I thought a full game commentary would be boring but i watched 37 minutes straight, then finished the video the next morning. absolutely fantastic my dude

Good game! I was afraid that the whole 48 min video would be dedicated at analyzing the possibilities for placing the initial settlements. 😃

This was my first competitive settlers video. Was pretty easy to follow, and I learned a lot :)

This was incredible to watch. I loved every minute of it.

Absolutely love your videos man. I only started playing catan universe a few weeks ago, but your videos really made me passionate about the strategy behind it. Admittedly I've been going Ore/Wheat/Sheep a lot, but I will be sure to practice this road strategy when I get the chance! Thanks so much, from a fan in Australia :)

"I'm DylLighted, and this is my masterclass"

I have a game: take a shot every time Dyl says "I'm very afraid of red". You drunk yet? ;)

very comprehensive video on road players against OWS. learned a lot from this vid. thanks DylLighted!

We used to play this game with friends, but I have always thought it was mostly luck more than anything (and tbf in our games it probably was, since none of us knew how to play properly). I never thought there would be so much strategy and thinking involved. Your videos are very interesting and also entertaining.

Never played this game so I don’t really know what’s going on but your vids are so interesting I’ve been watching anyways, lol. Keep up the good work man.

Very thorough and insightful analysis!

I like how you say “I’m delighted” and I feel like responding by saying “no, I’m delighted! Thank you for your content”

nice! This is a perfect example that catan is not only a dice game. :) The way you outsmarted blue. my god!

We need intro and exit music LOL-Great video!! Love the strategy talk. Thank you.

Your analysis videos are so good! You got my total attention when I read the title. "Road strategy? I wanna watch that!" The meta game is paying a lot of attention to OWS strategies, but it's always important to also consider a sneaky Longest road strategy to win. Also, considering the Brick numbers, I was curious with how would you get to that, but the numbers were really even. It would be cool to see another video of road strategy, but this time competing with another player with road strategy instead of 3 players with OWS strategy. Also, cutting blue early in the game was soooo crucial to your strategy. I've gotta start thinking more strategies like that one.

Your a pretty cool dude and well collected. Good to see some actual well thought out game play. I love Catan and never was too good but maybe next time I sit down with friends I can be much better.

Another great video with some great advice, thank you

Great game, very intuitive! Good to go over to keep it all in mind

Really interesting video. I definitely learned something. Keep on!

Finally!!! great vid

I bought 2 versions of catan because of this channel. Love it!! 10/10 greta help

Love your videos, keep up the fantastic work! Question on the placement strategy......... On Nekthen's second settlement placement you mentioned he could have gone on the 6,3,11, which I saw as a stronger placement than the 6,9,12 he ended up going on. Here is my reasoning: 1. He gets access to brick, which in this game is the rarest resource. Not to mention the only other person that has it is you and you are not likely to trade given you are racing him to the 5 wheat. (Which he should be aware of because red posted it in chat) 2. Which leads to my second point, since you committed your road down and to the left he can actually point his road up to go for the 6,9,12. A very strong (10 production) third settlement placement for an OWS player that gets him his last resource wood. 3. Alternatively if he wants to be less aggressive he can point his road left to the coast and settle on the 4,11 getting him the missing wood and a 3:1 port. (strongest port for OWS) 4. Again I devalue the wood significantly in this game, I think he actually has a pretty good chance trading for it with grey who you mentioned will be using it for port fuel and is not directly competing for any spots with blue. (especially if he decides to go on 6,3,11.) 5. Potentially he was trying to race to the 9 wood 3:1 with his 6,9,12 placement, but i think his chances are very low considering grey has free road and his priority is settling on 9,10. This leaves him with the 12 ore 2:1 sheep port which is IMO a much weaker expansion spot than the options I outlined above for the 6,3,11. Obviously there is a lot of opinion in these considerations and in this case blue is a target given the first settlement so maybe grey will be reluctant to trade. In that case..... given blue will have the most knights (along with red) I would be using those to offensively pluck a wood from grey or even bargain with him to move the knight if I can get a favorable trade from him. I am interested to hear your thoughts as I think your analysis is usually spot on. Thanks for the content as always! - Alex

Next level strategizing right here. Earned victory. 🏆

Instructive! Thanks for the lesson.

