Can we please get an option to disable the robber mechanic in Catan? When I play this board game IRL, we completely remove the robber from the game. Rolling a 7 on your turn is just a minor punishment in that no resources are collected by anyone. The knight cards are solely for establishing the largest army.
When I play here, I hardly ever use the robber, opting instead to move it to non-adjacent spaces and not steal resources from other players. Oftentimes, the other players catch on to what I'm doing and we play a "nice robber" game in which the robber is not a factor. These are by far my favorite games, much more likely to be balanced and competitive. Of course, those games are infrequent, as most players simply continue sticking the robber on other players, including those who usually move it to non-adjacent tiles.
Because when the robber is in play, what typically happens is that one person gets lucky and rolls a few more 7s than the other players, and this gives that person, whoever it is, an advantage that's pretty hard to overcome. The earlier that run of luck occurs, the more insurmountable the advantage becomes. With the robber in play, I can usually tell by the end of the third or fourth round who will win the game, and finishing it out just becomes a slog.
As a simple example, I just finished a game in which I did play the robber, and came in dead last. Not because I played badly; I started with settlements covering the 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, and 12 tiles, and was two spaces away from a 3?:1 harbor at which I intended to build my next settlement to be able to trade and build up from there. I was in a pretty good position to play a competitive game, with at least an even chance of winning as my opponents.
But on the very first roll of the first turn, the person who eventually won the game rolled a 7 and stuck the robber on one of my spaces, a grain hex (which is required for building additional settlements and cities). I literally was never able to recover. At the end of the game, these were the robber stats:
Resources stolen from opponents: 8 (1st place), 7 (2nd place), 6 (me, last place)
Resources stolen by opponents: 8 (1st place), 4 (2nd place), 9 (me, last place)
Resource production prevented by robber: 6 (1st place), 4 (2nd place), 11 (me, last place)
I spent most of the game unsuccessfully trying to scrape up the resources to get knight cards just to get the robber off my tiles, completely kneecapping my ability to build the settlements/cities I desperately needed to get more resources. By around five to six rounds in, my opponents were regularly getting at least two or three resources per round, and I was lucky to get one every other round. The game was just a slog to get to the end, and because it was an Arena game, I couldn't even concede to stop wasting my time and go do something else.
If you like the robber mechanic, then great, I'm not arguing that it should be unavailable for play. But to be honest, despite this being one of my favorite games to play IRL because of our house rule, I'm on the verge of never playing it here again because it's just not fun when one OP game mechanic based completely on luck is so frequently the difference maker in who ends up winning.
When I play here, I hardly ever use the robber, opting instead to move it to non-adjacent spaces and not steal resources from other players. Oftentimes, the other players catch on to what I'm doing and we play a "nice robber" game in which the robber is not a factor. These are by far my favorite games, much more likely to be balanced and competitive. Of course, those games are infrequent, as most players simply continue sticking the robber on other players, including those who usually move it to non-adjacent tiles.
Because when the robber is in play, what typically happens is that one person gets lucky and rolls a few more 7s than the other players, and this gives that person, whoever it is, an advantage that's pretty hard to overcome. The earlier that run of luck occurs, the more insurmountable the advantage becomes. With the robber in play, I can usually tell by the end of the third or fourth round who will win the game, and finishing it out just becomes a slog.
As a simple example, I just finished a game in which I did play the robber, and came in dead last. Not because I played badly; I started with settlements covering the 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, and 12 tiles, and was two spaces away from a 3?:1 harbor at which I intended to build my next settlement to be able to trade and build up from there. I was in a pretty good position to play a competitive game, with at least an even chance of winning as my opponents.
But on the very first roll of the first turn, the person who eventually won the game rolled a 7 and stuck the robber on one of my spaces, a grain hex (which is required for building additional settlements and cities). I literally was never able to recover. At the end of the game, these were the robber stats:
Resources stolen from opponents: 8 (1st place), 7 (2nd place), 6 (me, last place)
Resources stolen by opponents: 8 (1st place), 4 (2nd place), 9 (me, last place)
Resource production prevented by robber: 6 (1st place), 4 (2nd place), 11 (me, last place)
I spent most of the game unsuccessfully trying to scrape up the resources to get knight cards just to get the robber off my tiles, completely kneecapping my ability to build the settlements/cities I desperately needed to get more resources. By around five to six rounds in, my opponents were regularly getting at least two or three resources per round, and I was lucky to get one every other round. The game was just a slog to get to the end, and because it was an Arena game, I couldn't even concede to stop wasting my time and go do something else.
If you like the robber mechanic, then great, I'm not arguing that it should be unavailable for play. But to be honest, despite this being one of my favorite games to play IRL because of our house rule, I'm on the verge of never playing it here again because it's just not fun when one OP game mechanic based completely on luck is so frequently the difference maker in who ends up winning.
