Settlers of Catan Card Game

Complexity Medium Cost £15 Duration Medium Players 2 Producer Mayfair Games (Kosmos) Size Small

Premise

Can you build the best city before your opponent does ?

Review

This card version will be recognisable to anyone who has played the board game. Nevertheless, it has a unique game engine and is an excellent two player game. The game is portable, but does require a decent space to play.

The premise of the game is the same as the board game, but unlike the boardgame players' city networks do not directly interact. Each player's network looks a bit like a TV aerial to start. If you imagine three infinitely wide rows, the top contains alternate resources and buildings as does the last, the middle row contains the actual cities, villages and roads.

Each turn the player throws the two dice. One die is a standard die linked to the resource cards and generates resource income for the players. The other generates random events such as Brigands (similar to the Robber Barron). Players rotate the matching resource cards to indicate how many resources they have.

The aim of the game like the boardgame is to get a certain number of victory points. These are generated by villages, cities and buildings. You also gain a point if you have the highest commerce and the strongest army of knights (which are played like buildings).

The production quality is great but the German one is slightly better - it has the disadvantage that it's in German of course. The main shortcut is with the rulebook. The German one is all in colour, but Mayfair only give us a black and white one - this makes looking up cards harder in the rulebook.

Expansions

Settlers of Catan Card Game Expansions

This expansion includes all of the cards in the five separate theme packs, which in turn included all of the cards in the original German tournament expansion set. Rules are provided for expansions to the basic game, as well as tournament play. Unfortunately, whilst the cards are the same high quality of the original, the rules let down the overall effect. They seem to have been clumsily translated from the German and in places they are less than clear (such as in the game set-up rules, where it is not immediately clear whether one is to remove certain cards from the game, or to use them to form a new deck). Furthermore, the rules are in black and white like the original.

On a plus point the expansion includes 165 cards (including some blanks) themed into five different areas: Trade and Change, Politics and Intrigue, Knights and Merchants, Science and Progress, and Wizards and Dragons. The first four give new buildings, events etc. and do not expand the original rules too much, the last adds the concept of magic into the game. If one is playing the expansion rules, one selects a theme pack which is essentially added into the game.

Overall however, given that the expansion costs £15 it is excellent value for money, and for once is probably cheaper than the five separate German expansions.

Rating

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