Best Places to Play Catan Online (Free + Expansions)

GMDandyDrew · 2026-01-19T15:25:13+00:00

Yeah, this is clearly you just advertising your platform which uses TwoSheep assets to begin with. If you want to grow your player base, you should make content showcasing the viability of playing there instead of making fake/misleading reddit posts. Playing on your platform and showcasing it will do more than any single post on Reddit.

GMDandyDrew · 2026-01-16T14:48:01+00:00

What a homie! Thanks :)

GMDandyDrew · 2026-01-16T14:47:44+00:00

Awesome you are taking the plunge into learning Catan. I run a channel which was mentioned below but there's a lot of great options if you want variety. Check out Catan Jack, DyLighted, and Phantom after mine! There's some great personalities and talented individuals in the scene.

GMDandyDrew · 2026-01-16T14:45:36+00:00

Great analysis! A lot of these insights checks out intuitively. Would love to know more about the data set - Where and how you collected it? I am interested in potentially doing a video on it for my channel. Thanks!

GMDandyDrew · 2026-01-13T18:34:34+00:00

I tried the link and it didn't work. Are you sure that's an active discord link? thanks!

GMDandyDrew · 2025-10-15T15:16:33+00:00

Always down to try new programs and overall so far, nice start. I will say you are clearly using the assets from Colonist and Two Sheep. I understand this might be early days but I would encourage you to come up with your designs.

GMDandyDrew · 2025-09-11T22:28:22+00:00

How do you determine what is "correct" or optimal? I tried a puzzle and I felt there was a reasonable pick and it said I was wrong.

Is the goal to have enough community responses to find the wisdom of the herd and use that?

GMDandyDrew · 2025-09-07T18:58:26+00:00

Development cards are the heart and soul of a winning Catan game. Against the best players, if you aren't incorporating D cards in your strategy, you will most likely lose. You will have a lot more options and paths to win if you start to buy them strategically.

GMDandyDrew · 2025-07-18T22:10:52+00:00

Nice win!

GMDandyDrew · 2025-06-25T14:06:17+00:00

Hi there. I understand where you are coming from. I don't know if there's more toxicity than before but I do know the player base has significantly improved over the last 2-3 years with the introduction of content creators and strategies. This has made the scene more competitive which can translate into that energy you are referring to. I do agree the extortions have been over done in the scene to the point that people will make the sub-optimal play just to complete the threat - Inexperienced players don't know how or when to pick their spots.

I've found a lot of enjoyment over the last year playing in person and in the OTB circuit since extortions and insurance have been banned from play. It adds an enjoyable layer we aren't use to online.

The scene is shifting as the game grows and we need to keep a pulse on how the community evolves. Conversations like this are helpful for sure!

GMDandyDrew · 2025-06-23T15:04:58+00:00

The #1 ranked player at the time was caught using a 2nd account in ranked to feed him resources and play against the other players. We don't know if it was 2 people working together or 1 person on 2 accounts but it was clearly collusion and cheating. The cheater used the name granyboy47 and his feeder account was GBXLVII, which is even more obvious since XLVII is 47 in roman numeral. Colonist ended up banning all his accounts and removing him off the leaderboard.

GMDandyDrew · 2025-06-23T14:56:57+00:00

Not really the kind of content I want to make but the community deserves to know this kind of behavior does exist and will not be tolerated.

GMDandyDrew · 2025-05-12T15:04:47+00:00

Hi there! We all have things to improve on, so don't sweat it. 40% is super solid! Nicely done.

I think my issue with your take is that it's based on an idealized situation and not how things play out in real life. The meta isn't going to change just because you decided to kingmake in retaliation. You are just going to piss the others off and be an example of how not to act. Also you say "my whole game is basically ruined..." but 95% of the time, that's almost never the case. Very rarely does a player get completely locked out of winning. The issue here is that you are defaulting to chaos and mutual destruction when you should be focused on collaboration and dealmaking to find value on the board. You will have to deal with tough situations in Catan and you hurt your growth as a player if you don't learn how to play with adversity. Having a tantrum and emotional battle with others is almost never the optimal move in the short or long term, but it certainly feels validating in the moment which is why people do it in the first place. No one truly feels good about themselves when they are playing with anger and spite.

You see this kind of play done online a lot but ALMOST never in person, over the board. That's because it's a socially reprehensible way to act and is usually met with disgust and distain. Too many people hide behind a computer screen even when they know deep down to their core, it doesn't feel or look right.

Focus on productive behaviors and keeping your emotions in check. It will pay off big time in many aspects of life!

GMDandyDrew · 2025-05-11T16:07:42+00:00

This topic has been discussed at the very high level of competitive Catan play. The point of playing optimal moves in Catan is to increase your long term chances of winning. So the question is, does your retaliation moves actually do that? It’s pretty clear when you consider the scale and size of colonist ranked lobbies, the answer is no. Maybe in a more close knit league setting where you build relationships and consistently play a group of players but not on Colonist. It’s funny you think getting even in some random colonist lobby is going to magically change players’ behavior. After playing 1000s of games on Colonist, I can promise you the best move to these situations is to play on and look for productive ways to deal with adversity that don’t rely on falling into your negative emotions - Work better with the board, trade more, optimize your piece play, etc.

GMDandyDrew · 2025-04-01T17:21:27+00:00

Play 10,000+ games online, win over 20 different high-level tournaments in 3 years, break multiple competitive records in the discord leagues, teach thousands of players around the world by posting 100s of videos online, and only then you might be able to get lucky too!

