Played Catan wrong for 3 years until someone pointed out the robber rule

I was over at a friend's place last weekend and brought out my copy of Catan. We've been playing since 2021 and I always thought when the robber moves, you only lose half your cards if you have more than 10. Turns out it's 7 cards. My buddy read the rulebook out loud after I argued about it for 5 minutes. Felt like an idiot. Who else has been playing a game wrong forever without realizing it?

3 comments

3 Comments

abby_black12d ago

Actually I used to swear up and down it was 10 cards too. My whole group played that way for like two years because someone's older brother taught us and he must have misremembered. It wasn't until I watched a YouTube tutorial on accident one night that I saw the 7 card rule and felt my whole world tilt. We had so many games where someone was sitting on 9 cards feeling safe, but now I see how that changes the whole robber timing. Makes way more sense why resources are supposed to be tighter in the midgame.

tarag2812d ago

People really go all dramatic about this card rule thing like it ruins the whole game or something. Honestly I learned with the 7 card rule from the start and I still think the robber is annoying no matter what number you use. Its not like holding 9 cards versus 7 is some massive skill gap, you just adapt your strategy a little. The whole "the robber barely did anything" thing sounds like a problem with how your group played, not the rule itself. If you were all just sitting around hoarding cards maybe you should have been trading more or actually building roads.

hayden_butler2712d ago

wait wait wait wait ABBY BLACK you're telling me you played with the 10 card rule too?? That's insane. I honestly thought my group was the only one that messed that up. We had this whole house rule where we'd let people hold 9 cards and feel safe because we thought the threshold was higher. It completely changes the robber dynamic. Now that I know it's 7, it explains why resources felt so slow in our games. We were basically hoarding like crazy without any real pressure to trade or build. The robber barely did anything because everyone could just sit on 9 cards for a whole round.

-2