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Review of A Game Of Thrones Catan: Brotherhood Of The Watch 5-6 Player Extension
Blurb from the publisher: 'A mammoth extension by Klaus & Benjamin Teuber.
New heroes rise to face a large threat...
The great forests of the north hide many mysteries and wildlings have many surprises. Mammoths come lumbering toward the Wall, driven by the wildling hordes. These huge beasts are fierce and tenacious brutes. When they charge they cause chaos, and people scatter!
New heroes have come to the north. Can you enlist their aid to further your goal of becoming the next Lord Commander of the Night's Watch?
This game extension allows you to include up to two additional players. More competitors means that your victory will be all the more sweet.'
What you get: Your USD 49,95 or equivalent will buy you A Game of Thrones Catan: Brotherhood Of The Watch 5-6 Player Extension, an expansion for the autonomous game of A Game of Thrones Catan: Brotherhood Of The Watch based on the Catan gaming engine and set in the Game of Thrones universe. The extension can accommodate two additional players to the basic game which can now play with 5 or 6 players in around an hour and a half.
In addition to the 8-page mid-sized format English rulebook that can be found on the publisher's website free of charge, the game also contains the following: 2 new Wildling Clan Area Northern Frame pieces, 2 Southern Frame pieces, 2 Trade Route markers, 8 Terrain hexes, 8 Number tokens, 48 Wildling tokens (24 Regular Wildlings, 8 Climbers, 6 Giants, 10 Mammoths), one Supply Trade Rate marker, 2 Build Cost cards, 8 Wildling Mammoths, 2 Sections of the Wall, 60 Player Pieces in two player colours, 25 Resource cards, 9 Development cards, and 4 Heroes of the North.
In the interest of full disclosure, and even though this is a brand new game, I have been playing Catan (then called Settlers of Catan) since 1999, along with all its expansions. I have also participated in competitive events years back, achieving top-3 placements at my best. This is not your average playtest.
Gameplay: Depending on the number of players the map becomes bigger. There are 25 tiles for a 5-player game and 29 tiles for a 6-player game, always in fixed setups. The number of clans at the north is also different, with four and five clans respectively. Hero cards are distributed slightly differently including the new ones, namely Aemon Targaryen, Jon Snow, Gilly, and Osha. Each has his own ability. As an example, Jon Snow activates on a 7 and protects you from discarding cards if you hold more than seven. In fact, if you have less than seven, you even get to get a free one from the supply before Tormund is activated.
There are still three phases in a turn, even though they are not identical to the ones in the original game. Resource production works as usual. The Trade phase is merged with the Building Phase. The active player may now interchangeably trade, build, trade and build again in any order he wishes. The other players may not trade amongst themselves as usual. When the active player finishes, he announces it, and the other players, in clockwise order have a Special Building Phase to build whatever they can afford and wish. If you have played the Catan 5-6 Player Extension, you know exactly how this works.
Mammoths work differently than other Qildlings in that they do not enter the Gift. What they do however is potentially alter the direction that the other Wildlings follow in case of breaches, depending on how many of them there are on the wall.
The strong points: I was very perplexed not to see a 5-6 Player Extension in Star Trek Catan. Thankfully A Game of Thrones Catan did not repeat the same mistake. In many ways the game is easier when it comes to fighting the external threat, seeing how the Special Building Phase of the 5-6 Player Extension naturally leads to more buildings built substantially faster. This is a constant in any game of Catan irrespective of theme, not just this iteration. Counterintuitive as this might look, this increases the tactical aspects of purposefully neglecting wall duty and thus increasing pressure on settlements and keeps further to the north. I welcome that approach.
For someone that has played the base game, you need less than one minute to explain how the present extension works. I always felt that 5 and 6 player Catan games were more liberating, due to the lack of bureaucracy and the pointlessly clustered action-taking. They have other things working against them, yet when it comes to fluidity, they are definitely more pleasant to get into.
Finally, Jon Snow is available! Joking aside, and even though this guy might not be the reason to buy this extension, it is cool to finally have him on board. If I had to choose a favourite when it comes to new powers, Aemon Targaryen would be my first choice and Osha my second. As I said, tactically exploiting the position of the guards on the wall makes this game a lot more interesting, even if it makes you look like an devious, double-crossing ass.
The quality of the components is of the same very high standard we encountered on the base game. The art is evocative of Game of Thrones, while the sculpts of the plastic pieces are full of detail. The cards are bigger than the ones in standard Catan, adding to the game's classiness. The mammoths look very cool on the table, even though they are too small to be ported in other dioramas, had you wished to do so.
Fantasy Flight Games once again included 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.
The weak points: I have been complaining for years about how 5-6 player extensions shouldn't have really existed for Catan games. The base game should have cost a bit more, all the materials and minor rules changes should have been included, and that should have been it. Once again, marketing dictates differently. I am wondering whether I will get to see the abolition of this pointless practice in my life. For the time being, I am seeing an extension that is as impossibly expensive as the base game was when it came out. It's a license, I understand that, and the base game's catalogue price was also very high when compared to basic Catan. Is that however a reason for the present item to hit the whooping USD 50? That money purchases another mid-sized game. Uffff.
The present extension does not alter any of the game's shortcomings, even though constant building means that luck is now more seriously mitigated. With victory claimed at 10 VPs only, the game remains short for Catan standards, even though some might find this a strong and not a weak point. For the veteran players out there, it simply means that the fun and games end rather soon, while the tactical blockages start even earlier.
The fixed places for the production tiles reduce the game's replayability. This is rather self-defeating. A handful of different placement suggestions could be easily produced by Fantasy Flight Games, and no, I am not talking about pointless mirror images of the existing placement. I am talking about placements that could have tampered with the game's difficulty, providing a shift of focus from the wall to more traditional games of Catan, or vice versa. This is a lot opportunity. I hope to see something like that produced later on in the line, if indeed there is a later on in the line.
The writing was on the wall when it comes to the components of the extension fitting the base game's box: they do only if you painstakingly sort them and arrange them, and still the box cover won't close fully, unless you dispose of one out of the two plastic inserts. What a pointless act of self-sabotage. I am curious as to when gaming companies will learn, and start catering for space-starved customers.
Conclusion: The 5-6 Player Extension for A Game Of Thrones Catan: Brotherhood Of The Watch is a rather obvious purchase. Either you play this flavour of Catan with more than four players and you need it, or you don't, and you pass. The new cards and the mammoths are interesting, yet alone they cannot justify the high price tag if one doesn't use the extension for its primary purpose.
For more info on A Game of Thrones Catan: Brotherhood Of The Watch 5-6 Player Extension visit Fantasy Flight Games and Catan Studio at https://www.fantasyflightgames.com and https://www.catanstudio.com respectively.
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