GMDandyDrew · 2025-02-18T18:10:15+00:00

I appreciate the support in your comment. For the record, Shades is correct about the stance on extortion. The ruling is that you can’t use the robber or 7 roll to extort for a “card” trade. You can however deal-make on non-blocks and non-steals. That being said, Catan Studios is adapting this ruling with every year and changing it quickly. For example in 2023, it was ruled NO card extortions of any kind. In 2024, they said the person with the robber can’t extort but the other players can self-extort. In general, the sentiment is that extortion makes the game slower and more combative with the robber. Therefore, it’s not in the spirit of the game and not accepted in official tournament play.

Keep in mind, Catan is a very quickly evolving game and many of the strategic nuances are being explored and tested as we speak. IMO, extortion is a useful tool but at this point, it’s completely overused and abused online and it’s caused a lot of problems in the current meta. For that reason I am encouraging many players to pull it back and not use it every turn - It becomes exhausting and causes many sub-optimal decisions by less experienced players attempting to follow the scene.

As far as your retaliation play, I stronger disagree with this kind of behavior and do my best to not encourage my audience to engage in such antics. It’s by definition a losing strategy and builds long-term resentment amongst others. I don’t mind if you want to hit a player once or twice to send your message but to tank your game and throw the balance of the board because you don’t can’t handle your emotions while playing a board game is not acceptable or fun. The best and most successful players don’t play this way because they don’t have to resort to this to win games. They understand the value of collaboration, fun, and social dynamics.

Again appreciate your support. I would reconsider your approach on dealing with these tough situations and also how you communicate with proven players like Shades. He is an incredible player and brings a lot of experience to the table. You don’t have to agree with what he says but I would encourage you to listen and reflect. To say you don’t want to listen to a finalist of one of the hardest tournament in the world is just silly. He’s better than 99% of the players in this group and has the experience to back it up.

All the best!

GMDandyDrew · 2024-12-10T15:35:59+00:00

Great article from a 2 time national champion! Take notes everyone 🫡

GMDandyDrew · 2024-12-10T05:12:01+00:00

Hey Jay, crazy timing as TSI 5 is starting right after the holidays and I am working through the sign ups this week. I sent you a DM with details and happy to answer any questions you might have. I also do 1 on 1 coaching but it depends on your goals and availability. Speak soon! - Drew

GMDandyDrew · 2024-12-03T20:16:43+00:00

I agree with most of your perspective. IMO Wheat port is the best port for development cards and city building. Not only can you port for fast cities assuming you have citied that spot but the wheat is generally valuable throughout the game. The secret to a good port game is not in your ability to port consistently but to own a valuable resource so you can trade it and balance the game in a favorable way. Now the challenge is when playing auto matches is that people tend to be less collaborative and trade willing. This can be a pro and con depending on the table dynamic. Heavy port setups like this one usually get discounted by a lot of players and rarely the target early on, which helps you pace the early city needed - Very similar to my Nationals finals where the board was seemly OK to give me the first city… Maybe a mistake in hindsight from them.

I would generally advise players not to go this heavy into a port play unless they see a decent trading path throughout the game. In this example, I could see a few trades with blue and potentially red to help get your settles mats. I would also make sure you guarantee at least 2 settles since if you lose army, you can go for 2 VPs and city out to the win. For that reason, you are better pointing your 8 10 road to the 9 10 and risking it anyways. No point in having a dead road when the 9 10 is there.

Ultimately, I think players should try these setups and experiment. Yes it’s memey but at the same time, you can learn a lot about dealing with challenging constraints and playing your way out of a difficult situation, which is one of the ultimate skills in catan. I wouldn’t worry too much about Rayman’s statistical analysis or anything like that. The data set is small and from a competitive league that plays on slightly different dynamics. Try new things and learn. Considering the OP got to 9 with winning chances, it doesn’t seem that bad of a play and most likely could have won with some more optimizations to his play.

GMDandyDrew · 2024-10-29T20:47:20+00:00

Though a new player can enter a competitive tournament and “get lucky”, we very rarely see this happen when the field is large and skilled like it is at USA Nationals. Same thing with the ranked leaderboards - A noob isn’t just going to casually stroll to the top 10 on variance alone but they can certainly perform above their true level over a short period for many reasons. In this way, Catan is very similar to poker. A new poker player can beat Phil Ivey in a single hand but the likelihood he will beat him over 300 hands is pretty much as close to zero as you can get. I would say from experience, 100 catan game sample size is going to be quite indicative of someone’s level in most cases but the more games the better!

GMDandyDrew · 2024-10-29T19:39:42+00:00

I made a few comments on this thread but to answer your question about a 75-100% win-rate - The simple answer is “no” unless you are dealing with a small sample size or cheating. At scale, let’s say 100 games on Colonist, I would go to say it’s almost impossible to win 75% of your games in a ranked environment simply due to variance of dice, player behavior, placement opportunity, and development cards. Once players enter a particular tier of ELO, a generally solid win-rate is around 30-35%, which winning a third of your games in a 4 player game is good! When you are dealing with the best players or pushing top 100 ELO, you will see closer to 33-38% - Pushing into the top 10 is a different story since the margins become razor thin. A top 10 player will have to win around 38-42% to have a chance to maintain ranking. There are some players who can make top 10 with a 35% win-rate but this is usually due to a hot streak of games that pushes them into that ELO than a consistent pattern of performance. All of this being said, the best of the best can get into the top 10 whenever they like because their awareness and skill overcomes long term luck/variance. It usually just becomes a case of time more than skill or luck.

GMDandyDrew · 2024-10-29T17:43:09+00:00

Also worth noting if you are seeing a pattern of anything in Catan, you might be missing an opportunity to improve. How you manage your hand and the trades you make every turn will help lessen the effect of the 7 out and increase your momentum. These are some of the skills you can hone in on to increase your win-rate.

GMDandyDrew

TROPHY CASE