I finally reach the last Catan game we have. Catan Dice Game
This being a dice game, it of course comes with its own dice. In this set up you are creating the same basic items: roads, settlements, cities, soldiers. However this time you create them by rolling the dice and scoring your dice (like Yahtzee). I like the pictures and the color coding on the dice. But, I’m a sucker for specialized dice, as is evident by my ginormous box of dice, currently housed in a rather boring pencil box.
And like Yahtzee you can choose to reroll sub-sets of the dice or all of them for a limited number of times.
The big difference between this and Yahtzee? In this game if you don’t score on your turn, you lose 5 points. That can be a big deal.
Catan Dice Game strategies:
1. Save the soldiers for when you’re desperate for points to fill out.
2. Roads are good to build because they get you headed towards the high point areas.
3. If you can build a settlement or city BUILD IT. The higher point cities are at the end, but before you can build those you have to build the lower point ones. You want to get to those big points.
4. Taking chances to roll for the high points never hurts you, but keep in mind what options you have left. There’s an equal chance of rolling everything, but the odds change as you lock dice in.
For a strategy game this has a high amount of chance involved because it relies on luck of the die, but it still is a low level strategy game because you are figuring out odds and chances of rolling the right combination. Before getting involved in games so much, I never realized how much we deal in probability on a regular basis without thinking about it.
And thus ends my posts on Catan dice games.
If you’re interested, I’m collecting game posts on my Games pinterest board. Feel free to look for more game ideas there.
(I think the price was lower than it is on Amazon) at a homeschool convention last year, they had two different game booths, one was Simply Fun, and since I already had a hook up through my friend I didn’t spend too much time there, and the other was a local game store. There I bought several games, and this one has been an enduring hit.
- This is a great game to work on spatial reasoning. You have to fit all of the plastic pieces on the board AND cover your footprints.
- A great way to learn the moves a chess piece makes while being challenged to think ahead to where your pieces need to be. I am not good at this, but then I’m not very good at chess either…..
- You are trying to move the police car (the red car) off the board.
- It’s scrabble and tetris in one game. I can’t quite decide if I think it’s brilliant or I’d be wanting to throw the game across the room.
- There are 2 million versions of this marble jumping game, my kids have one with Captain America and Sentinels. I picked this one because it was pretty, and not crazy expensive. Personally, I’d wander down the back aisle of Wal-Mart or Target and find a version there. That being said, this is a great game for logical reasoning and spatial skills as you jump your way to one marble.
- Recreate the picture on the card using the Kanoodle pieces. I’ve sat there and played this game many a time at our local game store.
- Don’t buy this version, pick one up at the dollar store. My kids love to play this game every time we go to Cracker Barrel.
- This is a book, which I recommend finding one like this, if not this one. You’ll find 100 or so card games in it, and this can keep your kid entertained for hours. Or it did me as a kid. We had the Hoyles book of Solitaire games, or maybe it was Klutz…….. Either way, it’s a good investment.
- This is one of the ones Princess really enjoys, and I encourage this because it teaches deductive reasoning
I would say most Gamewright card games could be played anywhere, and the quality is fairly good. They usually bring a new mechanic to variations of: Go Fish, Speed, Gin Rummy, etc.
- This game has a modified deck of cards that has 5 suits instead of the normal 4 (hence the FIVE crowns). You are playing a version of gin rummy where your cards gradually increase. You start with 3 cards in your hand, with 3’s wild, and each round you get another card, and the next number up is wild. I like that this game can last as long as you want it to . While it’s not supposed to end until the kings go wild, when I play with the kids we end after the 8’s go wild.
- I love Clue, so a version that doesn’t require a board and is more portable is nice. In this version you are figuring out who committed the crime, how they did it, and where they are escaping to. I also like that Clue the Card Game can be played by 5 people, so the whole family can play.
- I put this one here because you need at least a little of a flat surface to play the game. You can make the game faster by lowering the number of cards you start with and or limiting the cards you pick up when you can’t play (my brother and I had the “you keep picking up until you can play rule,” which was really not fun).
- We haven’t played this one yet, but I like the nice sturdy metal case it came in. I can neither affirm nor deny that is part of why I bought it. Another game where you’re trying to run out of cards first, game play looks to be similar to Speed, so you’re playing up or down, but there’s number, letter, symbol cards to play through.
- Jeff and I played this game nonstop when I was on bed rest in the hospital with the twins. Basically you “roll” 2 pigs, and get points for how they land. You can keep rolling as many times as you want as long as you’re still scoring, but if they land in a combination that doesn’t let you score you lose all the points from that round. This is a fun mostly brainless game to entertain yourself with, oh and it can be endlessly expanded to an infinite number of players. It just requires more pencil and paper.
- One of the things I like about Pictureka is you have several different games to play in one small little box. I also like that your pre-reader can play some of the versions of this game.
- A light strategy game as you try to collect different animals for points. The lions will scare away other animals, but may not be worth enough to keep. A red squirrel is worth a lot if you have a moose, but nothing if you do not. As you can see there’s some thinking that goes into this game, but we’ve been playing it since Princess was 5, so your kindergartener can play it, it just will be challenging.
