Ed Ranks Settlers of Catan Resource Hexes

Settlers of Catan – the famous Eurogame that takes 46 hours to play (45 hours to figure out the rules, and then 1 hour of playtime before you get angry and toss the board).  Actually, this might not be fair. The only time I tried to play it with some friends I was already like 2 beers in… so the "complexity" of the game might have been more a ME issue than an issue with the game itself. 

Anyway, within the game (at least the standard edition and not expansion packs) there are five specialized hex tiles represnting terrain types that provide resource cards to the players with adjacent settlements/cities. What are those five specialized hex titles you ask? I’m glad you asked. Let me tell you in the form of a ranking.

5. Pasture (produces Wool)

I know pastures might seem important. Pastures are where we place animals, and animals give us important stuff like food and milk. But I guess the people who made this game are vegans, so pastures only produce Wool for us here. Which I suppose is important for clothes, right? You don’t want these settlers running around naked, do you? I suppose not… but if I’m going all in on settling… wool is going to be my bottom priority. 

4. Mountain (produces Ore)

Who settles in mountains? Crazy people, that’s who. Tibetan monks and stuff. A mountain isn’t a good place to live. It’s so high up. It’s cold and rocky. I guess you have plenty of water if you melt the snow and drink it but it’s not a piece of land I’d want to live on if I had my choice. It does produce ore, which I suppose it important later in the game for building cities and stuff. 

3. Hill (produces Brick)

Hills are like the mini versions of mountains. I guess it’s nice to live on a hill for defensive purposes. And it’s not quite as bad of a hike as living on a mountain. What I’m not really getting is the connection between hills and bricks though. Yes, hills are obviously made up of a lot of dirt (along with rocks) – but you know what other type of terrain is also made up of mostly dirt that you can make bricks out of? Literally every single other type. Why can’t you also make bricks from pastures and stuff? I dunno. I guess they just needed to give hill something. Bricks are important and all. If you build a brick house and live inside of it you can keep warm without all the need for those itchy wool clothes. I’ll just throw this one right in the middle. 

2. Forest (produces Lumber)

Although houses made of trees are more flammible than houses made of bricks… you gotta admit that trees are a lot easier and faster to work with. And you can do all sort of stuff with wood/lumber. It’s very versitle. Lumber’s great and you need it for building. Even moreso than ore. Yeah, forest is good stuff. You can probably also get deer and animals to eat here in the forest – but like with the pasture this game pretends that meat doesn’t exist. You know what food source does exist though? 

Hell yeah, GRAIN!

1. Field (produces Grain)

This one is simple: you don’t eat – you die. Everyone needs grain (sorry Adkins Diet people!) In the game it’s used to build settlements, upgrade settlements to cities, etc. And in the real world it’s simple common sense that you need grain. I know if I’m settling somewhere, I want it to be on a field. I mean preferably a dield near some fores and hill or something, but yeah… field is the way to go.