Players: 2-4*
Playing Time: 1-2 hours
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

* Whether The Settlers game systems really support a minimum of two or three players is a pretty open question. Most versions of the game say 3, though this and one other licensed product says two. There are some very minor rule changes for two players in Zarahemla, but it's otherwise the regular Catan game. After trying it out with two, I think it works OK, but more on that in The Game Design section.

The game play & game design sections of this review are heavily based on my review of The Settlers of Catan, since the systems are essentially identical. If you're familiar with the original game, you should read my notes on The Temple and Two Players in those sections. My comments on The Components and Relationships to Other Games, on the other hand, are largely original for this review.

The Components

The Settlers of Catan comes with a large set of beautifully produced components, including:

• 1 gameboard
• 5 hexagonal tile strips
• 18 number markers
• Player game pieces in 4 colors
  • 16 cities
  • 20 settlements
  • 60 roads
  • 4 scoring markers
  • 40 temple stones
• 1 robber
• 2 dice
• 90 resource cards
• 29 development cards
• 4 building cost cards
• 3 victory point cards
• 1 rule book

Board, Hex Strips & Number Markers: The board for The Settlers of Zarahemla is four panels in size, made of solid, linen-textured cardboard. It's absolutely gorgeously painted with jungle motifs everywhere. The board contains spaces to set six decks of cards (five resource decks and one development deck), a scoring track, and a space to build a Temple. There's also a big hole in the middle--a gap into which you slide the 19 hexes that actually make up the core of the game board. (There are also some ports marked along the edges of the gap for the hexes.)

The 19 hexes are arranged into five strips: one 5-long, two 4-long, and one 3-long. Each one is double-sided, with similar but not identical arrangements of hexes on either side. The five strips fit cleanly into the game board, with the 5 in the middle, the 4s at either side, and the 3s at the edges. The fact that they can be removed, rotated, rearranged, and flipped over provides variety from game to game. Some very bright, primary colors have been choosen to represent the six types of hexes, with fairly light texturing. It adds a lot to the eye-catching nature of the game.

The markers are numbers which are placed on the board to show how often the hexes produce resources. They're numbered from 2-12, to show the number that must be rolled on two dice. Each one also has from 1-5 pips, to show how commonly that number comes up. Each also has a very small letter, which helps you place them at the start of the game. As one additional nuance the common numbers (6 and 8) have been colored red, and the uncommon numbers (2 and 12) have been colored blue, which makes them very clear on the gameboard. Overall these pieces are intuitive to use, except the letters, which are inconsistently cased and in a font that's sometimes hard to read. I had a tiny bit of trouble setting the game up, as a result, but once that was done they worked great.

Wood Bits: Each player's pieces consist of a set of roads, cities, and settlements, each of which is made of painted wood. The three types of piece are each simple and iconic, and thus easy to represent on the building cost cards, which explain their purchase. The four player colors are: white, orange, red, and blue. There's also a cylinder in each player color which is placed on the scoring track.

The robber is a large black wooden pawn.

The dice are also wood. They're numbered 1-6 pips and inked in black.

Temple Stones: Each player also gets a set of 10 temple stones. These are small, linen-textured cardboard pieces which show bricks marked the appropriate color on their fronts.

Resource & Development Cards: The two decks of cards which come with the game are both printed on full-sized playing cards with rounded corners, on a cardstock that's a bit flimsier than I'd like.

The resource deck correlates each hex with a resource. For example, the "wheat" card shows the "yellow" tile in the background and the "wheat" in a circle in the foreground. It's very easy to look at a card and see what hex produced it and what resource it includes. This is made even more true by the continued use of strong, primary colors.

The second deck is the development card deck, which includes extremely nice colored pencil drawings. Most of the cards are "stripling warriors", but others have various special effects. All of the effects are textually described on the cards.

Reference Cards: The reference cards are all printed on large pieces of slightly flimsy cardstock.

