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Review of Catan: Traders & Barbarians / Catan: Traders & Barbarians 5-6 Player Extension
Blurb from the publisher: 'Transport. Market. Campaign.
Delve deep into Catan! In Catan: Traders & Barbarians you'll find lots of cool new ways to explore Klaus Teuber's award-winning game series. You can now play with just 2 players! Add a harbormaster, a friendly robber, or special events. Play with a wealth of new wooden pieces, board tiles, and capabilities. Even link your games to create an intriguing campaign. Use these 4 variants and 5 scenarios to reinvent your Catan experience!
Five challenging new scenarios:
- The Fishermen of Catan: Fish in the great lake or try casting in rich coastal shoals. A fresh, expanded, and updated version!
- The Rivers of Catan: Not one, but two great rivers invite flourishing commerce. Bridge them en route to glory and wealth.
- The Caravans: Nomads of the oasis seek wool and grain. Camel caravans offer rich trade opportunities.
- Barbarian Attack: Eager for booty, vile barbarians land and occupy Catan's fertile shores. Brave knights unite and ride to battle against the invaders.
- Traders & Barbarians: Your wagons transport fine marble, glass, tools, and sand to help restore Catan's great castle.
Combine these novel scenarios to create a refreshing, compelling campaign!
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 up to six players can share the very rich set of 4 variants and 5 scenarios in Catan: Traders & Barbarians!
Infuse even more fun and excitement into your Catan games without sacrificing ease of play. Add one or two more friends and family for more interaction and more drama!
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: Traders & Barbarians 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: Traders & Barbarians (the so-called fifth edition, published by Catan Studio), and of the Catan: Traders & Barbarians 5-6 Player Extension. Traders & Barbarians was the third Expansion to be published for the enormously successful and widely celebrated Catan game line.
The Expansion can be purchased at USD 49 while the Extension at USD 25 (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 3 to 4 players in around 90 minutes. The Extension increases the number of players to up to 6. Playing time is adjusted accordingly to two hours.
In addition to the 24-page English Variant Rules and Campaign Scenarios that can be found on the publisher's website free of charge, Catan: Traders & Barbarians also contains the following: 24 wooden Knights, 12 wooden Bridges, 22 wooden Camels, 4 wooden Wagons, 36 wooden Barbarians, 40 Gold Coins, 14 Terrain and Water tiles, 120 cards, and Special Victory Point cards and tokens.
The Catan: Traders & Barbarians 5-6 Player Extension on the other hand, and in addition to the 12-page English Game Rules that can be found on the publisher's website free of charge, contains the following: 12 wooden Knights,6 wooden Bridges, 11 wooden Camels, 2 wooden Wagons, 12 wooden Barbarians, 12 Terrain and Water tiles, 16 Gold Coins, 18 Commodity tokens, 14 Fish tokens, 24 cards, and 2 Poor Settler tiles.
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. This is not your average playtest.
Gameplay: Traders & Barbarians is a collection of variants and rule alterations, that can be implemented on any game of Catan. Even though it calls its scenarios a campaign, this is a misnomer. There is no continuity, overarching plot, point tally, linkage in either theme or rules, or anything else that connects the scenarios. They are simply different ways of playing in Catan.
The Friendly Robber is a family variant. In one sentence, the robber never attacks a settlement of a player with only two victory points.
The Catan Event Cards is the absolute luck-mitigation mechanism. Unless my memory fails me, the mechanic had appeared for the first time in Die Siedler von Nürnberg back in 1999. Die rolling gets purged from the game. Each player draws a card instead at the beginning of his round. Each card contains both a resource producing number, as well as an event. The number allocations on the cards are the ones that are statistically expected. Thus, a six and an eight will appear more times than an eleven or a twelve. Events vary from Tournament (the player with the most knights earns a resource of his choice) to Good Neighbors (give to the player on your left a resource of your choice), and from Robber Attacks! (discard half your cards if you have more than 7) and Epidemic (cities produce half of what they would have).
The Harbormaster is worth two victory points, and is acquired in a way similar to the Largest Army and the Longest Road. The prerequisite in this case is to build settlements and cities on harbors. Each settlement is worth one 'harbor point' while a city is worth two. An opponent may claim the Harbormaster reward, if he builds settlements and cities of a higher value.
Catan For Two is very straight forward. It allows the game to be played by two players only, without them needing to resort to Catan-themed games like Rivals For Catan which provide a different experience. The variant effectively sets an AI with two imaginary neutral players. Each player rolls dice twice in a row; the results should differ from one another. Every time a player builds a settlement or a road for himself, he must build the same thing for one of the two neutral players. Additional rules relate to forcing trades with the only breathing opponent etc.
