Highlights
- Resource management in games is key for that Catan feeling - Splendor's quick gameplay offers a great budget alternative.
- Crescent Moon offers Catan fans a more complex resource management game with betrayal - perfect for strategy enthusiasts.
- Terraforming Mars is essentially Catan in space, with hexagonal tiles, diverse strategies, and various ways to win - a great next step.
For many people, Catan is the first foray into the wider world of European-style board games. Considered one of the best board games, Catan has players win via a combination of positioning, trading, and probability. There's a bit of luck involved, but as with any game where mechanics have strategy involved, careful play usually wins out.
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Finding a good position on the map and waiting for the right rolls (or draws) to win the day feels tense and exciting, but let's face it, Catan is old. Most board game enthusiasts have played it to death and want something new, even if their board game noob friends haven't tried it yet. Finding a compromise is a key component of any fun game night, so Game ZXC gathered the best board games like Catan that can make everyone at the table happy to get scheming.
The Best Board Games for Fans of Catan
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TIcket to Ride
Ticket to Ride is a classic train collection and route-building game set in the Industrial-era USA. Each turn, players collect train cards, place tokens on the map to secure routes or opt to gain secret objectives. The game is a constant balance of trying to take on more to gain more points while also not attempting to do more than is possible.
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The Castles of Burgundy
The Castles Of Burgundy is a game where players strive to create the best kingdom, using tiles from a central pool to create engaging industries. Players trade, engage in livestock farming, create industry, and court unique businesses to edge out the most points. However, picking the perfect piece is never easy as players are always at the whim of the dice.
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Terraforming Mars
In Terraforming Mars, players control giant corporations, sponsored by the World Government on Earth, to raise the temperature, the oxygen level, and the ocean coverage on Mars until the environment is habitable.
With over two hundred project cards and six different resources in play, strategic gamers will love this sci-fi adventure. -
7 Wonders
7 Wonders is a card development game that spans three ages. The game offers players ways to manipulate the world immediately and, in the long run, using cards and resources. The somewhat complex gameplay is easy to handle after just a few rounds and encourages replays to try new strategies. Planning is essential in 7 Wonders, but it is simple enough to serve as a bridge between entry-level and more advanced strategy games.
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Small World
Smallworld is a mix-and-match figurine duel. Combining races and classes to create tons of possibilities and combat outcomes, players vie for a piece of the (small) world the game inhabits.
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Best Premium Game Like CatanCrescent Moon
This highly social game relies on lots of planning and table talk in order to win. Perfect for long game nights among veteran players, this board game offers a unique setting with truly immersive gameplay.
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King of Tokyo
A kaiju smash-em-up, King of Tokyo pits players in Tokyo (and Tokyo Bay) as they roll dice to fight for supremacy. Match numbers on the dice to gain points or use special die faces to gain powers, attack enemies, and possibly heal yourself. The first to 20 points — or the last alive — wins.
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Space Base
Space Base is a game of die-rolling, gold-gaining, rocket-building fun. Players draft cards that activate on certain die rolls. Score the blue side of your board on your roll and the red sides on your opponents' rolls. There's something to do on everybody's turn!
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Carcassonne Board Game
Carcassonne is a strategy game that challenges players to develop a medieval fortress city one tile at a time. The objective is to outsmart opponents by strategically placing tiles, which depict cities, roads, monasteries, and fields, to create an ever-expanding game board. Players then add followers to the tiles, each taking on various roles, such as knights, monks, farmers, or thieves, depending on the tile type.
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Best Budget Game Like CatanSplendor (Base Game)
Splendor takes players on a quest to mine the best jewels of the world and please wealthy clients. Each turn, players can collect gems directly or invest in and select mines to add to their power. As those who have their own mines don't need to do the mining to collect gems, players can do increasingly more on each subsequent turn in the game.
What to Play After Catan
Catan is one of those games that gets discovered by groups and then played as often as possible until everyone is a little sick of it. Except that they aren’t that sick of it. So how can players find a game that’s just like Catan, but offers a fresh and exciting experience? There are a few key features of Catan found in other titles that most often come to mind when thinking about Catan:
Resource Management: Choosing a game with good resource management, specifically managing more than two resources, is a great way to get that Catan feeling with any title. Even better are games that have so many resources that not every player is after every resource.
