New Energies: German Game Designer Klaus Teuber

When you hear the term “board games” you may think of typical tabletop games such as chess or checkers/draughts, Go, Monopoly, Pictionary, Risk, Scrabble, Sorry!, and many others. But we’re going to talk about a special kind of board game known as German-style games or “Eurogames”.

The current box for Klaus Teuber’s game of CATAN® (TRADE • BUILD • SETTLE). The original 1995 board game was named “The Settlers of Catan” and commonly called “Settlers” or “Catan”. Shortly before his death, Klaus and his son Benjamin created the New Energies version released in June 2024. Learn more below. PHOTO: Catan GmbH

Board games have a very long history going back to ancient times, including the Ancient Greek game called petteia, which later evolved into the Roman two-player strategy board game named latrones (“game of soldiers”). From written records, we know that the Ancient Egyptians had similar board games that preceded those found in the Greek and Roman worlds. The Aztecs and Maya, in what is now Mexico, had similar board games. The many cultures in Asia were no exception as well, such as pacheesi (aka “parcheesi”) in India.

Modern board games come in many varieties and are still popular today all around the globe. They can be classified in many categories, including these:

• Abstract strategy games – chess, checkers, Go
• Auction games – Hoity Toity/By Hook or Crook (Adel Verpflichtet), Power Grid (German-style games)
• Count and capture games – bean/stone games, mancala games (Muslim world)
• Cross and circle games – Yut, Ludo, Aggravation
• Deduction games – Mastermind, Black Box
• German-style board games or Eurogames – Catan, Carcassonne, Decatur, Carson City, Puerto Rico

There are in fact many more varieties of board games beyond what we have space to list here.

German game designer Klaus Teuber on the cover of the German version of his memoir: “My Journey to CATAN”. PHOTO: Catan GmbH

The Latest Version of Catan
The reason I’m posting this blog is because I recently learned that a new special edition of CATAN was being released this summer, in June 2024. I knew that CATAN was designed by a German, but I didn’t know a lot about the game or its designer. Catan: New Energies introduces a new element into this popular community-building game: climate change.

Unlike Klaus Teuber’s original The Settlers of Catan game, which is set in agrarian, Viking times on the island of Catan, Catan: New Energies is also set on the island, but in the present day, with contemporary environmental issues. Co-designed with his son Benjamin Teuber, among other things, players must make choices related to green energy or fossil-fueled energy. There are energy tokens and other elements related to environmental concerns. (The key word mentioned in the New Energies rules is “pollution”.)

But New Energies doesn’t preach about climate change. The energy options are merged into the game along with other elements. Players can win using a variety of solutions, even opting for less green alternatives, as long as the end result is enough points to come out on top. But if the players in a game pollute too much, too soon, the game ends, and the player with the most points wins, as sort of a consolation prize.

Faithful to German-Game Principles
But New Energies remains faithful to the basic principles of Eurogames How are “German games” different from typical non-Eurogames? Catan: New Energies and all of Klaus Teuber’s games share a few important baseline rules that you won’t find in Monopoly, Risk, and similar simulation board games.

As a general rule, German games similar to Catan share these criteria:

• Social cooperation: In contrast to Monopoly’s cutthroat approach, Catan and similar games encourage cooperation and negotiation. Auctions and negotiating are part of the game.
• No elimination: At the end of the game, all players are still in the game. Yes, there’s a winner (based on points), but no one is left sitting alone watching others finish the game.
• Low randomness/luck: The element of chance or luck is reduced in German games. Luck is not completely eliminated, but chance is far less a factor than in a typical dice-throwing or card-drawing games. Chance or randomness arises more through not knowing what strategy other players are using, as in real life.
• Game designer names: Most German games bear the imprint of their creator(s). German-game designers such as Teuber have a reputation that carries over to new games they design.
• Time limits: Anyone who has played Monopoly knows how a game can go on forever. Catan and other German games set a time limit (one hour or 90 minutes; no more than two hours) and use a point system that determines the winner. Whoever has the most points (not cash or hotels) when the clock runs out is the winner.
• Themes: German games have a theme that shapes the play and course of the game. Catan and its many variations all have a basic premise or theme. Other game examples include: Puerto Rico (develop plantations in 18th century Puerto Rico); Carcassonne (build a medieval landscape with walled cities, monasteries, roads, and fields); Power Grid (expand a power company’s network and buy power plants)

In a 2022 Nikkei Asia magazine interview (quoted in Teuber’s NYT obituary), Klaus Teuber said this about why he thinks Catan has become so popular: “There may have been a good balance between strategy and luck. For example, roulette is only about luck, and chess is all about strategies. However, if you win in Catan, you think, ‘My strategy was good,’ and when you lose, you might think, ‘I was just out of luck.’ This is the same as life.”

Klaus Teuber’s Story
Klaus Teuber (TOY-bear) was born on 25 June 1952 in the village of Rai-Breitenbach, West Germany, now a district of the southern Hessian city of Breuberg. The city lies below the historic hilltop Breuberg Castle (Burg Breuberg) that dates from the 13th century. It is one of Germany’s best preserved castles.

