no, it's an actual variant. the discussion of the game that i've seen generally revolves around "since it's designed for 3-4, there are some things that break when played only with 2 without modifying the original game" - mostly

a) trading
b) crowding

so there are lots of player-made variants to make Catan-for-Two, but the official variant is the designer's, Klaus Teuber. I think the rules are somewhere on the official sites for catan (???), but they're hard to find, and they're here on boardgamegeek, too:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/info/21616

also, for comparison, here's a thread called "Romantic Island Get-away - A Review of some 2-player variants":

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/155936

Teuber Variant in a nutshell, iirc:

1) you set up the other 2 colors as dummy players. every time you build a road, you build a road for one of them. every time you build a settlement, you build a settlement for one of them (if there are no legal settlements locations, you build a road, instead). you don't do anything for the dummy players when you build a city.

2) you have a starting pool of tokens (5, i think) which let you "buy" one of two outcomes:

A) you can force yr opponent to do a two-card trade with you - you blind draw 2 cards from their hand, then you give them 2 cards back.

B) you can move the robber back to the desert.

The token cost is either 1 or 2 tokens. If you have the same amount (or less) of *visible* Victory Points as your opponent, it costs you 1 token. If you have more VPs, then it costs you 2 tokens.

You can get more tokens during the game by: building a settlement on the coast; building a settlement on the desert; sacrificing an already-played faceup knight.

3) Each player rolls twice for resources, and the 2 rolls must be different (so you reroll if you get the same result on the second roll).

I haven't tried any of the other variants. This one seems to work pretty well so far.

pandemic is good.
Titan is my favourite boardgame, but it's not for everyone or every time - 2-12 hour strategy game. you move stacks of monsters around the board, recruit more/better monsters, then if you move into an enemy stack zoom in to a tactical map and fight there. "A monster slugathon fantasy wargame"

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/103

such a simple but awesome game. I got it on ebay cause i played as a kid. all you do is roll 4 dice and try to get to the top of several #s, but if you dont roll the right #s you crap out and lose what you did that round. Or you can stop and "freeze" your pieces












Apparantly, Face2Face games has rereleased it

i used to play a game like "can't stop" we called "you blew it"

you had like 6 dice to start turn...had to roll either 3+ of any number or at least a 5 or a 1 or you 'blew it' and your turn ended with 0 points...otherwise u could keep going and adding to your points...stop at any point before blowing it and u bank the points

Dominion:Seaside comes out this week! It's an expansion, so you need to have either Dominion or Dominion:Intrigue to play it as it doesn't stand alone like those 2.

It adds 26 new kingdom cards, adding a few trillion new possible game combinations to play. The biggest differences in this set are duration cards, which are cards that affect this turn and the next one as well as cards that create piles either to set aside cards until the end (keep victory point cards out of your deck until the end) or for a future turn (build up a mini-deck on the side for a future turn to have a great combo ready)

I'm hoping a local store has it by thursday; if so, we'll play it at work Thursday and I'll post initial impressions.

also, if you own any version of dominion, or play it with others, you should go to store.boardgamegeek.com and click on promo items

they have the 2-card promo set for $0.01 with 4.99 shipping, so $5.00 total...this is 10 copies (plus randomizer card) each of Black Market and Envoy action cards. I especially love Black Market and Envoy is great for quickly getting through your deck.

Risk. Need I say more.

...yes...this is the topic for GREAT board games

risk is a fun game, but i think Settlers of Catan is better at every aspect of the game:

Resource Management
Strategic Initial Placement
Strategic Expansion of Empire
Interaction between Players
Card Usage
Skill:Luck Ratio
Average Time to Play
Replayability


plus, the game board changes every time you play the game, so you have to change strategies every game as opposed to owning north america vs south america vs australia vs africa vs europe vs asia always being the same

Diplomacy > Risk. No luck at all in Diplomacy.

I just recently learned Dominion, very awesome game.

Set is an old favorite.

Fluxx is fun but is mostly luck. My GF and I made a drinking fluxx game that's pretty funny.

I really recommend a game called Wits and Wagers. 2-8 players (Best with 3+), involved estimating numbers price is right style (not going over), and then wagering on whose answer you think is the closest. The further from the average guess an answer is, the better odds it pays on the bet. You get to bet 2 chips per round, so you can hedge, etc. It's basically a pogger's dream game, combining estimatingm betting and game theory with a small side of trivia.

Wits and Wagers = POG Gambit

That game never did finish tho

"You blew it" under slightly different rules (the guy who taught it to me called it "six-dice sands") was a popular pastime among the drinking crowd in my summer field camp when I was a geology undergrad. I spent a few nights alone in my tent with pen, paper, and calculator finding optimal stopping points, and by the time I decided I understood the game well enough to want to play it, they had all gotten tired of it. Oh well...

Being neither a great game nor a board game, it's a bit off topic, anyway.

for purposes of this thread, card, dice and other are considered board games

also, has anyone played settlers of catan card game? Looks to be good 2-player version according to comments on bgg

You Blew It/Six-Dice sands is also called Farkle. I think it has a pretty popular following on Facebook, and there's a decent implementation on Kongregate called Zilch. Can't Stop is more fun though.

I hope I never play Risk again, sorry DTD. Played it a few times as a kid and was bored out of my mind.

The first time I played Wits and Wagers, the very first question was something I knew. I said, "Woohoo!" and put down my answer. Then everybody bet all their money on me. Oops. Fun game.

Dominion rocks, and I play on BSW as well (always under random non-registered names). For those of you wondering, my friend's 9 year old son picked up the basics of the game in like 5 minutes. After playing a game or 2 he was well on his way to developing strategies to beat us.

Getting seaside when it comes out!

seaside is out!

also, i play dominion on bsw almost every evening if anybody wants to play
usually sometime between 11-2

that dominion is addictive and I'm not even good yet.

I'll play one tonight if your around

sure, i can play now

ok im signing on, name JLlama unregistered

dunno if I can make my own room. if I can, I don't know how to

i created a game...join if you can see it

this thing is freezing up big time, gonna restart it

im in the room it looks like its 4 handed but its not starting...