The Fishermen of Catan (played to 10 VP) is the first scenario. This involves a lake and fishing ground tiles which are placed on coastal areas. Fish can be caught like any other resource (i.e. when their numbers comes up), even though one does not know the exact quantity he is going to harvest until he reveals it. A player may have a maximum of seven fish in his hand. They may be used in order to gain benefits like removing the robber from the board, steal a resource from another player, and even draw a free development card. An old boot has also found its way among the fish. The person who holds it needs an extra victory point to win the game.
The Rivers of Catan (10 VP) shares the same name with a scenario that was autonomously published years ago, yet it differs significantly from it. Many of Catan's hexes now contain rivers, while bridges are also introduced as a structure that players can build. When a settlement is built adjacent to a river hex, a player earns a gold coin. Two coins may be changed with the bank for a resource of your choice. Players should be prudent with their gold coins however; the one with the most coins earns the Wealthiest Settler distinction (+1 VP), while the one with the least coins is the Poor Settler and loses 2 victory points from his running total.
The Caravans (12 VP) introduces camels. Three caravans will leave the central Oasis tile, heading towards three different directions. A camel is placed on the map each time a settlement is built or gets upgraded to a city. The first camel will follow the direction of the arrows on the Oasis, from there on however players will bid wool or grain in order to determine the direction. A caravan only goes forward; it may not branch. Camels provide two distinct advantages. First, the roads built parallel to them count as two roads when calculating the Longest Road. Second, the settlements and cities in-between two camels are worth an additional victory point.
The Barbarian Attack (12 VP) sees barbarians landing in Catan every time a settlement is built or gets upgraded to a city. The barbarians land randomly on coastal tiles. If three barbarians land on the same coastal tile, the tile is considered conquered and stops producing. A city surrounded by conquered hexes also falls to the barbarians and does not count for victory points, the player cannot use its harbor etc. Players can now play Development Cards as soon as they buy them, while they can also field knights. Knights appear on the special Castle tile. They may move a number of tiles, a player however can increase their movement by paying grain. If knights surround a hex with barbarians, they may take them as prisoners, provided they are more than them. Each two prisoners translate into one victory point. Liberated coastal hexes resume their previous functions, as do settlements, cities etc. Knights may die after a victory, something that is determined in a random manner. Should that happen, the player reclaims three gold for each knight lost.
Traders & Barbarians (13 VP), the eponymous scenario of this expansion, introduces trade hexes that can be reached up to their center, as well as moving components in the guise of baggage trains. The movement cost of wagons is different depending on whether there is a road or not, and the player might be called to pay if the road does not belong to him. Wagons can go faster than usual if a player pays extra. Wagons take and deliver different commodities like glass mable, sand and tools. Baggage trains can be upgraded, something that also provides additional VP. Barbarians stall wagons, which however, when properly equipped, may try to move them away.
All variants contain instructions about how they can be additionally combined with other variants, or even the big box expansions of the Catan game line.
The Catan: Traders & Barbarians 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 variants and scenarios as Catan: Traders & Barbarians, 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: Traders & Barbarians is what one gets when multiple variants and scenarios not unlike Catan Scenarios are collected and presented with high-quality components in a big box. The present expansion clearly addresses itself to players of the basic game which want to add variety and a bit of complexity to their game of Catan, without however reaching Seafarer or Cities & Knights heights. This does not mean that the scenarios cannot be combined with these expansions; the main mechanic behind the Fishermen is a great fit for many, if not all Seafarers scenarios, even though one must be prudent with the placement of the fishing grounds. Admittedly however some of these scenarios would be overkill on top of Cities & Knights.
Depending on what you wish to use, you might need less than 20 seconds to explain the additional rules to your group. I am not joking; that's how much The Friendly Robber and the Harbormaster need. Taking the modular nature of this expansion into account and how well-written the rulebook is, I have trouble quantifying the difficulty of most of these variants. There simply isn't any. Maybe one might need 15 minutes to explain the eponymous scenario, this is hardly however a chore. As usual, have the map set before you start explaining what is going on. It really expedites the whole process.
