Catan Strategy

A Complete Guide to Winning the Popular Board Game

By: Mark Oxer

Narrated by: Mike Goodrick

Length: 2 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

After winning the Canadian Championship in 2005 (defeating the 2004 champion in the round-robin play), I read every Catan strategy guide I could find, in my attempt to win the world championship. At that time, there was not a lot of information available, with the exception of a few online articles. There is more information available these days, but I have yet to find anything comprehensive written by another tournament player.

This is an advanced guide to the game of Catan and goes beyond anything authored previously. It is intended to become a reference piece rather than something that you listen to once and forget. I hope that it inspires you to study the game, your opponents, and your own level of play. This is not just a book of rules, scenarios, and statistics; it is an audiobook designed to change the way you think about Catan.

I want you to learn the intricacies of the game and show you how to solve problems using methods implemented by the top players in the world. I am not suggesting that my way is the only way to win; there are more ways than one way to win at Catan, however, in order to win, you will need to learn how to think through a situation and develop your own winning strategy.

I truly believe that whatever level of play you are currently at, the additional skills you will learn by listening to this audiobook will significantly improve your Catan gaming ability.

©2019 Mark Oxer (P)2020 Mark Oxer

Good Reference for Catan

This book is exactly what it purports to be, a good reference for Catan players seeking to improve their game play.

Nothing a novice doesn’t know

This book is contains simple and arbitrary information that many will find to be novice-level information. Such as where to place the robber, any level of significant critical thinking will yield a response that fulfills the description given by the author. It doesn’t contribute anything new to the game with respect to perspective. Details on a given strategies are missing, instead an overview of the goal of the strategy is given without context to the strategies others implement. An advanced or even novice player may not gain or improve their skills from this text. Concrete examples of turn-by-turn analysis are not included in the text. The writer makes assumptions about the reader’s knowledge of tournament play, novice students of catan with no tournament experience will not know what is meant by “round-robin” or the dynamics of pre-game social engineering which are talked about very briefly. While the writer is no doubt a master catan player, it doesn’t make him a master at explaining the reasoning of the decisions he is making.

Lots of words, little insight.

If you've never played Catan, this book is a very long retelling of the rules with a few additional insights. If you've played the game, there are a few nuggets to mine, but it takes a lot of sifting. Most of the meat in this book could have been distilled into a few pages, but then the author wouldn't have had enough "content" to sell as a book. Would not recommend.