my gaming friends called it at the time. Eventually, my son and daughter wanted to play the original and share this memory with me too. So we did.

A few years later, Catan sat on my shelf, the old Mayfair box dusty and torn, and I added it to my “to sell” list for a convention. It didn’t pre-sell, and my kids caught me packing it in a bin to take to sell on-site.

“Dad, you’re not going to sell Catan are you?! We really love that game!”

The memories of playing with them from only a few years past flooded me and I unpacked the copies as I choked back nostalgic tears.

It was at that time that I realized Catan was more than just a game for gamers my age, who experienced the modern gaming renaissance as it happened. It’s an artifact, a cultural icon, and part of our gaming DNA.

How Do I Remember and Rate Catan?

The most powerful memory I have of the game though is that it was fun. I feel like in today’s gaming culture, we spend too much time dissecting a game for its features, theme, mechanisms, art, graphic design, etc., but forget the simple question of whether it was fun or not. I rate Catan in the same way I rate cinema classics like Citizen Kane, Psycho, and Back to the Future… flawed yet flawless. It exists outside of the regular scale where other games are rated.

It’s absolutely clear that without my crusty and problematic grandpappy Catan, I’d have never experienced modern gaming in the same way, and certainly wouldn’t be writing about them now. I appreciate and love him for that, despite all his flaws.

My friends and I that played Catan together in those early days are all grown up now, most of us between our 40s and early 60s. We have our own families and careers, have moved to various places around the country, and no longer often find ourselves sitting together around a table to play a board game. There’s one thing that we all still share though, and that’s the memories of sitting around a folding table, chucking dice, collecting resources, telling jokes, talking smack, and lamenting how many times Jason rolled an 11 or 3 while my 6 or 8 refused to roll for THE ENTIRE GAME.

Man, I could go for a game of Catan about now… anyone feel like joining me?