Players: 3-4
Playing Time: 90-120 minutes
Complexity: 5 (of 10)
This review is of the German edition, produced by Kosmos and distributed in the United States by Mayfair Games. For contractual reasons, no English edition of the game is planned. This is a revision of a review that I originally wrote in January, 2003.
The Components
The Settlers of Nurnberg comes with a set of high quality components, as you'd expect in a Catan-family game. They include:
- 1 game board
- 96 wood pieces in 4 colors
- 1 wooden timeline piece
- 26 city wall tiles
- 16 tower tiles
- 46 prestige chips
- 50 gold chips
- 8 victory point markers
- 1 robber knight
- 100 resource cards
- 36 event cards
- German quick-start, almanac, Nurnberg overview
Map: The map is a set board that shows the city of Nurnberg to the left, and its environs to the right. A timeline runs down the middle, used to control the length of the game. The map is nicely drawn, brightly colored, and printed on a very sturdy, linen-textured cardboard.
The map also does a superb job of using icons to help illustrate game rules (as do all the Catan games) . All of the building costs for structures appear on the right-hand side of the map while building costs for commodities, their prices, and tolls appear to the left. It's all very attractive and definitely increases ease of play.
The back of the map is printed with what looks like a period woodcut of Nurnberg, which is a nice touch.
My only complaint about the board is that it doesn't contain a victory point chart where each player can record their current level of VPs. Other Catan games which have done this have proven it a good idea, so that players don't have to keep counting and recounting how many points they and their opponents have.
Wood Pieces: The players' wood pieces are typical high German quality, printed in the four player colors (orange, white, red, and blue). There are settlements and toll stations, which go in the environs, and workshops, which go in the city. There's also a conical purple timeline marker. Longtime Settlers players will recognise the toll booths as being road pieces and the timeline marker as being a merchant piece.
Cardboard Tiles & Chips: There are a large number of chips & tiles in this game, all printed full color on thick, linen-textured cardboard. They’re generally pretty and high quality.
The city wall and tower tiles go around the city of Nurnberg on the left of the board. They're actually quite cleverly cut, so that the towers go in the spaces between walls on outside hexes
The prestige chips are green squares and the gold chips are yellow circles, so they're quite easy to tell apart. There are a couple of denominations of each to keep accounting simple.
The victory point markers are all large cardboard squares. The three council victory point markers are clearly marked "4", "3", and "2"--the number of victory points each is worth. (Unfortunately each also contains the prestige symbol, which seems to confuse some players into thinkign they’re worth prestige points rather than victory points.) The right of way markers are denoted with the road it applies to (I to V) and the fact that it's 1 "siegpunkt" (victory point).
Finally, the robber knight is a shaped bit of cardboard that snaps into a round plastic base. As with everything, it's got nice art and looks pretty.
Cards: The cards are all half-size, as is pretty common in German games. They're fairly sturdy (given their size) and are cut with rounded corners. The resource cards are colorful and show the resources (e.g., wood) in front of the terrain that produces it (e.g., forest) and are yet another example of how icons are used to increase comprehension and playability.
The event cards are a bit more boring, as some are entirely or mostly monochromatic. However, they again use icons to get their point across. Each event card has a number, an icon or picture, and then an explanation (in German). Practically there are only 6 types of cards (Kostenloser Lehm, Wegezoll, Raubritter, Der Markgraf greift ein, Die Jahre vergehen, and the number 8), and it's really easy to pick up what they do after a few rounds of play, thanks to the pics, even if you don't read German (and I don't).
Rules: The division or rules between a colorful quickstart and an almanac might be of use to German readers, but did nothing for this English gamer. There's also a book on the city of Nurnberg, which I likewise wasn't able to read. My import of this game came with two translations, one from Mayfair Games, and one from funagain.com. They were both adequate. The funagain.com rules were nicely illustrated but had a crucial mistake in them. The Mayfair Games translation was pedestrian and occasionally awkward, but correct. I was glad I had two rules translations to compare.
Overall, the quality of all these components was extremely high. It's all very sturdy and very pretty. At a $50 price point, I'd have to slightly question the value-to-price ratio in relationship to other stuff in the market, but given this is an import, I won't complain too much. Nurnberg thus gets my highest rating for "style", “5” out of “5”.
German Language in the Components
I had some concern about buying this game because I knew it was a standalone game printed in German. Overall, I find it extremely playable for non-German players.
On the actual components, German words are only used on: scattered costs on the board; the event cards; and the victory point markers. I find the icons on the victory point markers and the board entirely clear (actually, I didn't know if I should put the event deck on "Ereigniskarten Stapel" and the discards on "abgelegte Ereigniskarten" or vice-versa, but who cares).
