Great idea, but confusing

Great idea, but confusing

Kosmos 693 305 - Catan - Traders & Barbarians Expansion (Toys)

Customer Review

as Klaus Teuber developed "The Settlers of Catan", he had devised a simple game principle with a high fun factor and many strategic possibilities, thanks to the variable pitch a little that was always different from round to round. In particular, the expansion "Cities & Knights" has contributed a lot to improve "The Settlers" nor to increase the game and to increase the complexity. But always the principle remained relatively easily obtain intelligible rules.

The latest expansion "Traders & Barbarians" is not so. Instead of an extension that shows up with a few new game pieces, cards and VP possibilities as a well-rounded overall concept, Teuber delivers with this extension equal to five different scenarios that could be played consecutively as "campaign". There are also a few additional variants of the basic game, you can install any! However, this leads to a number of problems: first, the five scenarios are theoretically some can be combined, but only theoretically. In practice, it looks like that each scenario comes along with some more or less complex new rules that need to be processed first. No scenario is designed so that you can combine it easily with "Cities & Knights". Who wants to do that, it must itself come up with rules. The scenarios with each other to combine is also not readily possible, and the more complex the scenarios are, the more impossible the attempt.

The variations of the basic game, however, can be applied to all previous versions of the game and make a lot of fun - so for example, the possibility of replacing the die roll by a set of event cards with a dice roll. CardsTerms instead dice so. Who is playing "Cities & Knights", the events must unfortunately still cubes.

Positive the new variety of scenarios and variants fall clearly on: So many ways to collect on Catan VPs, there has never been! And that makes a lot of fun!

Negative, however, the player has a complex set of rules, that is from scenario to scenario differently. The number of various new small game elements (of fish over caravans and bridges to diverse new game card sets), however, turned out very confusing. Building a game becomes a tedious and lengthy process of sorting and arranging.

Those who do not regularly plays settlers, is totally overwhelmed with this extension that's why! Those without fixed group of players, with this extension will have little joy.

Settlers fans who love new scenarios and variants and the new rules internalize through frequent games, however, have a great variety!

Remains to be seen, that there is the Erwetierung for 5 and 6 players. And that (too confusing) official settler website soon published a reasonable set of rules with which the many open questions to be clarified about the new variant.

Since the expansion is really only suitable for fans, for this but offers great opportunities there four out of five stars!

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