Review of The Starfarers of Catan 5-6 Player Expansion

The Starfarers of Catan 5-6 Player Expansion provides exactly what it suggests: extra components for two more players to join in the exploration of Catan space.

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

This supplement requires the original Starfarers game to play, and likewise this review requires my original Starfarers of Catan review.

This is a revision/expansion of a review I wrote in November, 2002.

The Components

The Starfarers expansion comes with:

• 1 sheet of reusable labels to (temporarily) attach to your board.
• 2 mother ships
• 2 sets of player game pieces
• 50 resource cards
• 11 resource number chits for new systems
• 5 friendship cards for the Travellers
• 1 friendship chit for the Travellers
• 2 game overview cards

New Planets: The most notable addition to the game comes in the form of sticky vinyl pieces which you attach to the board. There are a few new planetary triads and also one new trading locale for a sixth alien race--the Travellers. I was dubious of the sticky pieces, but they seemed to easily both go on and come off the board, and I've not seen any negative reports on their long turn use. To go with the new planets are new resource chits, so that there are enough for all the planets on the board. A few of these mark a new type of planet--the artifact planet.

Traveller Pieces: The friendship chits and friendship cards for the Travellers are a fine match for the similar alien components in the original set. Overall the Travellers fit very well into the overall Starfarers milleu because they're already represented on the encounter cards in the original set.

Player Pieces: The addition of new planets and a new alien race were both pretty necessary to provide enough space for 5 or 6 players to colonize & trade. However, the core of this supplement simply provides the game pieces necessary for those additional players. The ships and game overview cards are just like the ones in the original. The new player pieces come in two new colors (gray and white).

The use of sticky planets to expand out the galaxy is clever, but other than that there's nothing special or surprising in this supplement. It has what's required for 2 additional players, basically expanding the original pieces, and thus earns the same Style score as the original: "4" out of "5".

The Game Play

The supplement changes a couple of Starfarers' rules:

• Setup is slightly different for 6 players (and presumably for 5 too, though that seems to have been left out of the rules).
• Aid from Earth, during production, increases from 1 to 2 cards.
• All players get the opportunity to build whenever any player builds.

In addition, a couple of the components allow for new gameplay:

• Exploration can now turn up artifact planets, which work similar to pirates or ice planets, but require 3 friendship cards from 3 different alien races in order to colonize the planet.
• The Travellers provide friendship cards that allow for space jumps and some other nice stuff.

The Game Design

The game design of the Starfarers expansion is largely the same as the original game. I find the general ways that the game was expanded to 6 players a bit kludgy--with sticking things to your board, then having to remember slightly different rules. Conversely, I find the introduction of the Travellers to be a nice addition to the strong background of the original game.

Overall, the expansion is neither flawed nor particularly notable, and thus earns a "3" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Overall, it's nice to be able to play Starfarers with 5 or 6 players, and the new alien race is fun to have, but it's too bad that it couldn't all have been a bit more elegant. Still, if you enjoy Starfarers and have more than 4 players around, this is clearly a must-buy.