Our gaming group just got the Cities & Knights expansion last week and really, really enjoyed it. However, I personally found the knights to be a little lacking there, and it seemed to me like Traders & Barbarians expands on that combat" aspect. Is that accurate at all? Any general thoughts on the expansion, and whether it’s worth getting?
Also, it seems like Traders mostly comes with a bunch of “scenarios”. Is it possible to play a standard Catan game (the original hexagon) but still use the new features, or do the additional gameplay aspects only come into play with the new scenarios?
You can download the Traders & Barbarians rules here.
It looks like the game is divided into two parts; variant rules for the base game, and an expansion that adds new pieces and tiles.
The variants are (a) a new rule for the robber - you cannot move it to a tile if a player with fewer than three VPs has a settlement there, (b) an Event Deck that replaces the dice rolls, (c) a “Harbormaster” card (similar to “largest army”; the first player to get 3 VPs’ worth of settlements/cities adjacent to harbors gets the card, worth 2 VPs, and keeps it until somebody has 4 VPs of harbor-adjacent buildings; the victory condition is now 11 VPs), and (d) a 2-player version.
I’ve played each of the scenarios once and never played it again (the rules feel very fiddly). The Fisherman of Catan/Harbormaster expansions are the only ones that feel like Catan.
For the most part, I’ve found that playing a different game is way more fun than playing an expansion of the game I already know (unless the expansions are way cheaper than a new base game). I only bring out expansions when people insist on them.
As others have mentioned, this expansion mostly consists of slight tweaks or additions to regular Catan games.
I play with the harbormaster card. That’s a good addition. I find no one builds harbors but there’s always a race for longest road and largest army. In six person games it’s nice to have a third challenge going on.
I also use the rule that the robber can’t be used too early. It really can kill someone’s game before it begins and this makes things more fair.
There are probably other things in there that have value, but that’s all I initially picked up from looking through the rules when I got Traders and Barbarians as a gift.
I’d say it’s worth it if you play so often that you want to shake things up and get a new experience. But not worth it if you only play a few games a year (like me) and will be paying $30 or so for a few extra spices added to the game.