Table Talk: Most groups end up doing a fair bit of table talking to broker deals for trades and alliances by the time they’re playing Catan for the tenth time. Choosing a game with loose rules about table talk or that actively encourages players to form alliances and enemies is perfect for more strategic groups.
Simple Gameplay: Some players just don’t want to get bogged down by rules, no matter how long they’ve been playing board games. Catan has fairly straightforward rules, made more complicated by player action rather than by elements of the game itself. By choosing a game that doesn’t get overly complicated, fans of Catan will have a great time with their new game.
Hex Grid Placement: Not all games use hex pieces to play, and even fewer have the same placement system as Catan. In Catan, the map is randomly generated at the beginning of the game, with users taking turns to place drawn land tiles. If this is something you enjoy or something you’d rather have more control over, look at different map-building methods offered by board games before purchasing a new title.
Best Budget Game Like Catan
Splendor
Splendor is an older game, but it’s a famously engaging and quick resource management game. Splendor asks players to collect gemstones to purchase developments and make themselves more prestigious. Each turn, players can collect gems or purchase cards, until one player has 15 points, when the final round begins.
This light bit of resource management is vital to success, as players need to keep an eye on how close their opponents are to 15 total points, while also trying to get there themselves. However, that's it. That's as complicated as the game gets, and it plays super fast. Fans of Catan who are looking for a speedy round of trying to outsmart their friends and family won't be disappointed by Splendor. Plus, the game is one of the few tabletop titles that is available for less than $30.
Best Premium Game Like Catan
Crescent Moon
Crescent Moon was made for those groups who have gone way off the rails within Catan’s table-talk allowances. Very similar in gameplay to Catan, Crescent Moon is a resource management game that really wants players to betray each other.
Taking place in a kingdom rife with turmoil, opportunities abound for players to rule the land through ambitious moves. The plot of the game runs through three or four years, depending on the mode players choose, and the game is about as complicated as it sounds, with an estimated play time of 180 minutes.
There are familiar hexagonal land tiles, tokens that mark resources, NPCs, and player-claimed locations, all beautifully created with vibrant colors and details. For Catan fans who appreciate tactile gameplay, Crescent Moon has a ton to offer. While it is a bit expensive and very complex, Crescent Moon is a natural next step for players who can't get enough of Catan, but need a bit more challenge.
Editor’s Pick
Terraforming Mars
Terraforming Mars is basically Catan in space. Again, there are hexagonal tiles and tokens for players to interact with, but the game is made a bit more approachable with the addition of cards. Cards are given to players to help them claim water, build cities, and collect resources.
Additionally, the game starts with players selecting what essentially amounts to a character card, with different corporations vying for control of the Red Planet. These cards come with special abilities and bonuses that players can leverage throughout the game to beat their opponents.
What’s great about Terraforming Mars is that there are a lot of different ways to play and win. The game is just as much fun with two players as it is with five. At the same time, a player can be a force for good or evil as they amass heaps of resources and claim tiles. The game plays for about as long as Catan and is about as complicated, making Terraforming Mars the perfect choice for Catan players in search of a new game.
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FAQ
Q: What game is Catan similar to?
Catan is very similar to Space Base due to the die-rolling mechanics in each game. Like Catan, two six-sided dice are rolled by the active player each turn, but all players are allowed to accumulate resources based on the outcome.Catan is very similar to Space Base due to the die-rolling mechanics in each game. Like Catan, two six-sided dice are rolled by the active player each turn, but all players are allowed to accumulate resources based on the outcome.
Q: Which is better, Catan or Carcassonne?
Catan and Carcassonne are roughly equal in quality. Different audiences might enjoy one game more than the other, but people as a whole regard them roughly equally. They both hold a 4.8 rating on Amazon, are in the top 10 games on BoardGameArena, and are rated between 7.0 and 7.5 on BoardGameGeek.