There are four Building Cost cards, one per player. Each shows which resources are needed to build which buildings. Again, the resources are shown clearly in circles, easily connecting them up to the resource cards. Victory points for each building are also clearly labeled on the card (though the "longest road" option is missing from the "road" cost area--not a big deal).

Three more cards, labelled "Longest Road", "Largest Army", and "Greatest Temple Contributor" are used to mark special victory points.

Rule Book: The rulebook is a 28-page full-colorbook. It's divided into three sections: game summary, game rules, and quick reference guide (the last, essentially, a glossary for reference). It's well-laid-out, with examples and notes clearly marked, and also has plentiful examples. It's a pretty and useful rulebook.

Box & Tray: The box is sturdy and medium-sized. It contains a fairly nice tray which has individual spaces for most of the major components (though my wood bits remain baggied so that they don't go all over).

The Settlers of Catan has always been a well-designed game, with lots of care taken to make suer that all the game pieces are intuitive and easy to use. The hexes, the resource cards, the wood pieces, and the reference cards work together like intricate clockwork. However, this is the first Settlers-variant I've seen that's also gorgeously produced, thanks, I suspect, to the design work by Alvin Madden. The board, cards, hexes, and reference sheets are all pieces of a cohesive whole, with art and style choices that work together and come out looking great. Between high utility and high beauty, the game pretty much defines a "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Game Play

The Settlers of Zarahemla is a game of resource management. By producing resources from the bountiful lands of Zarahemla you can build the settlements, cities, roads, temple stones,and other developments which ultimately lead to victory.

Setup: The area of Zarahemla is laid out to begin the game. It's made up of 19 hexes in six colors: one barren brown, and then a set of reds, greens, blues, yellows, and grays. (The hexes are really defined by what they produce, which are: bricks, wood, water, wheat, and stone respectively.) Those hexes are in turn placed on five strips which are placed in the middle of the gameboard at start. Numbered markers labeled between 2 and 12 are then laid out on those tiles, one per hex. These refer to the number that must be rolled for that hex to produce resources.

Each player then starts the game by placing two settlements and two roads on the board, each road connecting to a settlement. The settlements are placed at the corners of hexes (meaning that each is adjacent to three different hexes), while the roads are placed on the hex sides. No settlement can be placed closer than two corners away from another settlement.

Finally, the resource deck is separated out into 18 cards each for each of the five resources, and then placed on the board. The development deck is shuffled and placed on the board as well. Each player then gets up to three resource cards--one each of the resources from the hexes surrounding one of their settlements.

Order of Play: Each turn each player gets to take the following actions, in turn:

1. Production
2. Trading & Building

Trading & Building may be done in any order, though they're separated in the explanation below.

Production: Each turn a player rolls a pair of dice, with a result between 2 and 12. As you'll recall each hex has a little production chit on it. When a number is rolled, all hexes with that number produce their resource. (With one exception: a hex with the robber on it doesn't produce; more on that in a second.) Each specific hex type produces a specific resource type:

Green: Wood
Blue: Water
Yellow: Wheat
Red: Brick
Gray: Stone
Brown: nothing

if a player has a settlement adjacent to a hex that produced, he gets 1 resource card worth of that resource; if he has a city he gets 2.

If a "7" is rolled, the Gadianton Robber is activated. This robber, marked by a black pawn that initially starts in the barren brown space, is moved by the active player to any hex of his choice (other than the one it currently resides on). He can then steal a resource card from any player who has a city or settlement adjacent to the robber's new home. As noted above, that hex won't produce in the future, until the robber is moved.

There's one other penalty for a "7" being rolled: anyone with more than 7 resource cards loses half of them. (And, finally, no hexes produce, because there are no hexes with a "7" production chit.)

Trading: You can trade cards with other players--and you should, frequently (ie, "I've got a 'wood' if anyone wants to trade me a 'water' for it").

You can also make use of trading posts (trading with the bank) by offering 4 of one card (ie, "4 stone") for 1 of another (ie, "1 wheat"). You can get better maritime trading post ratios by settling near the trading posts. These posts are displayed at the edges of the hex map. You can access them by building an adjacent city of settlement. Some trading posts let you trade at a ratio of 3:1. Some let you trade at a superior ratio of 2:1 when you have a specific resource.

