Picture yourself in the era of discoveries: after a long voyage of great deprivation, your ships have finally reached the coast of an uncharted island. Its name shall be Catan! But you are not the only discoverer. Other fearless seafarers have also landed on the shores of Catan: the race to settle the island has begun! To begin the game, we build the game board with hexagonal terrain tiles. Catan is now born - a beautiful island with mountains, pastures, hills, fields, and forests, surrounded by the sea. We each place two small houses on spaces where three of these terrain hexes meet, as our starting settlements. And so it begins. I roll two dice. An `11`! Each terrain hex is marked with a die roll number. Each player who owns a settlement adjacent to a terrain hex marked with the number rolled receives a resource produced by this hex. Hills produce brick, forests produce lumber, mountains produce ore, fields produce grain, and pastures produce wool. We use these resources to expand across Catan: we build roads and new settlements, or we upgrade our existing settlements to cities. For example, a road costs 1 brick and 1 lumber. If we do not have the necessary resources, we can acquire them by trading with our opponents. Each settlement is worth 1 victory point and each city is worth 2 victory points. If you expand cleverly, you may be the first player to reach 10 victory points and thus win the game! Box Contents: 19 unique hexagonal terrain tiles 6 coastal frame pieces 9 extra harbor pieces 20 wooden settlements 16 wooden cities 60 wooden roads 95 resource cards 25 development cards 4 building costs cards 2 special bonus cards 18 number tokens 2 six-sided dice 1 wooden robber pawn Simple rules & Almanac