canspice.org

Well, for lack of staying silent and making you wonder if I’m reading, let me just speak up and say that I didn’t even know there WERE two-person variants of Settlers. I need to look into that, because that’s really promising for while I’m in CO.

I’ll be curious to see what you find.

It’s a fantastic board game. It’s fairly simple to play — simple rules, simple board, etc. Yet it’s shockingly fun.

You’ve maybe played Axis & Allies? Diplomacy? Pax Britannica?

It’s nothing like those.

I’ve got a fun 2-player variant. It requires the Original 4 player game, plus the expansion for Seafarers and both 5-6 player packs. It makes for a game length around 45 min with 2 people, longer with more.

You use the Seafarers border pieces to make a huge board – it barely fits on our kitchen table – that allows all land and water tiles to be placed. I don’t recall the exact lettered configuration, but I know that if you lay out the non-X border pieces in connecting order (by letter – A to A, B to B, etc), two corners are cut off (ie, not 90 degrees) by extending their connections with one of the XX pieces, and the width is expanded by adding a XX and X piece on the “top” and “bottom” of the board.

Then take 2 of each resource and 1 desert. Do that again. Shuffle them and lay out each group in opposing corners (3 rows of 3 and 1 row of 2, in the lower left and upper right corners, works best). Take two sets of number chits (1 of each number in each set) and randomly place them on the respective islands to determine resource availability. We don’t have any restrictions with red numbers being adjacent.

Then shuffle the remaining land (including Gold tiles) & water and place them randomly upside-down in the middle section of the board. This makes for a discovery type of game. We play the basic discovery rules within Seafarers with a twist – when you discover a resource tile with a boat or road, you get one of those resources for your hand. A random number chit is placed on the tile; again with no restrictions on double-red or duplicate numbers adjacent.

Three random Seafarer ports are put upside-down on each player’s coastline. Choose identical locations on each island before revealing the port, and before the number chits are assigned. The remaining 6 ports are placed upside-down in the discovery area, on tiles equidistant from each player. When the tile they are on is flipped, the port must be placed on the closest known landmass. You can thus possibly end up with one settlement having two ports; however, the ports cannot overlap.

Each player places 3 settlements on his or her own island to begin (with 3 or 4 players, you roll as in the normal game to determine first placement, and are not restricted to a particular side). The first player to 15 points wins. Each player gets an extra victory point for each PROVEN unique island he or she settles on.

Now for the fun part: I’ve tweaked my board even more by adding custom tiles with my own graphics taped on to them:

1: Klaas Tueber’s idea for the Volcano. When its number is rolled it erupts; lava flows in a direction determined by a roll of a single die which then either destroys the settlement in that direction or reduces a city to a settlement; if left intact it acts like Gold.

2: Locusts. This replaces one wheat; when it is discovered all players loose all wheat in their hand, and all wheat production is halted for one full round. Wheat cannot be collected when wild resources are rolled (Gold, etc.) but can be traded for with a player’s ports. After that round, this tile functions like regular wheat and is given a number chit at that point.

3: The Bermuda Hexagon. If a boat discovers this, the whole line of boats tracing back to the nearest settlement is mysteriously lost. Place the boats on that tile for the duration of the game. If the line of boats is branching off of an intact trade route between two settlements, only the branch is lost. No more boats can be built around that hexagon. Roads are unaffected, and can be built around it though (assuming there is a shore line).

4: The Islet of Catan. This small island has a finite amount of each resource; the first player to discover it gets one of each resource, plus one gold. At this point the two dice are put aside and players switch to a single 12 sided die (available cheap at most game shops). Both the 7 and the 1 on this die move the robber. If the islet of Catan is robbed, no player loses a resource as it cannot be built on, and play resumes with the two six-sided dice – until the robber moves again.

5: The Lookout Tower. This is a desert tile, but it contains a tall tower. The player that flips it over gets to flip all adjacent undiscovered tiles, and collects as per the discovery rules above.

6: The Fortress. This is also a desert tile, but it contains a massive fortification. Any adjacent tiles cannot be robbed (very useful when next to a Gold with a 6 on it!); if any are already robbed when the fortress is revealed, the robber is immediately placed on the desert.

7: Oil. This water tile functions like Gold, in that it produces a wild resource. It receives a numberd chit, but can only be harvested if a player can build on land adjacent to the Oil. If no land is next to the Oil tile, the chit remains on it, but it can never be harvested aside from its discovery collection bonus.

I haven’t played tested this a tremendous amount but here it is. A 2 player variant. You don’t need anything but the regular cataan.

7-hand changed to 8-hand for robber rolls, 9 or less is now subject to halving of cards.

2 pasture, 1 forest, 1 mountain, 1 field become deserts (flip tile over) This is easiest if you just flip them over in your hand then lay them out.

Neutral Player rules
Additional resource bank of Neutral player.
Neutral Player will only build roads on his turn and does not collect largest road.
Neutral Player only builds roads.
Roads are built connecting from one settlement to another and then in a longest path clockwise
from the southern most settlement (bottom of board)
Neutral Player will only trade 2:1 for his own resources, but it can be 2 mixed cards.
Neutral Player has resource cards face up.
Neutral Player is exempt from robber halving rule but not from blocking resource and stealing resouce.

Neutral roll (optional, can be confusing to keep track of)
This is an alternating roll for after the Neutral Player and After the Last Player roll. It is to simulate a 4 player resource draw.

Robber rolls go to lowest board victory points (minus development cards)

Example of Turn Sequence
Player A
Neutral Player
Neutral roll
Player B
Player A
Neutral Player
Player B
Neutral roll

I will be making a formal version of these rules soon and post here.

We have also come up with a 2 player version;
To set up the game, lay it out like normal, but when placing the initial settlements it goes – player 1, player 2, player 1, player 2.
Game play is like normal, but since trading is hindered with only two people trades are as follows;
Any 3 of the same card can be traded for 1 card to the bank on your turn.
If you are on the 3:1 port, this means any combination of 3 cards can be traded in for one card.
and the two to one port is the same.
We played with normal robber rules, and this seemed to work ok, but after a few games we changed the robber to be:
if you roll a 7 you must move the robber according to the following preferences,
1) to a vacant hex (no houses)
2) to a hex that only effects you
3) to a hex that you share with your opponent
Stealing a card can only be done by using a soldier card which acts like normal. This is referred to as the reverse robber 7 rul on some online sites.

This seems to work ok, and the games are pretty even and last about half hour max.

hope this works for you!
cheers

There is a 2-person card game that is really fun. I haven’t yet been able to find it in game stores, but you can order it online. It varies from the board game as you are playing with cards, but the basics tactics and techniques are the same and I actually enjoy it even more than the multi-person game which I love.