Players: 5-6
Playing Time: 2-3 hours
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

This is a revision/expansion of a review originally published in October, 2002.

The Components

Simply, this expansion gives you the pieces you need to expand The Settlers of Catan out into a game for 5-6 players. It contains:

• 15 hexagonal tiles
• 28 number markers
• Player game pieces in 2 colors
  • 8 cities
  • 10 settlements
  • 30 roads
• 25 resource cards
• 9 development cards
• 2 blank cards
• 2 building cost cards
• 1 game rules

Tiles & Markers: Additional hexagonal tiles are included to allow for the construction of a larger island--so that there's still room for everyone. The new island has a diameter of 6 rather than 5.

With the new tiles come new number markers, used to control the randomization of the board. A whole new set is provided so that good variance can be provided throughout the island. Unfortunately the first 18 of the new number markers look exactly like the original 18 number markers, except with different numbers on them. It's thus incredibly easy to get them mixed up; the obvious answer is to mark the backs of all the new markers in some way, but using a different colors for these markers in the printing process would have worked better.

Wood Bits: The new player colors are green and brown.

Cards: The additional cards are all about what you'd expect. The resource cards include 5 of each type, while the development cards are mostly soldiers, with a couple of others thrown in.

Rule Book: A short black and white rulebook lists the components, depicts the different setup, and lists the one rules change for this expansion.

Overall the components of this expansion exactly match the quality of the original. It's a tiny bit more expensive per capita, but not much and my one complaint over the lack of distinguishing marks on the new number markers is ultimately a nuisance. Thus this expansion earns a "4" out of "5" Style rating, just like the main game.

The Game Play

Gameplay is exactly like the original game with one exception: the special building phase.

Special Building Phase: After the end of each player's full turn (production/trading/building), all players then get an opportunity to build. If order matters, each player builds clockwise around the table from the player whose turn it was. There's no playing of cards during this phase or trading--just building.

The Game Design

It's somewhat tricky to make a game work for a variable number of players; particularly at the extremes, systems that worked well otherwise can breakdown.

The Settlers of Catan played by 5 or 6 players faced the problem of players gathering together large sets of cards during other players' turns, then losing them all to a robber, all without getting any chance to do anything. This would have increased randomness (and frustration) by quite a bit.

Allowing players to build after other players' turns does resolve this problem. Players can't always build exactly what they want, because they can't trade, but they can at least get cards out of their hand.

However, I've never found this rule to be that elegant; I don't like forcing players to remember slightly different sets of rules for different playing conditions. I would personally have preferred something more visually obvious, like changing the card limit at which the robber steals cards, then clearly marking that on all the building cost cards.

However, the rule change as it exists clearly does the job, resolving the only notable problem caused by increasing Settlers to 5 or 6 players.

Thus this expansion earns the same Substance rating as the original Settlers game: "4" out of "5".

Conclusion

Buy this expansion if you own The Settlers of Catan and want to play with 5 or 6 players. If you don't, don't.