Catan is one of the all-time best beginner board games, and utterly essential to any good collection. Snooty tabletop snobs may look down their noses at it, but they’re wrong, and we’re right. If this strategy classic still isn’t on your shelf, you should pick up a copy at the earliest opportunity – lucky for you, then, that we’ve scoped out a fresh board game deal to nab the main game at 27% discount, and some of its best expansions at up to 40% off.
A whole swathe of the (now extensive) Catan range – including some of our favorite Catan expansions – is currently selling at a discount on Amazon. As is usually the case with Amazon promos, we’ve no way of knowing when these limited time discounts will end, so best strike while the iron is hot. Here’s what’s cooking.
The only truly essential purchase, in our view, is the core Catan board game – and that’s currently a few cents under $44, down 27% off the usual $60 price tag.
Then again, if you’re investing in Catan because you’ve already played it and liked it, there’s no good reason not to also nab the 5-6 Player Extension, so you can build out the board a little and welcome two extra pals to the game. That’s down 15% from the $33 regular price, at $27.99.
The biggest discounts on offer here, though, are on the most popular expansions to the game. As with any expansion, we wouldn’t recommend buying them unless you already know and love the main game – but if that’s you, and you’ve been waiting for an excuse to grab them, wait no longer.
Top of the pops is Traders and Barbarians, running at an impressive 40% discount, for $36 and change. T&B isn’t so much one big expansion as a medley of several smaller ones, adding lots of optional extras, variants, and materials, as well as – excitingly for Catan – a proper two-player mode. The original Catan is, notoriously, not a very good two-player board game, so if you often play games à deux, this is a must.
Almost as extravagantly discounted – down 37% to $38 – is Explorers and Pirates. This is a fairly advanced transformation of the main game, expanding the board from a single island to a group of three, with new shipping and port city mechanics, and variant options to play as a pirate. Not recommended for beginners, but excellent swashbuckling fun, especially at 22 bucks off.
The more basic option for adding more naval gameplay is the original oceanic expansion, Seafarers – discounted 33% to a smidge under $40. It sticks close to the original game’s rules, making it a better choice than E&P for new players – but still adds some nautical fun, as you sail off the island to find strategic advantages offshore.
Slightly disappointingly, one of the best (and most vital) Catan expansions – Cities and Knights – has the lowest discount, priced down just 8% at $55. If you want an expansion to add strategic depth and options, though, this is the one to go for (and hey, five bucks off is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick).
The preposterously large and luxurious Catan 3D edition, and the sci-fi spin-off Catan: Starfarers, sadly aren’t included in the current promotion.
However, the surprisingly decent A Song of Ice and Fire variant is down 24% at $61, if you love Game of Thrones board games and don’t mind paying extra for a big white plastic wall and a bunch of troll minis.
The work of the late, great Klaus Teuber, Catan (originally released in 1995 as The Settlers of Catan) is unarguably one of the best strategy board games ever – and arguably one of the best board games, period.
We’ll keep you updated whenever we see more tasty board game deals like this – in the meantime, you can keep up with the latest by bookmarking our board games news page and following Wargamer on Google News.