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Review of Catan: Explorers & Pirates / Catan: Explorers & Pirates 5-6 Player Extension
Blurb from the publisher: 'Explore. Harvest. Retrieve.
Catan: Explorers & Pirates includes 5 novel scenarios, each of which builds upon your previous experience. All are easy to learn, rich in character, and lots of fun. In each, you explore an unknown sea by ship and build settlements on the discovered islands.
Scenario 1 (Land Ho!) introduces you to valuable harbor settlements, shipbuilding, exploration, and overseas settlement - the most important basic rules of this expansion. Each subsequent scenario introduces a new mission and its simple new rules. The game culminates in Scenario 5 (Explorers & Pirates), which incorporates all of these very rich new themes in a diverse and exciting campaign of bold exploration and piracy!
Explore Catan! Build harbor settlements, ships, settlers, and sailing crews and set out across mysterious seas in search of new lands, spices, fish, and gold fields.
This is not a complete game. It requires the base Settlers of Catan game to play.
Learn it in only 15 minutes! Play it in only 60 minutes! Enjoy hundreds of hours of fast-paced, interactive fun!
Explore all things Catan at Catan.com!
Now five to six players can explore Catan's wild unknown seas in search of fish, spices, or rich new lands for settlement!
Catan: Explorers & Pirates 5-6 Player Extension allows you to add one or two new opponents without sacrificing ease of play. As in the Catan: Explorers & Pirates expansion, you'll build harbor settlements, ships, settlers, and crews and set out across mysterious seas in search of new lands, spices, fish, and gold fields.
So, get a team of 5 or 6 together for an adventure in Catan. Challenge pirates on land and sea as you seek to win renown. Use your ships to carry loyal settlers and claim faraway territory. Complete your mission and you'll be master of Catan!
This is not a complete game. You need a Catan game (aka The Settlers of Catan), a Catan: 5-6 Player Extension, and a Catan: Explorers & Pirates expansion in order to play with this game extension.'
What you get: The present review is a combo review of the 2015 edition of Catan: Explorers & Pirates (the so-called fifth edition, published by Catan Studio), and of the Catan: Explorers & Pirates 5-6 Player Extension. Explorers & Pirates is the fourth (and currently last) Expansion to be published for the enormously successful and widely celebrated Catan game line.
The Expansion can be purchased at USD 55 while the Extension at USD 32 (or equivalent). It is not necessary to buy the latter when buying the former, buying only the Extension however without owning the Expansion is pointless. The Extension cannot be played alone. The Expansion can accommodate 2 to 4 players in around 90 minutes. This is the first Catan expansion that can accommodate two players, as opposed to a usual minimum of three. The Extension increases the number of players to up to 6. Playing time is adjusted accordingly to two hours.
In addition to the 4-page English Game Overview and the 16-page Rules and Scenarios that can be found on the publisher's website free of charge, Catan: Explorers & Pirates also contains the following: 16 Harbor Settlements, 36 Crews, 12 Ships, 8 Settlers, 12 Markers, 4 Pirate Ships, 6 Fish Hauls, 24 Spice Sacks, 92 Gold coins, 16 Frame Expansion pieces, 6 Pirate Lair/Gold Field hexes, 6 Fish Shoal hexes, 6 Spice hexes, 12 Terrain hexes, 12 Number Tokens, 6 Pirate Lair tokens with numbered backs, 3 Mission cards, 3 Victory Point cards, 4 Building cost cards, and 10 Component Sorting tiles.
The Catan: Explorers & Pirates 5-6 Player Extension on the other hand, and in addition to the 6-page English Game Rules that can be found on the publisher's website free of charge, contains the following: 8 Harbor Settlements, 18 Crews, 6 Ships, 4 Settlers, 2 Pirate Ships, 2 Pirate Lair tokens, 2 Fish hauls, 12 Spice Sacks, 2 Gold Field hexes, 4 Sea hexes, 6 Terrain hexes, 2 Building Cost cards, and 6 Number Tokens.
In the interest of full disclosure I have been playing Catan (then called Settlers of Catan) since 1999, along with all its expansions and extensions. I have also participated in competitive events years back, achieving top-3 placements at my best. The first time I perused the present two products however has been during the playtests for the present review.
Gameplay: Just like Catan: Seafarers, the present game brings the sea to a previously landlocked game. It also alters the rules substantially, instead of simply adding to the rules like Seafarers does.
