[Board Games] Settlers of Catan

[Eridanis]

I own Seafarers and Cities/Knights, and but have never played them. The basic set is all I've needed for - gasp - nearly ten years now of Catan fun. The 4th edition Catan set that recetnly came out looks very nice, and from what I've read, it's physically compatible with older expansions (which have been released in new editions as well). I was at Compleat Strategist NYC yesterday, and picked up an adapter kit for $10 that provides the nice new tile fram that the 4th edition set provides.

A new expansion, Traders and Barbarians, has been released, too, but I need to start playing more again before I pick it up. Has anyone played that yet?

 

[thundershot]

We love Catan.

We have pretty much everything for it... (all the 5-6 player extentions, Cities & Knights, Seafarers, and Das Buch)

We like to pick and choose what rules we're using at a time. It's crazy to try to use too many of them. But simple things like the Dragon or Balloon from Das Buch are pretty neat. Traders & Barbarians (which we haven't tried yet, but own) includes the fisherman, the rivers, and the event cards, FYI...



Chris

 

[Korgoth]

I've played several games of standard Catan, mostly with the 5-6 expansion. I like the simplicity and purity of the game. I'm not sure I'd be tempted to add any expansions!

 

[HellHound]

We usually play Cities & Knights unless we are playing with relative n00bs, in which case we stick to classic Catan.

 

[questing gm]

I only played the classical Catan once but absolutely love it.

It's nice when you get to hoard a particular resource and become some sort of monopoly

We can't really find these interesting board games other than the staple monopoly and risk so it was really a blast to play this game and would definately pounch on the chance to play with the expansions.

 

[greatamericanfolkher]

I only played the classical Catan once but absolutely love it.

It's nice when you get to hoard a particular resource and become some sort of monopoly

We can't really find these interesting board games other than the staple monopoly and risk so it was really a blast to play this game and would definately pounch on the chance to play with the expansions.

I once played a game where I got both of the monopoly cards in the dev deck. Fun times were had when I was able to turn every village I had into a city within three turns.

 

[knightofround]

Seafarer's is a great expansion imho, but I didn't care too much for Cities and Knights. Walls are kinda pointless, barbarian invasions aren't a big deal because there's no real surprise, and knights basically exist so you can block roads with grain instead of brick/wood. The "growing cities" portion takes up too much time for too little impact on the game. By the time having a super-develped city matters, someone has enough victory points to win. I guess if you wanted to have longer games, cities would be good, but otherwise....meh.

Seafarers was awesome though because it made wool actually useful, and all the extra water hexes adds more depth to the game. Gold is fun too.

Actually I would recommend the 5-6 player expansion even if you don't normally play with that many people. Playing settlers as a type of inter-continental warfare is fun, but if you don't have some extra hexes it can sometimes get too easy for someone to get isolated at the beginning of the game.

 

[satin]

I love Cities and Knights. As another poster suggested, we keep the pieces separated so we can easily scale back to the classical Settlers game if we have some newbies joining.

And we keep the 5-6 player expansion handy, in case we have more friends over.

 

[MerricB]

A new expansion, Traders and Barbarians, has been released, too, but I need to start playing more again before I pick it up. Has anyone played that yet?

I own it, but haven't played it yet (alas, we had 5 players at our most recent boardgame day).

It isn't a single expansion, but rather several, reprinting some and adding new options in.

The scenarios:
* Fishermen of Catan
* The Rivers of Catan
* The Caravans
* Barbarian Attack
* Traders & Barbarians

It also has four variants that can be combined with normal Catan:
* Friendly Robber
* Event Cards
* Harbormaster
* Catan for Two

If you enjoy regular Catan, I think this is a must-buy; the scenarios range from "little twiddle to the regular game" to "let's change a key aspect of the game and see what happens". With the Traders expansion, for instance, the Longest Road card disappears from the game, but instead you're using your roads to make deliveries of goods to and from three key hexes. Each delivery gives you a VP... so you want a *network* of roads rather than just the longest road.

Urgh. I've got too many good games! Race for the Galaxy just arrived as well.

Cheers!

 

[Ayrk]

I've played several games of standard Catan, mostly with the 5-6 expansion. I like the simplicity and purity of the game. I'm not sure I'd be tempted to add any expansions!

I agree with this statment. I find the straight Catan the best experience.

If I wanted to start adding expansions, I'd rather just find an entirely different game that does the same thing.

That's not to say that I think expansions are bad, just that I feel Catan works perfectly as is. I don't feel the 5-6 player is truly and expansions since it doesn't change the game rules, just adds players.

The On Board Games podcast talked about expansions, including the Catan one in episode 2.