I was recently introduced to this game, and I’m absolutely head-over-heels in love with it. It is long enough and involves enough strategy to keep it interesting, but not so involved that I get frustrated (I don’t have the patience for a lot of strategical games). And, of course, one never really gets tired of saying, “I’ve got wood for sheep!” (One wonders if Hal Briston has given the game a try…)
In poking around on Amazon, I’ve noticed that there are numerous variations and expansions for the game. I’m just wondering whether anyone here has invested in any other versions of the game, and how they compare to the original. Your thoughts?
Seafarers - this is the more mild expansion. It adds boats (wood + sheep), the pirate ship (in addition to the robber - though it blocks building not production), and some extra victory point scenarios. (ex: build a setllement on an island that you didn’t start on and get an extra VP). Another addition is undiscovered hexes. build a sea rout and pull a hex from a bag - could be water or land. If land you get that resource.
Knights and Cities - a more radical change in rules. Adds “commodities” (paper, cloth, and coins) that you get instead of a secnd resouce if you have a city next to forest, pasture, and mountain respectively. Gets rid of delevopment cards and replaces them with “progress cards” (a 3rd die is used to determine when you get these *). It makes the game more “agressive” but you are more likely to be able to do something on your turn.
I’d check the reviews on boardgamegeek for more info.
Welcome to the world of Catan :). It is always a great game to teach, because the look on new players faces reminds me of how much I loved it when I first learned. And playing in college, there is no shortage of the number of euphuisms that come up. Settlers is on the short list of my favorite games. A good part of it is that I can play it with people who aren’t quite as competitive as me. I have played the base game (with and without 5/6 player expansion), Seafarers, Cities and Knights, Starfarers, and the card game + expansion.
Seafarers and Cities and Knights are the base expansions. That is, both of them require the base game to play, and come with pieces to add on to the board. Mayfair has just released an updated version of the base game, Seafarers, and Cities along with 5 and 6 player expansion. The rest of the expansions are stand alone games
Seafarers adds the concept of ships, which act similarly to roads, except you can move them. Instead of one island, there are multiple ones that you can settle and explore. There are a number of starting scenarios to choose which dictate how the game will be played. It does a good job of capturing the feel of Settlers, while expanding your options.
Cities and Knights introduces more direct conflict into the game. Some people don’t like it as much, because it does make it more competitive.
Starfarers is a stand alone game. I recently bought it, because they stopped making it. I eventually want to get every Settler’s game, so ones that will be hard to get later go to the top the list. I have only played it once thus far, but it is pretty awesome, and it has the best dice roller of any game I’ve ever played. The pieces are fragile though, and prone to breakage. The game plays like Settlers in space, with a few new interesting concepts.
The card game is alright, but I’ve found it to be less interesting and more time consuming then the base game. But since Mouse and I are only 2, it gets played a lot more often then everything else.
You might be interesting trying other European games well. A lot of them have similar balances in terms of strategy and competitiveness. Carcassonne is another game that we have most expansions to and it has the advantage of being playable as a two player game.
The two major expansions are Seafarers of Catan and Cities and Knights of Catan.
Seafarers replaces the one big landmass with a whole bunch of little ones, and uses ships as the equivalent of roads for spanning a hexside between two water hexes. The rules include a bunch of “canned” setups in place of the random tile layout of the original game. The main difference in gameplay is that resources tend to be a bit sparser (because most of the available building sites are along a coastline, and thus don’t have access to three production hexes) and ports more important (see previous comment). This is somewhat offset by using the “gold mine” hex (that produces “one of whatever you want” when its number comes up).
Cities and Knights introduces a whole batch of new elements. You start with one settlement and one city, and cities produce “commodities” in addition to the basic “resources” of the original game. Commodities can be traded for progress on several flip-card tracks that enable you to get development cards (they replace the special cards of the original game, and have a much greater variety of effects), earn special privileges when you advance far enough, and gives you a “metropolis” (worth two points) when you advance really far.
In place of the “soldier” cards from the basic game, you can buy “knights” that are placed on the board, and can hold sites (to block opponent roadbuilding or settling), chase away the robber (from an adjacent hex), and help defend the island against the barbarians (failure to do that can reduce a city to a settlement; providing the greatest contribution to a successful defense earns a point).