The game contains five scenarios. Each scenario is an expanded version of the previous scenario, with one additional option for the players to do. As an example, in the first scenario the players will use only some of the new rules and play the game at 10 points, just like in basic Catan. The second scenario adds Pirate Lairs (and the way players can capture them), and ends at 12 points. The third scenario ends at 15 points, having added fishing and the delivery of the catch. The fourth scenario ends at 15 points, with the extra option of finding and delivering spices. The last scenario includes every single option, and is played to 17 points.
The players can now build ships (one wood, one wool), harbor settlements (two grain, two ore), crew (one wool, one ore), and settlers (at the same price as a settlement). Harbor Settlements can accommodate other gaming pieces (like crews, settlers etc), and are worth 2 VPs like the Cities of the basic game. They do not produce two resources however. Settlers are transportable via ships, and are the unit that will allow you to colonize unoccupied territory. Pirate ships do not belong to the bank, like they did in Seafarers; each belongs to a player. Thus, there can be up to four pirate ships on the board. The ships are used in a similar way as the pirate, even though they are placed in the center of a hex and not on its sides. The player can steal a card from another player when a seven is rolled and his pirate is moved next to the other player's ship. Additionally, any player who wishes to move his ship from, through, or to a hex where a pirate ship is, he has to pay a tribute in gold. Pirates can be chased away by other players' ships that point towards the hex they are at. A die is rolled. The pirate is chased out of the board when a 6 is rolled.
Explorers & Pirates eliminates Development Cards, the Longest Road VP option, the Largest Army VP option, the upgrade of Settlements to Cities (!), as well as the robber. Whenever a player receives no resources at the roll of the dice, he claims one Gold instead. Gold can be exchanged at the bank at a rate of 2:1. There are no harbors in the game, and trade with the bank is conducted at 3:1. In contrast to standard Catan, trading and building are interchangeable and can be mixed.
The last part of a player's turn is the Movement Phase, where his ships can move at a movement rate of 4. Gone are the continuous sea lines of Seafarers. Extra movement may be purchased by paying in wool (for the sails, I would presume). Ships can transport one large cargo (fish hauls or settlers) or two small pieces of cargo (crews, spice sacks). Ships may reveal undiscovered land by sailing into it. If it is a land hex, the player receives the resource of the land tile as a reward (e.g. a wool, an ore, etc).
The Catan: Explorers & Pirates 5-6 Player Extension adds new players. The gameplay follows the novelties inserted by the Catan: 5-6 Player Extension, namely with the Special Building Phase. From there on, the small-sized rulebook tackles the exact same scenarios as Explorers & Pirates, adjusting them for 5 and 6 players. That invariably means an increase in the size of the map, and some minor explanations and clarifications where needed.
The strong points: Explorers & Pirates target group is as clear as the sea waters on a sunny day. The game addresses itself to people that want to up their games of Catan, but wish to do so gradually without being overwhelmed by rules and options. Even though its theme is similar to Seafarers, its rules are not. Numerous things work differently. Taking away major aspects of Catan like the Longest Road or the links of ships takes the game to totally different directions than before. It is the only Expansion of Catan whose scenarios are effectively the one and the same scenario, based on four different modules. One can mix and match them as he wishes, yet admittedly they are much easier to learn when they are isolated from one another. The first scenario does not last more than half an hour. It is by far the fastest Catan scenario in existence, being even faster than the basic game.
Its most important innovation however, and one that cannot be stressed enough, is that it makes Catan playable by two players only. Other Catan modules also lead to the same result, yet this appears to do it in a much more convinced and systematic way.
Having moving ships around has been a request of Catan enthusiasts since Seafarers came out. Shipping lanes behaved in the exact same way roads did, discounting the untethered last ship's movement. That felt very static. The new mechanic brings mobility to the board, eliminates the fencing off of opponents, and makes the map feel bigger.
The design of the different modules is solid. It is nothing groundbreaking if one has played Catan before. In fact, the names are reminiscent of other Catan modules from other Expansions which however work differently. Fishing is one example, since it can be found in Traders & Barbarians, albeit with substantially different rules (and definitely without the need for transporting the catch). I don't know whether this creates any confusion to the veterans, it is good however to revisit some things through a new lens.
I liked how the individualized Pirates work, even though I would have called them Buccaneers in order to avoid confusion. It is rather hard to get rid of them once they get on the board, and on a game rife with 7s they are sure to make an impact. They allow for some sort of sequestering and ganging up on the leader, I would need however substantially more games to appreciate their effect fully.
Anybody who is knowledgeable of Catan can learn Explorers & Pirates in under 15 minutes and explain it in less than 5. Practically everything about this game is included in the scenarios. The fact that each scenario only adds one module at a time is a big plus for those who take a more casual approach towards gaming.
