I love the game Settlers of Catan, along with its variations, including Cities and Knights and Seafarers. It is a board game where players build and collect resources to be the first to get to a certain number of victory points, combining strategy, negotiation, and chance, while being easy for new players to pick up.
The mechanics of the game are interesting. For example, turns move clockwise around a circle, a relatively straightforward and equal approach to turn giving. However, players’ ability to perform actions on their turn depends on their resources, which depends on random dice rolls. However, they were initially able to choose locations that were connected to different values of those random dice rolls. Therefore, while the order of moves are straightforward, the underlying ability of different people to move is more nuanced.
The mechanics of where is it possible to build new locations is straightforward and rule-based, always being at least 2 spots away from any other settlements. However, the ability to choose starting locations that allow for strategic growth, block other players, diversify dice roll numbers, and always work with a new board allows that simple rules to take nuance and allow for different outcomes in different games, resulting in no singular OP strategy.
While there are many other sets of mechanics that make the game interesting, there is a fun that I get in this game out of constantly problem solving and building mastery over deploying different types of strategies in different boards, seeing how others play, and seeing immediately how well the strategy does given the circumstances and how to adjust it for next time.