The event cards were slightly intimidating, but given that there are only 6 types, and that all of the players look at them together, we actually never had any troubles. Once we'd read over the rules, each event was very clear thanks to the icons on the cards.
So, unless you're a real foreign-phobe, or strategy games already give you a headache, I don't think the foreign printing on The Settlers of Nurnberg should be an issue at all.
The Game Play
As with all Catan games, the object in The Settlers of Nurnberg is to gather Victory Points. Here, you get them from settlements and workshops, as well as the eight victory point markers, which reward you for controlling right of way and for earning prestige.
Practically, most games of The Settlers of Nurnberg follow a progression: you set up settlements on the environs board to collect resources, earning right of way victory markers in the process; then you use those resources to expand your presence on the environs board; then you use those resources to add workshops to the city board; then you start producing commodities to earn gold; then you use that gold to build city walls and towers, earning prestige; then you use that prestige to win council seats, winning the game.
Setup: Each player places two toll stations and two settlements on the environs board at start.
The toll stations are built on the roads leaving Nurnberg, starting at the hexside closest to the city and moving out until the road is filled with toll stations.
A player may place a settlement at a hex corner of any road on which he has a toll station. Settlements may not be placed on adjacent hex corners on the same road.
Players also get 3 gold at start.
The Environs Board. This board ("Das Umland Nurnbergs") shows the lands around the city of Nurnberg. It's split up into hexes, each of which contains one of five terrain types, and each of which also has a production number, between 2 and 12. The city of Nurnberg is a hex too. Roads run along the hexsides, originating at Nurnberg and heading toward the edges of the map. There are 5 roads total, the Venedig Road (I), the Frankfurt Road (II), the Prag road (III), and two nameless roads which just run off into the near countryside (IV and V).
The City Board. You won't be using this board ("Die freie Reichsstadt Nurnberg") initially, but it's worth knowing what it does when you get started. The left-hand side of the Nurnberg game board shows the city proper. It's divided up into hexes, like the environs board, but these hexes don't produce anything; rather they give players different benefits. The two central hexes in Nurnberg are the Great Market ("Haupmarkt") and the Building Yard ("Bauhof"). Each corner of the Great Market gives a different trading advantage (e.g., 3:1 anything, 2:1 brick, 2:1 ore, etc.). Building on a corner of the Building Yard gives the player the ability to build towers. The rest of the hexes each contain the picture of one of the five commodities. Building on a hex corner gives the player the ability to earn twice as much from the sale of that commodity.
There are also spaces for city walls around the city of Nurnberg. The walls also form spaces for towers every other segment.
Order of Play: Each turn a player takes the following actions:
- Draw an Event Card
- Trade, Build, and Manufacture
Note that the last three actions may be taken in any order, though they’re described sequentially below.
Draw an Event Card: Every turn begins with a player selecting the top card on the event deck. Most of these cards have a harvest number; most also have an event. First the harvest is conducted, then the event.
Harvest. The number on the event card identifies which hexes generate resources each turn. Each terrain type has a resource type associated with it, as shown below:
Forest: Wood
Pasture: Sheep
Fields: Wheat
Hills: Brick
Mountains: Ore
if a player has a settlement adjacent to a hex that produced, he gets 1 resource card worth of that resource. If the robber is currently in a hex, that hex doesn't produce
The only card without a harvest number is the "robber knight" event.
Events. Most cards also have some special effect.
The "Robber Knight" allows the current player to move the robber onto a hex of his choice and steal a card from any player; players with more than 7 resources in hand also lose half of them.
The "Margave" causes the Robber Knight to go home.
The "Hourglass" advances the timeline toward endgame, and causes the event deck to be reshuffled every third time it's pulled.
The "City Wall" allows each player to build a city wall segment without having to pay a brick.
The "Toll" forces each player with a settlement on a road to pay 1 gold per settlement to whomever has the right of way on that road.
The "8" harvest is the only card without an event.
Trading: You can, during your turn, trade cards with other players--and you should, frequently (e.g., "I've got a 'wood' if anyone wants to trade me a 'sheep' for it").
You can also engage in trade with the bank by offering 4 of one card (e.g., "4 ore") for 1 of another (e.g., "1 wheat"). You can get better trading ratios by building workshops next to the Great Market, on the city board. Some Great Market spaces 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 (e.g., 2 wood for 1 of anything).
Building:Each player will collect resources and trade them in order to build specific things which interest him.