Catan with 5-6 players is by far my favourite, even though competitive tournament play does not usually support that standard. Thus, it logically follows that I enjoy Explorers & Pirates with 5 and 6 players more than I do with 3 or 4. The game feels more focused and involved, even though mistakes do not have the immediate backlash they do in other Catan games. The reason is obvious: the map can no longer be used towards restricting the lebensraum of your opponents. Keep on reading.
In contrast to other language versions which went for plastic components, the English range of the Catan game line insists on wood and rightfully so. It doesn't feel right to handle plastics when developing a living and breathing civilization. Hurrah for Explorers & Pirates going down the same road. The new wooden pieces are different to the ones in Seafarers not only because of aesthetics but due to necessity: these ships need to actively carry other components.
Catan Studio includes resealable plastic bags in order to keep your game in top shape and not ruin it by losing a component. I admit I am more used in smaller publishers doing this; bigger ones didn't appear to care. I am very happy to see this happening by the second biggest game publisher globally. Everybody should do it, to be honest.
The weak points: No matter how I see it, I feel that this Expansion (and its Extension) doesn't have as much meat as the others in the line. Once one gets to learn the different modular mechanics, what he has bought is effectively a single scenario at a very high price. It should be noted that the price of this Expansion and Extensions is higher to the one of all the others, which admittedly were published many years ago. Even more so, the game alters his basic Catan game by eliminating rules as much as inserting new ones. If a new game (as opposed to 23-year-old Catan) did this, it would have been unceremoniously panned. Why would I pay for Player Reference cards in Catan only to see them all substituted by new ones here? There are many things that have changed in what a player can build, indeed, yet the purpose of an expansion is not to render obsolete a large chunk of the rules and components from the basic game.
Some of the rules that lead to alleged game friendliness actively promote lazy gaming. The Gold Compensation rule is an obvious example. If you don't get any resource, you get gold, and gold is traded at the bank on a 2:1 ratio. This means that you can pick a poor starting position and cruise through the game with impunity, even having real chances to win it. As a player that has played competitively and enjoys the aspect of starting the game already at placement, I recognize that this kumbaya style of play is not for me. Not in Catan, at least.
I felt that games set in Explorers & Pirates were producing substantially less resources than games in other Catan Expansions and scenarios. The reason is obvious: no cities. No cities! Trading between players takes a fat big slump, since gold is traded mostly with the bank. As much as I am exaggerating by this statement, this is the closest I have seen Catan turn into multiple simultaneous solitaires. Don't get me wrong, it does not become 7 Wonders, yet player interaction compared to any other Catan Expansion comes out as greatly diminished.
Cool as the concept of moving ships is, some might feel that it takes Catan quite for from its roots. Again: no Longest Road! It also adds fiddliness where other versions of Catan have none. I applaud the moving ships idea, yet I feel that it needed more work.
Just like with Seafarers, something appears to have gone wrong in the die cutting of the cardboard components. Cardboard appears to be of the same quality as in every other Catan game, yet once again, it was not easy to remove the components from their cardboards. I marked at least two components because the die cut didn't go deep enough, even though I was as careful as a man can humanely be. This is the second time this happens. If I had bought this item and wasn't sent it to me by the publisher directly, I would have imagined that it is a counterfeit product. Hmmmm.
Just like with every single Catan expansion and extension, I find it incredible that even a relatively new product like this follows the tired 3-4 and 5-6 player boxes. The concept is outdated, pointless, and not cost effective whatsoever. Having four expansions to the game is one thing (and it is debatable whether the same format should continue to be used or whether a redistribution of components and design elements should be moved from the Expansions to the basic game). In any event, distinguishing between Expansions (boxes that add options and rules) and Extensions (boxes that add players and faithfully follow an Expansion) is needlessly confusing for the newer acolytes. I already complained about it on the basic game, and trust me, I will keep on complaining about it for every expansion. It is one thing to have a game like Agricola have a single 5-6 player expansion, and another to have a game with multiple expansions, each of which has its own 5-6 extension. No. Just... no.
Conclusion: Catan: Explorers & Pirates is a brand new take on the sea that surrounds Catan. It does not try to imitate Seafarers and goes its own different path. It is designed for the new players of basic Catan in mind, not for the existing veterans. It eliminates some of Catan's basic premises, while adding its own things in a gradual, modular way. I am likely to use the easier scenarios in order to bring more players into the hobby. Setting aside the final and complete scenario however which offers quite the substance, I fear that the disconnect between content and price in this box is rather disappointing.
For more info on Catan: Explorers & Pirates, and Catan: Explorers & Pirates 5-6 Player Extension visit Catan Studio at https://www.catanstudio.com.
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