The Components

The Fishermen of Catan comes with a one-page rulesheet and one cardboard sheet which includes 30 square fish tokens and six fishery tiles.

The fish tokens are small square markers which show one, two, or three fish or an old boot. The fishery tiles are chevrons which are placed in some of the sea spaces, in between ports. They're all medium weight cardboard, and my only real complaint is that the art on the fishery tiles doesn't particularly match the art of the American game, but that's a minor issue.

The MSRP of this supplement is $4, which seems quite reasonable for what you get.

On whole The Fishermen of Catan earns an average rating of "3" out of "5" for Style.

The Gameplay

The Fishermen of Catan changes Settlers by letting some of the water spaces produce resources of a sort.

Setup: When the board is setup the six fishery tiles are randomly placed on the board, in sea spaces between certain trading ports. Each of these fishery tiles has a production number, just like a hex: 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, or 10.

Fishing: When a fishery's number is rolled it produces fish for anyone who has built a settlement or city on one of the three hex vertices adjacent to the fishery. A player draws one fish tile for a settlement or two for a city.

Fish. 29 of the 30 tokens depicts 1, 2, or 3 fish. These are a sort of new resource, though they can't be stolen nor do they count toward hand limits. A player can trade them or he can turn them in on his turn for various rewards:

• 2 fish: Move the robber to the desert.
• 3 fish: Steal a random resource card from another player
• 4 fish: Take a resource of your choice from the bank
• 5 fish: build a free road
• 7 fish: draw a free development card

Boot. One of the 30 tokens is instead a boot. This increases the number of victory points needed for that player to win by 1 point. On his turn a player may give it to someone with the same number or more victory points than him.

Other than these new elements, the game is the same.

Relationships to Other Games

The Fishermen of Catan is a mini-supplement for The Settlers of Catan. It is one of a few mini-supplements that Mayfair has recently released, with others being The Great River and Catan Event Cards.

The Fishermen of Catan has been given away in various places including Spielbox magazine and the defunct Games Quarterly magazine. If your game store happens to still have Games Quarterly #12, it's available there, else you can get the expansion direct from Mayfair.

The Game Design

Like the previous mini-games, The Fishermen of Catan is a great example of a minimalistic expansion for a game. It's easy to include or exclude from a game and it has a fairly short set of new rules to learn, yet it makes notable and interesting changes to the game.

The biggest effect that Fishermen has on Catan is that it makes the waterfront spaces much more desirable. In an original Catan game, getting pushed out toward the edges of the board is a near death sentence. Here instead you can get a pay-off: fishes. At first we thought that fishes were a poor substitute for actual resources, but as we played more we realized that their multiple abilities made them quite useful, and perhaps still not as desirable as regular resources, but nonetheless very close.

Generally four-player games of The Settlers of Catan can be quite tight and for more casual play I think that Fishermen improves the game tremendously. It's not really necessary for a 3-player game, and more serious players will prefer the ruthless possibilities of normal play, but for a casual game, I'd suggest using the Fishermen almost every time.

The supplement can also offer a little bit of variability to your Catan games, pushing people more toward the water, and thus causing increased usage of trading ports as well, overall resulting in a slightly different game.

Particularly because of the way that Fishermen can make casual 4-player Settlers games more fun, I give it a top rating of "5" out of "5" Substance.

Conclusion

Fishermen of Catan is a very worthwhile mini-supplement if you enjoy playing casual games of The Settlers of Catan with four players. It opens up the game board a bit and also makes the game a bit more forgiving.