In the Environs. The following items may be build in the environs: settlements and toll stations
Settlements are built at the corners of hexes on roads, at least two corners away from any other settlements on the same road, and allow a player to collect one of the appropriate resource when any of the three adjoining hexes produces. A player must have at least one toll station on a road to build on that road. They're also worth 1 Victory Point each.
Toll Stations are built on the five roads depicted in the environs, with each new station going in the closest empty hex edge to the city itself. Having one allows a player to build settlements on that road; having many can secure a player Right of Way.
The costs of these two structures are as follows:
Settlement:wood, brick, wheat, sheep
Toll Station: wood, brick
Whomever has the most toll stations on a road gains access of the "right of way" on that road. (In case of ties, the current person holds on to it.) This gives him a victory point card worth 1 victory point. In addition, he gets to collect two types of toll for the road. First of all, whenever a toll event card is turned up for his road, the player receives one gold for each settlement on his road owned by another player. Second, players building commodities, as discussed below, have to pay tolls when they export.
In the City. There are three things you can produce in a city: workshops, city walls, and city towers.
Workshops are built at the corner of hexes in the city, and can give you three different advantages: the ability to trade certain items at better ratios; the ability to build towers; and the ability to sell commodities for twice the value. They're worth 1 Victory Point each.
City Walls are built along the edges of the city and must be built partially with gold, which means you'll probably need to manufacture commodities before you can build them. They're worth 1 prestige.
Towers are built only at corners formed by the walls, and also are built partially with gold. They can also only be built if you have a workshop adjacent to the Building Yard. They're worth 2 prestige.
The costs of these three structures are as follows:
Workshop: 3 ore, 2 grain
City Wall: 1 brick, 3 gold
Tower: 1 brick, 1 wood, 3 gold
As noted, walls and towers produce prestige. The player with the most prestige points get the 4 victory point council seat ("Mitglied im Siebenerrat"), the player with the second most gets the 3 victory point council seat ("Mitglied im Kleinen Rat"), and the player with the third most gets the 2 victory point council seat ("Mitglied im Groben Rat"). If there's a fourth player, he gets squat.
Manufacturing Commodities:Commodities can be produced at any time. They're immediately sold. There are a total of five different commodities. Each one has a resource cost, an associated trade route, a sale value, and a toll. They're all shown clearly on the map, but here's the outline:
Armor: 3 ore, 1 wood; to Prag; value 6 gold; toll 3 gold.
Compasses: 1 ore, 1 wood; to Frankfurt; value 3 gold; toll 2 gold.
Helm: 2 ore, 1 wood; to Frankfurt; value 4 gold; toll 2 gold.
Lyres: 1 sheep, 1 wood; to Venedigt; value 3 gold; toll 1 gold.
Paper: 2 sheep; to Venedig; value 2 gold; toll 1 gold.
A player announces he's building a commodity, spends the resources, collects the value (x2 if he has a workshop on an appropriate hex corner), and then pays the toll to the player who controls the right of way of the appropriate road (not x2, even if the player is earning more money). And the whole point, as already noted, is to generate gold pieces for building walls and towers.
Gold is also valuable because it can also be traded for other resources at a 4:1 ratio, 3:1 if the player controls the appropriate space at the Great Market.
Ending the Game: When a player earns 13 victory points he wins the game. This total comes from settlements (1 VP each), workshops (1 VP each), right of way cards (1 VP each), and council seats (2-4 VP). Alternatively the game ends when the timeline advances to 1400 (9 "Hourglass" advancements), in which case the player with the most victory points at that time wins.
I've never seen the timeline get even close.