- For those of you in the gaming/comic subculture you’re familiar with Steve Jackson and his rule over all things gaming. This follows the style of many of his games, complete with snarky game text and a quirky sense of humor. But, it is an adult sense of humor and he makes jokes about drugs/alcohol, and sex. This is not a game I would play with people that do not have a sense of humor, and are willing to poke fun at themselves and work. That being said, we’ve taken this with us on a couple of trips with friends and had a lot of fun. You’re trying to be the biggest slacker by entertaining yourself, buying things, or sleeping. I think it’s fun in a light hearted sort of way.
” (now produced by another company as a full board game, mine is printed on cardstock), essentialy it’s the night before Clue and you’re trying to kill Dr Lucky. Their games are fun and usually a quick play.
– This is a variation on Carcassone, it lets you think about the different ways food was gathered as we were learning to farm.
- This is Trivial Pursuit for the 
- Can you take over the Roman Empire? This is a game Jeff owned when we started dating, that he’s want to play for years, but it’s a 2 hour game, and it’s high intense strategy, so not one to play with your young kids. Jeff is still waiting to play it with me……..
- This is another of Jeff’s strategy games. You are a Daimyo in feudal Japan and are trying to secure the most land/power. From what I’m reading it’s similar to Puerto Rico in play.
- You’re a prince (young nobleman) in Florence, Italy during the Renaissance. You want to be shown as the best patron of the arts, so you’re building out your villa to get the best and brightest artists to join you. Another strategy game for junior high/high school. Maybe upper elementary.
- You are an Italian painter and you’re trying to get the best patrons and make the best paintings. To do that you need to mix the best paints, be seen in the right places, and finish your painting at the right time. It’s a lot of fun, and I look forward to playing this with my kids in a few years (read junior high).
- discover the dangers that came with crossing the Atlantic on the Mayflower.
- I learned about this from Phyllis over at 
– This game is a great one for an in-depth study of World War 2, there are several different versions of this (1941, 1942, D-Day), all of which will give you a very solid understanding of World War 2. This is a long term game, and not intended to be played in a single night. Not for young kids, you want a high schooler or very focused middle schooler playing this game.
- If you’ve ever thought the laws Congress passes are insane, well you just need to play this game, and it will all make sense to you. I love this game, it’s a blast, but you need to be a strong reader to play this. You have to read the laws and understand it. I’d say upper elementary. I can’t wait to play this with my games.
- This is the game everyone thinks of, I happen to think this game is weak because it’s dependent on your drawing the right tiles to complete a whole word. All I ever draw are consonants. That is rather tedious. If you get it, I like the version I linked to because the tiles won’t move all over. What few games of Scrabble I’ve played have been messed up by moving tiles……. I much prefer 
, where you are not attempting to make whole words…….
-Shakes the dice out and write as many words as you see in 3 minutes. I think this is a great game for finding patterns and words. And if you’re truly geeky you play it in Klingon, I’m not that geeky, besides you’d need a lot more consonants and “k” to pop up to really do well in Klingon.
- If you are looking for a fun game to play with your older kids (I tried with mine, and they’re a hair too young, so I’d say 3rd grade and up), this is a great one. You have 7 story cards (these can be events, characters, aspects, what have you), and an ending card. You are trying to guide the story so your story cards are used, and you reach your ending card. This version is fairy tale themed, so you have the old woman, and the beautiful princess as characters. There is a horror version, which I am not finding a link to right now.
- This is a more kid friendly version of Once Upon a Time, we just got this, and we haven’t really played it much yet (certain kids may have disappeared with the dice). Roll the dice and tell a story with what you rolled.
- This was my favorite game as a kid. I loved moving around the board and through the month earning money and spending it. I don’t know why THIS particular game appealed to me so much, but I always wanted to play this game.
- This was another game I enjoyed as a kid, though mainly because I had fun mocking the scenarios presented and giving names to the kids I collected and being ridiculously silly. My big caveat on this, the games can go quite long.
- I personally don’t like Monopoly (flashbacks to the horrible game throwing incident with my brother, shudder), my kids on the other hand adore the 
I found at Half Price books. It’s a great way to practice money skills and making change. It also teaches about the value of making wise purchases. It’s also horribly painful if you’re not going to win and you have to sit there for 2 hours watching the other person win as you slowly hemorrhage money.
- This is a great game for working out how to fit that piece in just right and takes some strategy to end up with the least amount of pieces left. I always get messed up by not anticipating what the other players are going to do. ARGH!
- This is the one exception, I LOVE Tetris, I spent many an hour as a kid playing this. This is the board game version where you draw pieces out and place them. I excel at this. (I linked to a special edition that has a travel version).
- this is a great way to learn coordinates for a graph. It’s also one of those logic reasoning puzzles that can either be very fun to you or mind-numbingly frustrating. I enjoyed the hunt and peck aspect of it as a kid………..
- It’s built into the rules, do you take the 2’s as a 3 of a kind or hope you can roll that again……… As you play it more you realize what is likely to happen again, and how much you’re playing the odds. FYI, there is a 
– I like this game for the very young because it’s less than 5 minutes to play. It’s also a great way for you as Mom to get out some aggravation as you pound those ice cubes 
.
- there are 10 million variations of this on Amazon, I had shared with me: 
- I have to admit my kids primarily used this for fine motor skill, rather than playing the game, but it is still a great beginning game, and then we used it again when we learned about insect body parts. For kids really struggling with attention span I would play the 
. It’s a very quick play in that version for the littlest guys, and is a great distraction at restaurants or in lines.