Building: You can also build two broad classes of things: structures and technology ("development"). In each case you spend certain types of resource cards in certain combinations in order to build.

Individual Structures. Each player has three individual types of structures he can build: roads, settlements, and cities.

Settlements are built at the corners of hexes, at least two corners away from any other settlements, and allow a player to collect one of the appropriate resource when any of the three adjoining hexes produces. They're also worth 1 Victory Point each.

Cities are upgrades of settlements; they allow a player to collect 2 of a resource. They're also worth 2 Victory Points each.

Roads are built out from cities or settlements--and are required to be able to build additional cities or settlements. The player with the longest road gets the Longest Road victory point card which is worth 2 Victory Parts.

The costs of these three individual structures are as follows:

Settlement:wood, brick, wheat, water
City: 2 wheat, 3 stone
Road: wood, brick

The Temple. Each player can also contribute to the building of the looming Temple. Whichever player has contributed the most to the Temple at any time gets 2 Victory Points.

Temple Brick: brick, stone

Technology Players can also choose to "build" development cards, which are drawn from the development card deck. It includes stripling warriors, cards which can give you free resources and structures, andvictory points (which are saved until game end).,

Stripling warriors are special cards which can be used to move the robber, shifting him from one hex to another, and also allowing the person who played the soldier to steal a resource card from a player with cities or settlements adjacent to the robber's new position. Whomever has the largest army of soldiers get a victory point card worth 2 Victory Points.

The cost to purchase development cards is:

Development Card: wheat, water, stone

Only one development card can be played per turn, and you can't play a development card until the turn after you drew it.

Winning the Game: The game goes to 12 Victory Points, which is won by adding up all the possible VPs, as follows:

Settlement: 1 VP
City: 2 VPs
Longest Road: 2 VPs
Largest Army: 2 VPs
Biggest Temple Contributor: 2 VPs
Some Development Cards: 1 VP

First to 12 wins.

Two-Player Play: The game also includes special rules for two-player play: essentially, each player starts off with an extra road and settlement (to a total of 3 each), presumably to alleviate any start-up issues.

Relationships to Other Games

The Settlers of Zarahemla (2003) is a licensed & themed version of The Settlers of Catan (1995). Beyond the theming, most of the changes are cosmetic. Zarahemla is much more lavishly produced that the Mayfair Games English edition, includes a scoring track, and also chooses to arrange the tiles as 5 strips rather than 19 individual tiles. There are only two gameplay changes: one is also cosmetic, the fact that the sheep resource has been changed to water; the other is notable, and that's the addition of the temple, as a new thing to build and a new way to score victory.

There are actually two other Settlers games which change the core Catan gameplay by adding in a temple to build.

The first was Historical Scenarios #1: Cheops & Alexander (1998). This expansion to the original Settlers used a fairly unique set board for the land of Egypt. It also had a lot of additional rules. You could build a pyramid (worth +3 or -2 VPs), build boats, mine gold, and use other people's ports.

The second was standalone game The Settlers of Canaan (2002). It has lower production values than any of the other Settlers, though still average for the gaming industry. It uses a set-board and lets you build a pyramid which gives you +2 VP if you're the leader plus lets you have a special 2:1 trading post. Otherwise, it's fairly identical to Zarahemla.

With so many varieties of Settlers, it's starting to get hard to distinguish them. Clearly, anyone who expects to play lots and lots of Settlers will want to buy the original Settlers of Catan, since they'll be able to buy a lot of supplements for it. Conversely, The Settlers of Zarahemla (and The Settlers of Canaan) is for players who expect to be play Settlers a bit more casually, and who will be happy with just the core game.

If I wanted to split hairs, I could say that Canaan is a good choice for the most casual gamer, who is likely to play only every once in a while, since the set-board makes it easier to play but less replayable; while the slightly more serious player, who still doesn't expect to pick up supplements, could get Zarahemla, as the board changing from game to game increases the replayability, even if it makes the setup ever so slightly more difficult.