Lovely video. I've heard insights in this one that you haven't done in other videos, such as trading for the "soon to be desired" material

I only started playing 3 days ago. You are awe-inspiring! Need to learn strategy cuz I suck at making calculated moves

Good job at containing red. Enjoy your videos. Good editing & narration

At the pause and place: I think the person who goes 4th always has two great advantages: 1) he always knows his resource pickup with the second settlement, 2) he is the only player who can 100% guarantee the relative positions of both of his settlements. I thought it's interesting because in your discussion, it took you pretty long to get around to thinking about the 9-6-5 in the north. For me, the two setups I thought of first were the 9-6-5 in the north and the 8-4-3 in the east. This gives you relatively clear access to two ports that for resources you'd have quite a few of -- sheeps and wood. The obvious problem is the terrible resource diversity, but naturally you'd have the ports and very high producing spots. This, to me, "guarantees" wheat based on the port placement. The other set up was the 9-6-5 in the north and the 4-3-8 in the west, since that gives you a free road, access to brick and ore. Since I didn't play, I don't ultimately know what I'd have decided :pppp edit: I like your ultimate setup alot, since I didn't think about just removing the 9-6-5 in the north, and the resource/number spread is solid

Nice high level game analysis!

Really enjoyed this video! I'm just picturing me doing this strategy and the 3 and 11 never hitting so I don't have roads lol

Nice! Feel free to keep the videos coming! :)

8/4/3 and 6/9/5. This position creates a lot of sheep and wood, with easy access to wood and sheep ports, but it's risky, because you don't have all the resources needed to build a lot of roads, so you need to trade with other players.

Wow, this was really helpful and jam-packed with information! Amazing job with sharing your thoughts out loud and explaining why players did or didn't do certain actions. Keep it up!

gosh darnit I love your content so much

I watch this dude's videos on 1.25x, still pretty easy to follow. Thanks for the amazing content!

@Dylighted at 43:00 one reason to also port for wheat is because even if he doesn't have knight, you hit the 5 you can trade in. So either he moves knight to wheat and you already have it or you hit the 5 and trade in. Can get city in either scenario. Great game.

Amazing content! Do you happen to have the counter to this video - how to be a really good OWS player? I've been binging your videos haha amazing quality, analysis, and logic.

Niice, I didn't know how to try and counter an ows player, now I know, gotta pay attention the next time I'm road.

Great video Dyl, always good to see your name come up on my KZfaq notifications 😊

I dont know how I ended up here but If i ever get to play settlers of catan with my cousins again im busting out all the strategies. Been loving the vids !!

I want someone to love me like DylLighted loves YoungNaijah

Oh I am so glad you have steam content too, I tried so many times to get into the colonist version since they have more players and tournaments, but their visuals are just too hard to look at for a prolonged time

Great content.. I am getting consistent wins with ows but I wanted to learn this strategy in case I dont have an option

I haven't been using neither the blocking or monopoly method while playing Catan. My family will never see it coming >:)

Woahhhh I predicted those 2 spots to be the most viable!!! I feel so proud of myself lol.

Hey, Love your vids man Do you ever play seafarers/ cities and knights?

Unfortunately I can only do one LIKE on this video. It was great, the analysis on every play was really insightful. I would of made the mistake of going with the 5/9/6 headed to the 10 wheat and I would of got cut off. Going for the 5 wheat with your road building capabilities was much better. Realizing that Blue was basically a dead player even if he got biggest army was really smart. Can you make a video every day to keep us entertained while the world is shut down???

Hey DyLighted, love the videos, especially showing Longest Road this time. Great information and fun. I do have a question about your logic at 43:22, saying you don't want to steal from the leader who's got 8 cards, because a 7 might be rolled next. I'm not sure the straight math supports this idea. If you steal, they lose 1 (random) card 100% of the time, if you don't steal they lose 4 (chosen) cards 1/6 of the time, or the equivalent of only 4/6 of a card. Ignoring the fact that it's random vs. chosen, they're still losing more card value (1 vs 4/6) if you steal. Now three other things may come into the thinking: (1) You do get a guaranteed full card value from Grey, hurting him, who in this game was probably less than 12% threat to win; and (2) if there's multiple rounds before Red plays there's multiple chances of 7's being rolled, but the odds in this case probably also support more chances of rolling a 3/4/8/10/11 (effectively putting Red back at 8, or above); and finally (3) perhaps the value lost from going from 8 to 4 cards is more than 4 times worse than going from 8 to 7, because they're usually some play to make with 5 or 6 or 7 cards. I know it's a bit statistical and nerdy, but that's my view. I'm curious about your thoughts....

nice one man

Dude. Youre really good at catan...

