The Settlers of Catan or Catan is perhaps the most famous board game of recent history designed by Klaus Teuber and first published in 1995. Catan has grown to include many expansions and variations with players being settlers in Catan, building and developing their holdings while acquiring and trading resources.

In Catan Board Game, players try to be the dominant force on the island of Catan by building settlements, cities, and roads. On each turn dice are rolled to determine what resources the island produces. Players collect these resources (cards)—wood, grain, brick, sheep, or stone—to build up their civilizations to get to 10 victory points and win the game.

Setup includes randomly placing large hexagonal tiles (each showing a resource or the desert) in a honeycomb shape and surrounding them with water tiles, some of which contain ports of exchange. Number disks, which will correspond to die rolls (two 6-sided dice are used), are placed on each resource tile. Each player is given two settlements (think: houses) and roads (sticks) which are, in turn, placed on intersections and borders of the resource tiles. Players collect a hand of resource cards based on which hex tiles their last-placed house is adjacent to. A robber pawn is placed on the desert tile.. The game involves large amounts of strategy and trading, while being fairly simple to learn.

Catan has four official expansions: Seafarers, Cities & Knights, Traders & Barbarians and Explorers & Pirates. It also has a card game, Rivals of Catan and a number of spin-off board games like: A Game of Thrones, Rise of the Inkas, Star Trek, Settlers of America, Catan Junior and Catan Starfarers.