The Settlers of Catan travel edition is played in exactly the same way as the standard Settlers of Catan board game.  The games comes with a game board, 10 terrain tiles and 9 harbors.  It has 16 cities, 20 settlements, 60 roads and 1 robber.  Included are 95 resource cards and 25 development cards, 4 building cost cards and 2 victory point cards, two dice and the rulebook.

The greatest thing about the travel edition is the specially designed board.  As with the original game, the board is hex shaped.  In the travel edition the board is about 8 inches on each side and is made of hard plastic with hexagonal slots to hold the terrain tiles and triangles to hold the harbors.  Each slot has a raised number in the middle to mark the random terrains.  The hexagonal tiles have corresponding holes in the center.

The artwork isn't as pretty as the regular edition of Settlers, but the game is wonderfully portable.  The pieces will remain in place even if they are jostled about and the game is small enough to be easily portable.

The downside to the board is that the desert terrain tile only fits in the center of the board, which allows for less variety than the regular game, and you have to turn the game upside down to remove the tiles.

The pieces for the game, settlements, roads and cities are made of hard plastic and have pegs in the bottom to keep them stable on the board.  The robber doesn't have a peg, but should stay within the raised plastic of its terrain slot.

The cards look much like the regular game cards, only smaller.  The dice are hard white plastic with black pips.  There is also a 14 page rulebook that defines the rules clearly and has an almanac for good in game reference.  The book contains excellent pictures and examples and is very well done.

The travel edition comes in a box about 8 inches on each side and contains a tray to hold the cards.  The size of the box makes it wonderfully portable and the tray is another way in which the game's design for travel is successful.  There are slots for each type of card in the tray.  The slots allow enough space for you to be able to slip a finger in to remove a card or cards.

There are also slots to hold the pieces for each of 4 players and a center slot which holds the dice, reference cards and the board pieces which are used in the setup of the game.  The center slot can be used to roll the dice during play and the cards are held securely in a small space which is ideal for traveling.

The Settlers of Catan Travel Edition is everything a travel game should be.  It's size, the stability in the design and excellent features to keep pieces secure while playing, make it a hit with all the players who have tried it.