How to pick your starting settlements in Catan (a beginner’s guide)

If you've played a few games of Catan you've probably already noticed: the player who picks the best opening spots usually wins. Studies of online Catan games consistently put the opening placement at roughly 30-40% of the variance in win rate, even before the first die is rolled.

Good news: opening placement is mostly a checklist, not an art form. Here's the framework strong players use, ranked by importance.

1. Count pips, not numbers

Each number token has a probability dot count printed on it — the famous 'red pips'. 6 and 8 have five pips each (most likely). 2 and 12 have one pip each (least likely). Forget what number a tile says; look only at the pips when totaling your production.

Rule of thumb: each settlement spot should sum to at least 10 pips across its 3 adjacent tiles. 12+ pips is a top-tier spot. 8 or fewer pips and you'll spend half the game asking 'has anyone rolled a 9 yet?'

2. Diversify resources, then specialize

Your two settlements together should ideally touch all five resources. Missing one is fine if you have a 2:1 port for what you have a lot of, but missing ore or wheat is a much bigger deal than missing wood or brick, because the late game runs on ore and wheat (cities and development cards).

Special case: an 'ore-wheat' opening (two spots heavy on ore and wheat, light on the others) is one of the strongest archetypes in the game. It commits you to cities and dev cards, but it scales harder than a balanced opening once you start hitting the 8 on ore.

3. Pick your second spot to fix your first

Almost every player picks their highest-pip spot first. The interesting decision is the second one. Do not just pick the next-best leftover spot — pick the spot that covers what your first one missed.

Example: if your first settlement is on the corner of a 6-wheat, 8-ore, and 9-sheep, you have zero wood or brick. Even a mediocre 5/4/10 wood-brick-anything spot is more valuable to you than a 6/9/3 ore-wheat-sheep spot, because it lets you build roads at all.

4. Ports matter more than people think

A 2:1 specialty port that matches one of your strong resources is worth roughly a pip and a half across the whole game. A 3:1 generic port is a soft hedge that becomes valuable in the late game when banks dry up.

Don't bend over backwards for a port over a strong inland spot, but if two spots are otherwise tied, take the port.

5. Think about the second-to-last pick

Catan's snake-draft (1-2-3-4-4-3-2-1) means the first player picks last in round two. If you're picking first, you usually want spots that don't share resources with what's obviously about to get sniped — your last-place pick will be from leftovers.

If you're picking last in round one, you get back-to-back picks. That's the moment to commit hard to a strategy: take two complementary spots optimized for a single plan (ore-wheat, wood-brick-rush, or port specialist) instead of trying to be balanced.

A concrete example

You're picking second in a four-player game. The first player just took an 8-wheat / 5-wood / 11-sheep spot. The standout open spot is a 6-ore / 9-wheat / 4-brick corner (19 pips, three resources, including ore and wheat). The other strong spot is a 5-wood / 10-wood / 8-brick corner (with a 2:1 wood port).

Take the ore-wheat spot. Then in round two, look for any decent wood-brick combination to make sure you can still build roads. The wood-port spot is fine but committing to wood-brick from the first pick is overkill — wood and brick are cheap and you can hedge from a weaker secondary.

TL;DR cheat sheet

• Total pips on each spot should be ≥10. Aim for 12+.
• Touch all five resources across your two settlements.
• Strongly weight ore and wheat — they win the late game.
• Your second spot should cover what your first one missed.
• Ports break ties, never override pip count.

You can practice opening placement against bots in OreYouSerious (free, no signup) or vs. AI on Catan Universe. Five or six reps and the checklist becomes muscle memory.