Your first island.
Start with a place to call yours. Turn what the island gives you into your next move. We’ll show you how.
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- A place to begin. Choose your first settlement and a connected road.
- Everyone settles. Then the order reverses. The last player goes first in round two.
- Your second settlement gives you cards. Each neighbouring resource tile supplies one starting card.
- Now the game begins. Roll, collect, trade and build. Follow the interactive lesson below.
Settle in.
In a standard game, four players compete to reach ten points. You start by choosing where to build two settlements and two roads. Each settlement is worth one point.
Round one follows the allocated turn order. Round two reverses it: the last player places twice in a row, and the first player finishes last. Each placement is a settlement followed by an adjacent road.
Your first settlement.
Choose an intersection between resource tiles. The letters match the locations on the board.
YOUR HANDNo cards yet. Your second settlement supplies your starting hand.Your first settlement gives you a position. Your second also gives you one card from each adjacent resource tile. The desert gives nothing. Once everyone finishes, the first player rolls.
The island gives back.
One roll. Everyone can earn.
Choose a number to reveal its producing tiles and cards.
An example opening — finish the first lesson to use your own placements. The robber’s tile stays blocked.
Forest makes wood. Hills make brick. Pasture makes wool. Fields make grain. Mountains make ore.
Two dice pick a number. Each unblocked tile with that number produces for the buildings beside it: one card for a settlement, two for a city. That happens on everyone’s turn, not just yours.
The dots under a number on the game board show how many dice combinations make it. Six and eight have more combinations than two and twelve. They are useful, but no number is a promise.
Build your next move.
Roads connect your network. New settlements must connect to it and leave at least one empty intersection between settlements. A city upgrades one of your settlements.
Turn cards into a plan.
A development card costs one wool, one grain and one ore. It may give you a special action or a hidden victory point. Action cards bought this turn wait until your next turn; you can play at most one development action card per turn.
Make a trade.
Missing a brick? Offer another player cards they might need. A deal completes only when the proposer confirms a willing partner.
The bank normally takes four of the same resource for one of your choice. A 3:1 port improves that rate for any resource; a matching 2:1 port improves it for its resource. You need a settlement or city on the port to use it.
After rolling, trade and build in the order that suits your plan. End your turn when you are done.
Next: what happens on seven?Watch out for seven.
Seven produces no resources. Anyone holding more than seven resource cards returns half, rounded down. Development cards do not count.
Nine cards. Return four.
More than seven? Return half, rounded down. Choose four cards from this example hand.
The player who rolled then moves the robber to a different tile and, if there is an eligible neighbour, steals one random resource card. The robber blocks that tile’s production until it moves again.
Next: how to winFirst to ten.
Each settlement.
Each city, replacing a one-point settlement.
Longest Road needs a qualifying route of at least five roads. Largest Army needs at least three played knights. Each award belongs to its qualifying leader; another player can take it.
Victory-point development cards count towards your total.
Reach ten points on your turn to win the standard game. You do not need to memorise everything before starting: keep the building costs close, watch what a roll gives everyone, and make one useful move at a time.