I would have trouble picking a favourite variant. I have used almost all of them simultaneously at times (Catan for Two excluded, obviously enough), over the Cities & Knights rules on top of a Seafarer scenario. Fair warning: everybody around the table was a Catan veteran and we knew what we were doing. The dynamics change fairly quickly, and VP accumulation is much faster than one thinks. I strongly recommend the Event Cards for the groups where a player complains about how the messed up dice cost him the game. Suddenly Catan becomes triple-tactical. Those with strong memories have an enormous advantage, seeing how they will not build on tiles whose numbers have already appeared in the past. The Harbormaster increases the importance of two-tile intersections, seeing how they many now produce additional victory points if they host a harbour. That makes a flight for the coast (or direct placement on harbors at the beginning of the game) a valid strategy. The Friendly Robber is good for relaxed gaming. He is also useful when playing with the dice instead of the Event Cards and the results are borderline statistical aberrations. A bit of calm at the beginning never hurt anybody; things can always become messy later.
The 2-player variant deserves a few words. To keep it short, it's not bad! The two neutral players are duds, and are used for no other reason than to occupy space on the board and limit the lebensraum of the real players. Trade is by definition limited, and interaction tends to orient itself towards negative aspects as opposed to positive ones. The variant definitely feels like Catan the boardgame, becasue it still is Catan the boardgame. It is not however as tight and expanded as Rivals For Catan, which addresses itself exclusively to two players.
By far my favourite scenario is The Fishermen of Catan, and that because its main mechanism can be extracted and used as a variant on top of other scenarios. It makes games faster, seeing how there are now more producing tiles than there were before. The sea actually matters. I think that is ingenious. I find it rather peculiar that this has not been further developed into something holistic. The fishing concept in Explorers & Pirates is based on the same principle, yet it is even more detached, and relates to moving the catch in a manner not unlike the one seen here with the wagons at the eponymous scenario. The really clever rule which makes almost every tile on the map a producing one is still waiting to be invented.
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 Catan: Traders & Barbarians with 5 and 6 players more than I do with 3 or 4. The game feels substantially more focused and involved, with every mistake immediately producing repercussions.
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. Once again, the art is of a very high quality.
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: Traders & Barbarians is sure to disappoint if one purchases it believing that it follows the same style as Seafarers or Cities & Knights. It doesn't, and it does not claim that it does. It provides tweaks here and there, not a new way of tackling Catan. Its variants and expansions do not stack. They are options, elements that may be used together up to a certain extent, not a holistic total. The meaner ones amongst us might say that some of these variants were unusable ideas that were initially left on the drawing board. I don't necessarily see it that way. Just because a convinced Catan player who already uses the other expansions will have trouble incorporating some of the elements of the present one, does not mean that the expansion does not have merit.
I don't understand why the Catan franchise keeps reusing the same names when referring to variants and rulesets that can be found in different products and which are not linked to one another. The barbarians in the Barbarian Attack have absolutely nothing to do rules-wise with the barbarians of Cities & Knights. Why create pointless confusion about what is what? As if there aren't names to describe the concept of an enemy coming from the sea: the Invaders, the Horde, the Raiders. It took me less than three seconds to think of these names. This practice didn't stop here, unfortunately. Explorers & Pirates included its own version of fishing, as if the Fishermen of Catan in the present box was not enough. Alternatives and variants are good, but name them differently, for crying out loud.
Just like with every single Catan expansion and extension, I find it incredible that even a relatively new product like this (only ten-years-old since its first publication as opposed to more than twenty of Catan, Seafarers, and Cities & Knights) follows the tired 3-4 and 5-6 player boxes. The concept is outdated, pointless, and not cost effective whatsoever. The risk mitigation purpose it served back in 1995 is long gone. Were the game to get a lifting, this is the first issue that it needs to address. 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.
In a flagrant display of lack of foresight, if you are pressed for space and need to store everything in one box, the box of Catan: Traders & Barbarians cannot hold the elements of its 5-6 Player Extension unless one decides to throw away the plastic insert. This is embarrassing... again. It also happened with Catan and the Catan: 5-6 Player Extension.
Some of the flaws that plague basic Catan may be encountered to a certain extent in some of these scenarios if you stack them on top of standard Catan, as opposed to Seafarers or Cities & Knights. On casual gaming evenings some king-making might be observed. I don't really mind, to be fair.
Conclusion: Traders & Barbarians is a chest of options and possibilities for those who wish to inject new blood into their standard Catan game. It has merit even for the more involved amongst us, even though it is probably of less use. Don't misconstrue its nature, and you will not be disappointed. It might change the gameplay, seeing how one may now play Catan with only one opponent and without any dice, it will not however change your Catan experience holistically the way Seafarers or Cities & Knights did.
For more info on Catan: Traders & Barbarians, and Catan: Traders & Barbarians 5-6 Player Extension visit Catan Studio at https://www.catanstudio.com.
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