Catan World Record (1st Turn Win)
Behind the Scenes
Rough Script & Storyboard
As a fun thought experiment, I thought, "Hypothetically, how quickly can someone win a game of Catan if played perfectly and everything went their way?" After a lot of contemplation and tomfoolery, I made a video out of it. There is a lot of interesting things you can learn about the game from watching this, in addition to the actual goal of the video. Enjoy!
Original Script:
You’ve heard of Pokemon speedruns, you’ve heard of Zelda speedruns, but have you ever heard of Catan speedruns? Probably not because why would anyone do that? But ever since the t hought crossed my mind, I couldn’t ignore it, I needed to know if it could be done, it NEEDS to be done. I am ready to do battle and I won’t rest until it’s settled (places settlement on board, sheep BAH) (TG).
Music: Strength Men
Gameboy playing pokemon, n64 playing zelda, epic camera pan towards settler board
Fun enforcer, play police, PhD. In Play
Hourglass (crossed my mind), Bring out game box, standing over Catan box, Typography, look at camera and smirk at “settled”
“Until it’s settled, zoom in with music, then sheep
Music: Betrayal
But I’m here to ask, AND answer, HOW would anyone do that? You don’t even have to answer that, because the answer is no, simply because it’s never been done before. And we’re doing it here at lost in play because we take play seriously (“not that seriously” table flip meme), not in a flip the table sort of way, but the mad scientist sort of way. And if you think about it for more than 2 seconds, it’s pretty clear why. It breaks all the rules of what is expected or traditional to speedrunning, like oh.. I dunno, it being a 4 player game.
This is a first time ever attempt at speedrunning Catan, and for good reason. That’s because it breaks all the rules of a traditional speedrun. Whereas most speedruns happen in a single player game against the AI. This game is built to be played against real life humans who are trying their very best to defeat you. So how the **** are we going to pull this off? I don’t know yet, but I have to try.
Here’s the challenge, “Hypothetically, How quickly can someone win a game of Catan if played perfectly and everything went their way?” And I mean everything, perfect dice rolls, perfect placements, perfect development cards AND perfectly dumb opponents that have the brains of a scarecrow (yellow brick road). This should be interesting. The objec tive is clear, I know what I must do. I am ready to do battle.
What could possibly go wrong? It seemed like a cool mental exercise and I thought, “hey, I should do that.” without ever considering whether I could do that.
Music: DuDa
Timelapse board setup
Oceans 11 style slide ins of perfect dice etc. Roll dice, place settlement, flip dev card.
Here at lost in play are going to answer the question on everyone’s mind, yes that means you too (pivot head to cam b, stare), “Hypothetically, How quickly can someone win a game of Catan if played perfectly and everything went their way?” It seems like a cool mental exercise and I thought, “hey, I should do it.” without ever considering whether I could do it. And I mean everything, perfect dice rolls, perfect placements, perfect development cards AND having opponents that have the brains of a scarecrow (yellow brick road). This is going to be tough.
There are so many ways this can fall apart that I don’t even know where to begin, and so, I called in some help (Gondor calls for aide).
Hailey, we have a problem (houston). We are trying to do something that has never been done before and as such
But in my excitement I got ahead of myself and did something stupid, I placed an insane bet on this challenge that there’s no coming back from it. I told with my wife that I could design a perfect run in Catan where a player could win the game on their first turn. FIRST TURN. My wife laughed at me and said, “do you want to bet on it?”
Poke head into wife’s room, call her over to table. Sit her across the table, talk her through the idea, she is listening and nodding.
I hold up a finger saying 1 round. She laughs, lipsyncs words.
Head on, handshake reaching across the table
and in my pride as a gamer, I agreed without checking the fine print (zoom into text). To which she then added, “If you fail, whenever we play Catan, you have to give me all the cards you start with, forever.” (evil laugh) Well ****.
Music: There is no time.
Show handshake. While still holding my hand, hailey lip syncs, laughs. I turn to camera, well f***.
The pressure is on (TG). I’ve made my bed, and now I have to lay in it (wood/wheat resources made into a bed). Now I just need to think of an idea of how to do this. Thinking, thinking, man this bed is uncomfortable (lying in wheat bed thinking)
La Vendatta
Dealing wheat/wood, bed is constructed. ‘Laying’ down with straw BG pick. Faded scarecrow. Wiggle uncomfortably.
Idea #1 - Full speed ahead. As a first attempt I needed to just get a feel of how plausible this was, (spoilers, it’s not<-blurred ). I set up a game board and played it out. After 1 round, I barely had a road placed and some leftover cards that I couldn’t buy anything with. A complete failure.
Saturday Shopping
Setup up, roll turns, placements, etc. Show Token players in seats
I was about to throw in the towel after a 5 minute attempt but then I remembered.. I need to finish this video
(throwing catan in the garbage).