I only now discovered this wonderful channel. On this board, what do you think of the 8-4-3 wheat + 6-9-12 setup? It closes off 5-6-9, and there is access to a sheep port. Or do I overestimate the value of that port?

Awesome content. Just a question.. While cutting off blue for the wheat port, you relied on no trades with blue.. what would your plan B be if some other player decided to give it to him? Asking this because a lot of new to Catan players do crazy trades.

I’ve been watching a lot of your videos and love them! But my family plays C&K a lot, do these same strategies apply?

This is awesome. I started playing catan again online recently and after discovering your videos last night, i may have played catan till 5am this morning. How would you adapt your gameplay if you have a reputation among friends as being the good player and you ALWAYS get every robber and every card stolen from you? Do you go the Ore/wheat sheep route, or roads? 4 player game btw

I love how every catan streamer makes this game looks complex and cerebral.

Great video! Question: why did to choose to hold on to your road building card towards the end? Were you waiting till you had enough resources to build a settlement with the road card on the same turn?

I'd have as a fourth player selected: 843 wood-brick-ore (fifth) and 843 sheep-sheep-wheat, building a road right away and going for the 3:1 ore port, then building a road to 1154 and placing a city there and using my excess ore to city up, trading if necessary my sheep surplus for wheat.

For the starting position, what would your take be on 843 and 962 with a road pointing towards the ore port?

So looking at this board I see a very fun looking gambit 843 double sheep into 596 with road toward 12,9 with a goal of achieving sheep port and possibly wood port on the other side, lacking clay will hinder the start but most should struggle at first on this board, it does however give a decent chance to swap 4 sheep or woods for clay early and later on have easy resources, do need the other players to struggle a bit at first but that's fine all clay spots are bad and we are limiting sheep and wood harshly, profitable trades should be possible while marching toward the ports and victory

I wish the online catan game would give double allotted time for initial placement... they could shorten allotted time for turns after that to balance it.

For your 4th settlement at 30:11 I wonder if you would reconsider taking the 6/3/11 instead of the 8 ore 3:1 port for 4 reasons. 1.) Ports are only useful if you have the production to use them. The higher sheep production is needed for the 3:1 to be utilized. As the road player still saving for their city, what other resource could be more ideal to start porting beside sheep. Your production would have almost doubled (9:5) when compared to the 8 ore, and the resource you are looking to port would have increased by 6 points. You still would have had the ability to build a city on your next rotation, without trading (if you wanted), using your sheep 4:1 instead of your wood 3:1 (saving your road material). 2.) The additional sheep have trade value because blue can use the 2:1 port for more dev cards with them. 3.)It is much harder to block you because your producing so much all over the board now. Red will block the 8 ore unless blue can defend.. but if not, you still have production in other areas that will allow you to keep your game progressing to get the 3:1 port as your 5th settlement. 4.) You would have also evened out your wood/brick ratio as the road player You played a great game! But I think you could have won in less moves :) Im curious what you think. I would really enjoy playing you one day. Keep up the great content.

I have won without wheat, but only if I had a good resource port (for the resources I am likely to get) AND good luck.

Before unpausing: 4. position: I'm going with 843 and 6511 (free road) with my next goal being the 8 3:1 port and 6912.