However, really, the components of Zarahemla are so much higher quality than those in Canaan (and those of the Mayfair Games Settlers of Catan, for that matter), that I think Zarahemla has become the clear choice for the casual Settlers player, unless they're very price conscious (as Zarahemla is currently $8 more than Canaan).

Finally, on the issue of supplementing your game, I actually suspect the Zarahemla pieces will work fine for the two Historical Supplements and maybe even for The Cities & Knights of Catan. However, you won't be able to add on Seafarers, nor to expand it to 5-6 players. But, if you want to expand it a little bit, you can.

The Game Design

Overall, the game design of Settlers of Zarahemla is very good. Here's what I've said about the general Catan design before:

Controllable Randomness: There is a high random element to the game, as there's quite a bit of variance on a 2D6 die roll. However, Catan lets you at least feel like you're somewhat in control of this randomness, by choosing where to build your settlements, and thus what die rolls you'll require. Even with the development deck, there's a high degree of control. Before choosing to buy a new card you can quickly assess, e.g., that about half the cards are soldiers, a quarter are victory points, etc.

Good Victory Conditions: Catan does a nice job of combining visible and invisible victory conditions. You can generally be sure of how well each player is doing by quickly scanning the board, but there's some degree of uncertainty because a player could be concealing victory points in development cards.

Good Trade: Trade in Catan works quite well, because there's a differential in resources and a limited differential in what resources people want.

Good Ways to Slow Winners: Because trading between players is very important in Catan, it's possible to dramatically slow winners by refusing to trade with them. In addition, there's some limited possibility to slow winners by blocking their building of roads and settlements on the board. On the other hand, these offensives don't actually roll back victory conditions, a problem with many games.

Multiple Paths to Victory: Catan is not just a simple game where you build A, then build B, then build C, and whomever does it the fastest wins. Rather, there are multiple paths to victory. Some players will go for long roads, other for large armies, most temple stones and/or development VPs. Some players will build lots of settlements, and some will upgrade everything to cities. This all allows for good interactivity between players who each will have different short-term goals.

Here are just a few of the strategies that are used in Catan:

• Independence: Try to collect all 5 types of resources using your own settlements and cities.
• Brick / Wood: Set yourself up with good access to bricks and wood. Try and build the longest road; build lots of settlements.
• Ore / Wheat: Set yourself up with good access to ore and wheat. Build lots of cities; try and collect the largest army.
• Monopoly: Try and give yourself exclusive access to a rare resource.
• Low Variance:Try and cover a good spread of the most common numbers (ie, "5", "6", "8", "9") so you rarely have a "bad" streak.

In the neither-good-nor-bad area of design it's worth talking about player numbers:

About Two Players: As I mentioned earlier, Zarahemla is a rare Catan game that proclaims it works with two players. I decided to playtest it to see if that was true. Generally, the answer was that it worked OK, though not as good as the 3- or 4-player game. The 2-player game slows down a bit, because there's more often a total absence of a specific resource. Likewise, trading is a bit restricted. However, it did work, and I may well play a Catan game with two players again, using the fast setup suggested here (three settlements and roads instead of two).

Here's some of the problems with the Catan game design:

Randomness is High: Though some work has been done to control the randomness of Catan, it's still there, and a bad streak of luck can totally ruin a game for a player.

Strategy is Slightly Limited: Though there are lots of paths to victory, as I've discussed above, usually which route to take is set pretty early in the game, and play can thus become a bit mechanical for an experienced player as he slowly works toward the goals he initially set.

Overall, Catan still remains an above average game with very high replayability, due to its reasonable playing time and its dynamic map, thus earning a "4" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

The Settlers of Zarahemla is a very nice new variant of Klaus Teuber's classic Catan game. Its very high quality components and slightly increased strategy (thanks to the Temple) make it clearly better than the current English version of The Settlers of Catan--if you're not planning to get supplements. Thus, Zarahemla is a great choice for a casual gamer interested in trying out this German masterpiece.