Players: 3-4
Playing Time: 60-90 minutes
Summary of the Components
Star Trek Catan comes with: cardboard hexes and board edges to make a board; lots of plastic ships, outposts, and starbase hubs; various cardboard playing aids; and lots of cards.
Quality: The plastic ships, outposts & starbase hubs are exquisitely produced in great detail. The cardboard bits are all thick and glossy (but not line-textured). The cards are a bit thinner than I'd like, but will probably hold up to play. 4+ out of 5.
Beauty: The cards are all illustrated with artwork based carefully on Star Trek images (I'd guess they used samples from the Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home era). It all looks very nice. The hexes all show planets which are mostly monochrome, but still appear quite attractive due to the artistic attention. The graphic design on the resource cards and on the player references is probably the best in the set: very attractively done. Overall, this is a great-looking version of Catan. 5 out of 5.
Usability: The Catan games have always had good usability, and that's on display here. Hexes produces goods, which players get as cards, then use to build stuff. This is all really easy to see within the game thanks to color-coordinated resources and player reference cards that clearly lay all the formulae out. (Players had some initial problem with Dilithium, which is green, but glows so brightly that the color is hard to make out. However, everyone soon figured it out.)
I did have one usability issue with Star Trek Catan, which is pretty unusual for the franchise. It includes special "support cards", where characters from Star Trek help you out with special powers. Unfortunately, the powers are entirely textual, with no attempt to iconify them. As a result, players were constantly reading over all the cards when they had to select a new one. We were getting a little better by the end of the game, so long-term players wouldn't have problems, but it was a real missed opportunity for this new variant of the game. 4+ out of 5.
Theming: Star Trek Catan is pretty much Settlers of Catan, with the names of everything changed out. Thus you have outposts instead of settlements, starbases instead of cities, spaceships instead of roads, etc. That theming is all pretty light, as is the theming of the five resources used in the game (Dilithium, Tritanium, Food, Oxygen, and Water). Still, it's all appropriate to the game. You get more solid theming with the use of Star Trek characters on the support cards, though I was puzzled by some of the choices. I can see why Sulu lets you move your ships around and why Kirk manages to talk himself out of problems with the thief (Klingon), but I'm not sure why Uhuru forces trades with people, nor why Spock compensates you when you don't earn resources. Nonetheless, thanks to the preponderance of Star Trek details, I thought the theming generally worked. 4 out of 5.
I was stuck between giving Star Trek Catan a very good or a great rating for Substance. I finally decided to let it eke in a "5" out of "5" because it's a good-looking and well-produced games. There are minor issues with card thickness, with the support cards, and with general theming, but they're minor as a whole.
Summary of the Gameplay
If you'd like an extended discussion of the gameplay of Star Trek Catan I'll point you to my review of Settlers of Catan; the rules are all the same here (with the addition of Support Cards), though the names are changed.
What follows is a briefer summary of the gameplay. Basically, the game has three aspects, collecting resources, trading, and building.
Collecting Resources: You'll start the game with two outposts, each located near a couple of planets. Each of those planets has a number, and when that number is rolled (at the start of a player's turn), you'll gather resources.
Klingon. Whenever a "7" is rolled, the Klingon is moved instead. You get to set him on a planet (to prevent it from creating resources in the future), and then you get to steal a resource from a player with an adjacent outpost or starbase.
Trading: You aren't bound by just the resources that you randomly receive. You can also trade with other players as you see fit. Further, you can trade with the bank at a pretty bad ratio — which improves if you build outposts near the borders.
Building: The object of collecting and trading resources is ultimately to build stuff. There are four things you can build in the game, each of which requires a unique mixture of resources. They are: starships (which get you to locations where you can build new outposts); outposts (which are worth a victory point each and give you new locations where you can collect resources); starbases (which expand outposts, making them worth an extra victory point and collecting an extra resource); and development cards (which can give you various advantages and sometimes victory points).
Support Cards: These are a new addition to the Star Trek Catan game which allow you to use a special power, usually on your turn. They let you do stuff like: force a trade; steal a resource from a leading player; move a starship you've already placed; move the Klingon; etc. If you use a support card once you can choose to hold onto it, but once you've used it a second time you must exchange it with another available support card. Generally you can only use a support card once on your turn.
Winning the Game: The game end when someone earn 10 victory points from: outposts; starbases; development cards worth victory points; having the largest star fleet; and having the longest trade route. That player is the winner.
Relationships to Other Games
Star Trek Catan is essentially Settlers of Catan with some minor changes. The first is of course addition of the new support cards. The second is that the number of settlements (outposts) has increased from 5 to 7. Both of these things make a surprisingly big difference to the game, as I'll discuss further below.
The Game Design
The Settlers of Catan has always been a solid game system, and Star Trek Catan gets the full advantage of that. You have chaotic production that keeps you on your toes; clear goals thanks to the various formula for what you need to build stuff; and nice interaction thanks to the trading, as a result of the fact that you produce on other players' turns, and due to the fact that you and other players will get in each others' ways when you build on the board.
This is all improved by dynamism that makes Catan different every time you play. You lay out a new map with new hexes and new numbers each game, and this means the game is constantly changing. Yes, there are some broad strategies that you might follow from one game to another, but which strategy you take (and how successfully you'll be with it) will depend in large part on your initial game position and what lies around you.
The changes to the design of Star Trek Catan (from the original Setters) were small but both very beneficial and pretty notable for the game.
I hadn't even noticed that the settlement (outpost) count had grown to 7 until someone pointed it out. In classic Catan games you got a bit stuck if you placed all your settlements (outposts) on the board. Here, you can't win on outposts alone, but you can go a lot further on the strategy. This tends to make the game more fun and offers a new path to victory.
The support cards were more obviously a big deal from the start. They serve a couple of different purposes: they let you get out of bad positions (e.g., get help from Chekov if you're being attack by the Klingons, or get help from Sulu if your last ship placement ended up blocked), and they give you some opportunity for longer-term strategy (by grabbing a support card that you plan to use next turn). Not only did this improve the ability to influence the game, but it once made it more fun (primarily because they can get you out of bad situations).
I've traditionally given The Settlers of Catan a "4" rating as a good board game. Star Trek Catan is clearly better than its predecessor, so I'd instead say it gets a high "4" out of "5".
Conclusion
Star Trek Catan is a great variant of the classic Settlers of Catan gameplay. If you like Star Trek, I unreservedly recommend it. If you enjoy Catan, but you don't own a copy, I'd also suggest taking a look at this new release, as I think it offers some improvements on the original game system. Finally, for existing Catan owners, you'll have to decide if the fun science-fiction theming is enough to carry the new game for you.