As a child, Klaus enjoyed playing with toy soldiers. In school he liked geography and was fond of making maps. He also enjoyed history and chemistry. He later studied chemistry and became a dental technician (Zahntechnikermeister). He had his own firm (Teuber Dental-Labor) near Darmstadt. Not particularly happy in his dental work, Teuber began to dabble in game design in the 1980s.

His first success came with a game inspired by Patricia A. McKillip’s fantasy trilogy The Riddle-Master. After refining “Barbarossa” (German title: Barbarossa und die Rätselmeister) for seven years, he found a publisher, and the game won Germany’s prestigious Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) award in 1988. Teuber would win that award three more times, for the games Adel Verpflichtet (Hoity Toity) in 1990, Drunter und Drüber (Wacky Wacky West) in 1991, and Die Siedler von Catan (The Settlers of Catan) in 1995. That game, now known simply as Catan, became Teuber’s biggest success, and long before his death in 2023, his wife Claudia and two sons, Guido and Benjamin, were helping run the family business, Catan GmbH.

Klaus Teuber had also won another German game award, the German Games Prize (Deutscher Spielepreis, DSP), established in 1990. The DSP honors German-language board and card games marketed in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Unlike the Spiel des Jahres, the DSP awards are determined by industry insiders, retailers, and interested game players. The award is sponsored by the Friedhelm Merz Verlag, a publishing house in Bonn. The annual award ceremony takes place in the city of Essen, one day before the opening of the International Game Days (Internationale Spieltage) event. Teuber won the DSP in 1990, 1992, 1995, and 1997.

He also won the second-place DSP award for the card-game version of Catan in 1997. In addition to his first place wins, Teuber placed in the Top 10 of the annual DSP awards for his other games: Timberland (1990), Drunter & Drüber (1991), Vernissage (1993), Galopp Royal (1995), Entdecker (1996), Löwenherz (2003), and Elasund (2006).

The Pioneering Game of Catan
Teuber’s original board game, The Settlers of Catan, with its theme of Viking settlers in Iceland, is credited with launching a greater “social” era for board games, introducing cooperation with bargaining and bartering among three to six players as part of the winning strategy. Another one of Teuber’s brilliant strokes was the use of “hexes”, hexagonal tiles to represent the resources of wood, ore, brick, wool, and wheat. With the huge success of Catan, Teuber was able to become a full-time game designer in 1998. As is common with most Eurogames, Catan now has many variations and so-called “expansions”, add-ons with new themes or options for the stand-alone games, including the latest CATAN®: New Energies variation.

Before New Energies, other standalone variations of Catan were introduced over the years, including: A Game of Thrones CATAN®, CATAN®: Dawn of Humankind, CATAN®: Starfarers, CATAN® Histories: Settlers of America – Trails to Rails, and CATAN® Junior (for younger players).

Catan online: Catan Universe offers an online community and digital versions of the Catan games for use on smartphones, tablets, Mac computers, and Windows PCs. The website is in English, French, German or Spanish. You can download the Catan app (Android/iOS) for free (with in-app purchases). With a web browser you can even play a sample game for free without registering.

The German-style board game CATAN was invented in 1995 by the noted German game designer Klaus Teuber (1952-2023). To date CATAN has sold over 40 million copies in 40 languages. This latest version (2024), CATAN: New Energies, introduces environmental elements that affect the outcome of the game. PHOTO: Catan GmbH

Amazon.com also sells the original Catan board game for 3 to 4 players. (A 5-to-6 player extension is also available.) Amazon.com: “Set sail to the uncharted island of Catan and compete with other settlers to establish supremacy. Strategically gather and trade resources like ore, brick, lumber, grain, and wool to expand your settlements.” Note: Amazon.com offers many other Catan game variations, but “New Energies” is not one of them so far. However, you can preorder Catan: New Energies directly from the Catan Shop.

Two Companion Books and a Memoir
With Teuber’s collaboration, the Catan story also became available as a novel written by the German historical fiction author Rebecca Gablé (the pen name of Ingrid Krane-Müschen). The Settlers of Catan book was published in English in 2011.

Klaus Teuber later wrote his own Catan novel in German. CATAN – Der Roman, in three volumes, was published in 2022 by Kosmos-Verlag, only a year before Teuber’s death in 2023. (The English version, Catan: The Novel (1) was published in October 2024 by Blackstone Publishing. A Spanish version is also available.) Before that, in 2020, Teuber also wrote a memoir titled Mein Weg nach CATAN (“My Path to CATAN”), his personal story about how he came to create the world of Catan in a game format, back in 1995. The 2021 English version, My Journey to CATAN, translated by Geraldine Klumb and published by Aconyte Books as a special limited edition (1,000 signed copies) is unfortunately no longer available, either from Amazon or the CATAN Shop.

But the official CATAN cookbook is available! CATAN®: The Official Cookbook (Board Game Cookbooks) came out in hardcover format in September 2023. “Recipes inspired by the best-selling board game” declares the book’s cover. With this book, Amazon says, “…fans of Klaus Teuber’s iconic game can now fuel up while road building and negotiating trades. From snack-worthy appetizers to feast-level entrees.”

I hope this post will inspire you to play CATAN with friends, but in any case I find Klaus Teuber’s life story a very interesting one.

– HF