Open letter to Catan to fix its loopholes

As the first order of business in 2023, I felt the need to address the loopholes in the board game that has taken over my 2022 winter. The Friday night 3AM ritual every weekend over the last 6 weeks, has made our social circle defining their identities based on result of the weekend game. While it is well-designed and has an amazing ability to appeal to experienced gamers as well as those new to the hobby, we have stumbled into loopholes which can fixed very easily. This post is a satirical rant as much as it is a request to the current owners.

Loophole #1:

Allowing a settlement to be built on opponent’s pre-built roads while disallowing roads to be built passing through an opponent’s settlement.

Suggestion: No preference here. Make the rule consistent on both fronts.

Loophole #2:

Longest road being designed for 15 roads while the GoT version of the game has 14 roads provided to each player.

Suggestion: Provide the correct # of pieces in the package -.-

Loophole #3:

Trading that goes against the spirit of the game and rules

There’s a very simple loophole in the “no giving away resources rule”. For instance, say Player A trades ore+sheep to Player B for another sheep; the net result is that A gave B an ore for free. A similar example would be A trading ore+sheep to B for a grain, and then the two swapping the sheep and grain back. Technically it’s legal, but it will affect the spirit of the game where players collude. Although it can be argued the politics is what makes the interesting, playing as an independent — it affects the moral of the game, and we can remove the “unfair” trading.

P.S: There’s another reason I wanted to publish this article on January 1st. Although it is trivial and short article, I am hoping it will me build momentum into writing more in ’23.