Look at camera annoyed
So I took some notes from my failure. I learned very quickly that even with good placements, and perfect rolls, I still would not have enough resources to get (TG) 10 Victory Points within 1 round. In my desperation, I thought back to the challenge at hand hoping to find some loophole I could abuse. “Hypothetically, How quickly can someone win a game of Catan if played perfectly and everything went their way?” (“everyone went their way” echos) And then it hit me like a ton of bricks (resource cards fall on me), I can make everything go my way.
Floating Point
Take notes on whiteboard, ponder, write 10VP in doodles on whiteboard. Ponder with voices. Bricks fall on me.
Like / Comment / Subscribe / notification are among the bricks.
Idea #2 - Playing God. Hailey’s bet gave me an idea. (“give me all the cards you start with” echoes) I felt a lot better with this second attempt. The first thing I changed was allowing myself to basically pick and choose where everyone placed their initial settlements, not just me but the opponents t oo. And to justify this level of control, I thought, “if I kidnapped my opponents families and told them they had to follow my orders or else, (picture of families tied up in a basement on my phone) then under these conditions, they would basically assist me in my game while still following the rules of Catan. And by that I mean, they can’t just give me cards, they would still need to trade me but they would trade me exactly what I wanted.” (show phone again, player is in tears)
Take others settlements
“You, go there, and you! Go there!”
Tokens in trunk of car, tied up, me shutting the trunk. My showing photos of them tied up in a basement.
3D token crying
(illustrated) Can’t just give me cards
Secondly, I played under the assumption that the dice would roll exactly the numbers I need, because in a real game,*clear throat* in infinite universes , that could happen. Now with this new plan in place, I set up another game. This one went way better. Right at the start, my hostages, I mean, the other players traded me their starting cards with 2:1 deals landing me at least 12 cards on turn one. That’s a huge start, I had a good feeling about this. I immediately placed a settlement so I could generate resources more quickly and then ended my turn. It wasn’t long until it was my turn again and although I was in much a better position than my last attempt, but still way short of my goal. This was impossible. I’m going to lose that bet with my wife and be screwed in all our future Catan games. But there was still one idea that seemed plausible.
Sneaky Tricks
Placing dice instead of rolling.
Community dice throw
show 3D tokens on the chairs.
(illustrate) Giving me 2:1 trades.
Building a road.
Dice rolls to indicate turns happening, then my turn.
(illustrate) point progress falling short, bar to 10 vp’s
Table flipping meme.
Look to camera, 1 idea still possible.
Idea #3 - Beg for forgiveness. I went back to Hailey and explained that this was a silly bet and a one turn win was impossible. I asked her to take it back but then she didn’t something I didn’t expect. She said, “Ken, trust your instincts. When you had the idea, some part of you truly believed it was possible. Step back, breathe, and think back to that moment.” I was inspired by her words but still needed a good idea. but was still stumped about what to do. But then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Ow. I gotta stop saying that. e, but not with a ton of bricks, stop it, you’ve had your fun (bricks above me). I just need to think back to that moment, the answer was in front of me the entire time, or should I say behind me?
Need a lover
(Repeat footage) Pop into hailey’s place. Called her over and explained.
Silly bet/face. Then look anxiously.
Supporting hand on arm gesture with lipsync
Spin around in chair thinking
Bricks fall, climb out from pile of bricks. Like / Comment / Subscribe / notification
Idea #4 - Reverse Engineer the Solution. Okay, this is it. This is the game plan, I just need to lay it all out in front of me and connect the dots. What is the least amount of resources that I need to get 10 victory points. I started going through the options. The most obvious one was development cards. I could spend 3 resources to get a dev card and buy a point. And there are 5 victory points in that deck, meaning I need 15 resources just to get those 5 points. And since I’m playing on God mode (“everything went their way” repeats), I would assume that the top 5 cards I draw are victory points.
(illustrate) resources needed
Draw 5 VP’s
Good start. So with my first two starting settlements and 5 victory points, that puts me at 7 points total. How would I get another 3 more points, 15 resources is already a lot to hope for in one round. If I tried to buy 3 more settlements, at the least it would cost me 20 resources. (3D track real board) Twenty. Okay what else. If I tried to make cities, I could build one more settlement and upgrade my 3 settlements to cities, but that's 21 resources, that’s even worse. What about getting the largest army? I would need to buy 3 more victory cards which is pretty cheap but then I would have to wait for 4 turns to play them all. That’s way beyond my first turn. Okay, what about longest road. I could do that with 10 resources, okay not bad, big difference from the other options. So in total I would need 25 resources in one round. But then I thought of a shortcut, I could pull a road building development card. That would reduce the resources I need by one, not much but every card counts.
