The Kids of Catan

The Kids of Catan is a German board game for children, based on the world of The Settlers of Catan. Klaus Teuber designed it, and it was released by Kosmos in German and by Mayfair Games in English. In the game’s story, three children help their parents build Catan’s first settlement. One parent makes bricks, one cuts wood, and one farms.

The kids haul goods in wagons, but an older sibling sometimes bullies them, scaring them away so their supplies get stolen. The game uses a turntable split into 16 sections. Two to four players and their wagons sit on the turntable, while the 16 spaces are around the edge. Fifteen spaces hold resources—five each of three types—and the sixteenth is the robber.

Players start so no one begins on the robber. Each turn, a player rolls a die and moves the turntable that many spaces. If a player lands on a resource space that still has that resource, and they don’t already have it in their wagon, they take it. Landing on the robber forces a player to skip their turn and do nothing.

When a wagon is full, the player may place a building, returning all three resources to the board. There are 13 buildings total: 12 red ones and one green city hall. The red houses are split evenly among players, and only a player who has placed all their red houses may build the city hall. The first to build the city hall wins.