Basically, Cities and Knights has more of a learning curve, but gives more options in gameplay; there are far fewer turns when you just roll the dice and pass because you don’t have any way to improve your position.
Well, since several other people have explained Seafarers and Cities & Knights, I won’t bore you with saying the same things. Catan is a great world to play a game in!
Before you spend a lot of money on the expansions, you may want to consider how many people you generally will have play. As Hawkeye alluded to, it’s nearly impossible to play a regular game of Catan with two people. (We’ve tried. It doesn’t work.) So, if players and/or money is a concern, you may want to hold off on the expansions.
The only advice I can come up with that hasn’t been offered is don’t buy the 6 player expansion set. The game needs to be tweaked so much with 6 playing Cataan loses it’s charm and balance. Not only does each round take forever, but the trade aspect (the best part of the game) is severely limited.
The regular group is three of us, although we’d like to add a fourth. I have a demo of the computer game, which is cool but not as much fun as playing with live people.
I have the Seafarer’s expansion, but rarely use it. Based on that experience, I’ve never tried the Knights & Cities. However, I have a kind of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude, so other than a few games which are particularly suited for expansion, I rarely find that a good game is improved by adding an expansion. IMHO, what makes the great games great is often a simple, elegant ruleset, so mucking that up by adding new rules doesn’t work out for me.
When I taught my brother the game last year I told him everyone is sick of the “wood for sheep” jokes. I’ve reached the point that I’ll going for some real stretches in phrasing to avoid it.
With the base Settlers expansions there are Seafarers types and Cities and Knights types. Do you love expanding and exploring? Seafarers is the game for you. Do you wish Settlers was more like Civilization? Then Cities and Knights is for you.
Asimovian have I got a deal for you. I happen to have two, count them TWO, of the special convention expansions for Settlers. Obviously I need one for my collection but send me a note through the board I can provide you with an official set of Catan dice cards which replace the die rolling and add special events and Settlers of Catan - The Great River which is a set of three hexes that add a new victory point condition.
ArizonaTeach, I’ve played on the resin board and while it looks pretty it is clumsy. I have made my own wooden set instead as a Christmas gift and given it away.
I actually really like 4 player on the six player board. Or three players on the six player board with no extra pieces, which means you have to have longest road/biggest army, or several victory points to win. Either way, it’s nice to have a little more room.
If you want to try out the expansions before buying, I would suggest using games.asobrain.com - it’s called Xplorers on their site, but they’ve done a pretty good job.
We LOVE cities and knights - so much that we only really play that version now.
A coworker’s friend has the 3-D expensive board, but does not play on it. It’s more of a display piece for him.
Cities and Knights is by far my “preferred” version of the game - whilst i love (and happily) play both other variants, i find that C&K is by far the most tactical variant (i.e. less dependent on dice-roll luck).
Second the description of it as “aggresive” though (depending on who you are playing with obviously). I once royally pissed-off my Missus by managing to effectively take her out of the game within about 6 or 7 dice rolls.
I was well chuffed with myself from a gaming sense, but a quick look at her face soon made it clear that it was an outrageously stupid thing to do from a relationship perspective. Never made that mistake again.
I’ve been known to play it on XBox Live. It’s surprisingly enjoyable.
There’s also a couple of websites out there you can play it against people on. I know peeps who do that all the time (complete with microphones to talk to each other).
We frequently play Settlers with two sets for a 7-8 player game. Starfarers of Catan is also a good game, and plays well with the 5-6 player expansion as well (although the plastic ship bits break too easily in our experience - not critical to game play, however). For two players, Starships of Catan is loosely related to Starfarers and is a good game, but it’s two player only.
The Starfarers loose equivalent in our group of “Sheep for Wood” is “You must FIGHT!”, said when you fail to run away from an encounter card or decide to fight the pirates. You must say the phrase in a stentorian, 50’s - announcer voice.
Has anyone played Catan Histories: Struggle for Rome? I looked at it yesterday, but have been burned too many times to get a game without a recommendation.