Between my friends and family we limit table talk. It would be crazy if we pointed out obvious strategies to other players 😅

I would have just straight up put a starting settlement on the 9 10 3:1 and another on the 6 3 11, pointing both roads left. Only a 16 point start and this might be the fatal flaw in this idea, but it would give me pretty much the resource composition I want for roads _and_ settlements, letting me freely expand to the west since nobody will put starting settlements on so low producing corners and since I'm intentionally leaving two extra spots open that my opponents will happily take to leave me settle in peace. The 13-pointer is just 8 Wood and 5 Sheep on a map with low Bricks and Wheat, and basically nonexistent Wood and Sheep harbours. Since I have the only good woodless Bricks and am cutting off Grey from the 3:1, anyone who takes the surplus of Wood won't get that much more use from it than from a 5-point Wood... that said I haven't played a game in ages and never in a ranked ladder, so I'm probably just falling for a noob trap

So, totally new... about to play my first game. LOL. But you could have monopolized brick which had a low probability overall. Is this a strategy? Or do the wheat/ore people just eat you up?

hello great vid, but if you could add like arrows or circles for areas you'retalking about it'd be great

I would probably do the 6 9 5 and 8 4 3 Hoping that you get both the ports

I thought as 4th position: There are two really good sheep spots (the 6 and 8) what if you go for the sheep port?

Serious question: what do you mean by current meta, is there any part of the game that is changing which causes meta changes ?

What do you think about 5,6,9 and 3,4,8 aiming for the wood and sheep port?

Really interesting game! Just curious-why use the road building+settlement on the 5/2 instead of building on the 11/6/3 first since you have the 3:1 port? Thanks for making these vids btw

I appreciate the video. Critique: do you leave the screen switches in on purpose? It’s quite distracting, and I imagine they wouldn’t be too difficult to remove during editing.

Hey which expansions or collection did you buy I love Catan one of my favorite game f all rime I would like to play with you

What about starting on the 9/10 port and the 6/5/11? Thats what i thought of, but it might lock you out of ore.

Can you explain why at 41:00 you decided not to build on the 6 3 11? It has such high production, and it seems unlikely that anyone would have taken away the possibility of building on the 5 2. P. S. Enjoyed the video and commentary.

2:56 take 5/9/6 then 3/4/8 for free road. all resources. go with the free road to 9/10 coast port

Any thoughts on doing videos about Cities and knights, Seafarers or other expansions in the future?

How come the desert never seems to end up in the second ring?

I really think Red screwed up with that city. Placing one that early placed a target on their back that lasted the entire game. Eventually the robber was just going to switch between the two ore spots, but it might have been put off for a while.

Wonder why Blue didn't take that brick deal from red. They just got the wood from the 9 roll and would have had the road for the 5 wheat to keep their port alive

what do you think your strategy would have been had you not been able to get to the 5 wheat?

Why are 3 for 1’s so valuable? It’s usually easy to get 2 for 1’s when I play or are 3 for 1’s important when nobody wants to trade?

is there a strategy of not being to strong to not be blocked

30:20 but doesn't the 3 6 11 increase your production by so much that the chance of trading 4:1 becomes higher then the chance to use the 3:1 port? ofcourse the risk of 7 still makes it a more equal/even decision, but i would have still taken it over the port.

I'm not a terrible player, buy the guys I usually play with are a decent bit better than me and I tend to make mistakes often. Do you have any helpful videos for beginners?

Nice vid thanks. I'm a new player. But lol lots of things are terrifying. For me velociraptors are terrifying. Pretty much not too worried about card games. 😂 Card games don't hunt in packs.

see you next month bro B)

Nice analysis and videos. I really don't think building on the 8 ore / port is correct. Yes the production is "useless" but I think you would have had some favorable trades. You can also trade 4 resources in to the bank that is still a factor even though it's difficult

45:07 Couldn't you 2:1 wheat for sheep and go for a dev card or have you assumed all +1VPs are taken?

Can anyone tell me what platform this was played on? It looks very smooth

45:11 Why not port your wheat and buy a card to get a point and maybe win?

31:40 why do you do 3:1 wheat? don't you have 2:1 wheat port?

I watched all 48 minutes.

I am not sure what you mean when you say a spot has 13 points? Or any amount of points? How is this calculated?

You make nice Videos, not much to add to that 😉

Which Catan app/website is this?

when i try to make trades online like you they refuse lol X:D

At 29:45 you probably should have blocked the 10 wheat knowing that no one had wheat.

why exactly do you need to remember what cards they have, could you not just note in on a sheet of paper?