Relationships to Other Games
The Settlers of Nurnberg is, of course, a variant of the popular The Settlers of Catan game. Nurnberg is generally a more polished and a more complex system. Here's how the two line up:
| Catan | Nurnberg | Comments |
| Dice | Cards | By replacing the dice with cards, you can't have long runs of bad luck as is possible in Catan; nonetheless some mystery is still maintained since you never know when the deck might be shuffled. The events also add a little bit of chaos to the game. |
| Robber | Robber Knight | Nurnberg makes the Robber considerably less of a pain. He comes out less often (there are fewer cards than you would have expected if he had been a "7") and he often comes off the board thanks to the Margrave. |
| Road | Toll Booth | Same cost and same wood figure, but considerably different uses. Roads must connect, but not toll boths, and you had to have settlements adjacent to your roads in Catan, while in Nurnberg you just have to have a tollbooth on the same route. |
| Settlement | Settlement | Largely the same, except Nurnberg settlements can't be upgraded to cities. |
| City | Workshop | Same cost, but different figures and different use. Cities affected production, replaced settlements, and were worth 2 VP. Workshops affect trading, building towers, and manufacturing, and are worth 1 VP. |
| N/A | Walls, Towers, Commodities | These are all totally new ideas that create interesting economies in Nurnberg. The walls and commodities are nothing like the like-named features in Cities & Knights of Catan. |
| Victory Markers | Victory Markers | Rather than having a Longest Road and a Largest Army, Nurnberg has 3 council seats and 5 rights of way. Nonetheless, the basic ideas are the same: you collect majorities in a certain area (prestige or toll boths on the 5 roads) and whomever achieves that majority gets the appropriate VP marker. |
On whole I think The Settlers of Nurnberg is one of the most complex Catan games, on par with Cities & Knights of Catan. However where I found Cities & Knights overdone, I think that The Settlers of Nurnberg forms a much more harmonious whole, with the multitude of systems working together like clockwork.
The Game Design
The Settlers of Nurnberg manages to not just replicate the above-average game design found in the original Settlers of Catan game, but actually expands upon it to produce a richer, more complex game.
Here's the best design features, some shared with the original Catan game:
Good Use of Strategy: Nurnberg really makes a player feel like he can control his own destiny by choosing a strategy, then sticking to it in some rational way. Depending on which path he wishes to take he can, for example, gather wood and bricks in order to gain control of rights of way; or alternatively gather ore and grain to try and get a head start within the city itself.
Good Use of Randomness: Randomness in Nurnberg is used to good effect. Most importantly, perhaps, it's tightly controlled. On a "bad" roll you might get an unexpected resource that forces you to take a different tact or requires you to trade with other players, but there's almost always some other possibility. In addition, Nurnberg protects you from long strings of bad luck through its use of cards to generate numbers between 2 and 12 rather than dice. This controls the variance because you'll never get an infinite numbers of 6s and no 8s, for example, because each card is in the deck a set number of times.
Shifting Gameplay: Nurnberg makes good use of its two map setup to produce shifting gameplay as the game advances. In the early game players tend to be working in the environs, trying to control rights of way and to build sufficient settlements to collect good numbers of resources. Then, at midgame, a player shifts over to the city board, and suddenly everyone is playing there, trying to get access to the best spots at the market and in the surrounding areas. This shift in gameplay keeps the game interesting, yet still maintains the core ideas of the game.
Controlled Complexity: This game is more complex than the original Settlers. However it doesn't feel hard, and that's because the complexity is controlled in a number of ways. First, you have the early/late game distinction, so that you're really thinking about a shift in your overall gameplay, not trying to balance all the options at once. Second, though there are five different commodities that can be built, you're not really thinking about each commodity in turn. Rather, through your early gameplay you've established control over certain roads and given yourself access to certain resources with the goal of building one certain commodity (or perhaps two) that will bring you to victory. Still, though you won't be bogged down in every decision, it might take a game or two before you really understand how the game fits together.
Solid Endgame: The endgame felt both natural and competitive, since it eventually came down to directly working against other players to control the floating victory point markers (the council seats and the rights of way). Though I've never goten close to 1400 in any game, I did also appreciate the use of the timeline. A set endpoint like that keeps a game from stagnating; making it somewhat random keeps players from making unrealistic last-ditch assaults.
Here's the scant problems I had with the game:
Power Curve: All of the Settlers of Catan games are built on power curves. The better you get, the better you get, and this can result in being far ahead or far behind by the time you hit mid-game. This game improves upon the general problem quite a bit through its interactivity. There are more ways to slow down someone who's ahead. Nonetheless, it's a concern.
Some Balance Issues: The city board has never felt well-balanced to me. There are some clearly superior workshop spaces (mainly, those around the Great Market) and some less desirous ones (mainly those down in the south). Though this might create increased competition, it also makes building in the city follow the same pattern game after game.
Overall, I think The Settlers of Nurnberg clearly improves on the original Settlers of Catan gameplay, and so I've given it a better substance rating as well: a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
The Settlers of Nurnberg definitely offers very solid gameplay and strategy at a level higher than either the original Settlers or Seafarers, and it manages its complexity much better than Cities & Knights. If you're already an ardent Settlers fan, and would like a bit more complexity, I definitely suggest this game.
If you've never played Settlers before, however, unless you're a die-hard strategist, this is probably a bit much to start off with, and I'd instead suggest the original Settlers of Catan, or one of the really nice standalone variants, particularly The Settlers of Zarahemla.