The Thing Is
(illustrate) progress Vp
(illustrate) cost of options
That’s the game plan. Find a way to generate 24 resources in 1 round. But then I realised what the real challenge is, it’s not just getting those 24 resources but somehow having the perfect placements on resource hexes paired with the correct dice rolls to generate EXACTLY the 24 resources I need. Which if I counted right is..6 ores, 7 sheep, 7 wheat, 2 wood, and 2 brick in 1 round.
That’s the game plan. Find a way to generate 25 resources for my first turn. But then I realised what the real challenge was, I needed to have the perfect hex setup with the perfect placements and the exact dice rolls to get those resources. Which if I counted right is..6 ores, 7 sheep, 7 wheat, 2 wood, and 2 brick in 1 round.
Take the shot
(illustrate)
Placing settlements and hexes in diff places
6 ores, 7 sheep, 7 wheat, 2 wood, and 2 brick on table
It’s time for diagrams and spreadsheets. I set up a basic catan board in illustrator and started moving around hexes and colouring in tiles. Although I could place hexes where I wanted since those were essentially random, I had to abide by the order of the numbered tokens following their A-Z placement rules and the number of hex resources allowed. I could not think of a systematic way to do this, nor do I have the programming skills to automate it somehow, so it was a lot of trial and error. I also had a spreadsheet going to track what the dice result should be for each turn, who got what resources from their settlements, how those resources were traded around and what the current victory point situation was. As you can imagine, this took a lot of time. After who knows how many attempts of shuffling numbers around, I felt that I landed on a real possibility to make this happen. At that’s left is to play it out.
Spy Fiction
Screenrecord of illustrator (build from scratch), switching hexes etc
Show a/z, hex limits
Programming, banging wood on an ore
I started by doubling down on resource rolls so that if I needed a lot of wheat, I put wheat on the same number. Then I placed settlements so that each dice roll gave me the maximum number of resources I could get. Then I placed everyone’s second settlements to get any resources I didn’t have room to roll for. Okay we’re set, let’s roll dice. I chose to start with a 10 roll to fulfil my wheat requirement quickly as that was among the highest priority resources. Followed by 8 for sheep for the same reasons. Then I did a 4 for some ore and sheep that I needed for the deep digging of dev cards. 3 turns have finished, it is now my turn. This is my first turn of the game and in this turn I need to get all 25 resources needed to execute the plan for 10 victory points. I chose 4 as my best bet. After distributing the last of the resources, the “trading” began. I trade blue an Ore in exchange for 3 Ore, 1 Sheep, 1 Wood, and 1 Brick. Then I trade green an Ore for 4 Wheat and 1 Brick. And finally I traded Yellow a Sheep for 6 Sheep, 1 Wheat and 1 Wood. I am now holding 25 resources in my hand on turn 1. I start by buying a road and a development card to get road building. This secured me the 5 road minimum I need to acquire Longest Road. At the end of the road I dropped a settlement for an extra point. Then with my remaining cards I dug into the development card deck, drawing 5 Victory point cards which brought me to the goal line. 10 Victory Points on Turn 1. And an extra sheep for good measure. (bahhh, king sheep) I now hold the world record for fastest possible win in Catan, come at me bro. Now that you’re warmed up in Catan, time to get serious or silly with more Catan videos, don’t forget to like & comment and subscribe for more ways to get lost in play .
Pave the way
Lizard
Crown lands on sheep (“I now hold the world record), come at me bro bubble
Ideas
Wheat dealer
Angry at green for not contributing, zoom in on family
The game starts with all of us on hexes that had matching pairs of numbers so that for each dice roll we would accumulate the most resources we could. We made sure to snag a road+settlement on turn 1 so that it would start generating us resources AND we would secure longest road immediately. This meant that we had to draw a road building on turn one to reach that third settlement position and get the minimum 5 roads required to unlock longest road. Okay, first part of the plan is finished. That’s 5 points already. Then we had to get the exact rolls needed to acquire the 5 sheep, wheat and ore needed, after lots of number and placement shuffling, we figured out a way to get those resources by rolling an 8, and two 4’s. And on the final turn when it come back to me, aka 1 round, a 10 for good measure. This is it, it all comes down to this turn, can I trade and get enough cards to buy 5 development cards on one turn to reach the final 10 point win requirement. Turns out, I could. Not only did I draw 5 victory points reaching the 10 Point victory condition but I also had enough resources left over to drop down a city for style points.
Holy shit people we did it. After jumping up and down in celebration, I calmed myself enough to call my wife over to showcase my achievement. After explaining how it worked, she congratulated me say, “I knew you could do it.” I smiled and said, “thank you, and now you gotta pay up for losing.” To which she said, “Hun, think back, I had nothing to lose in this bet.” My mouth dropped, she placed an arm on my shoulder consoling me with a few words, “Welcome to the game.”
If you made it this far, you clearly like Catan and should check out these other videos I made and click the notification button so you don’t miss out on more videos!