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Review of Catan: Starfarers
Blurb from the publisher: 'Discover the universe!
Finally, the jump to the stars has succeeded.
It is the middle of the 3rd millennium. You and your fellow Catanians travel in spaceships to distant planetary systems in search of more resources. Along the way you befriend alien civilizations who might become valued trading partners.
Increase your resource production to build new transport ships and spaceports. Equip yourself against the lurking danger of space pirates. Many exciting encounters await you!
This completely revised reissue of the classic The Starfarers of Catan contains atmospheric illustrations, refined rules, redesigned game components, and an exciting variable game board.
Catan: Starfarers is a stand-alone game for Catan connoisseurs and space fans.'
What you get: Your USD 99 or equivalent will buy you Catan: Starfarers, an autonomous game based on the Catan gaming engine. The game is a remake of The Starfarers of Catan, a game originally published in the previous millennium (1999), and which still holds its ground amongst BGG's top-1000. The game can accommodate 3 or 4 players in just over two hours.
In addition to the 8-page English A4-sized Rulebook and the 20-page A4-sized Almanac that can be found on the publisher's website free of charge, the game also contains the following: 4 Large Motherships, 24 Cannons, 24 Boosters, 20 Fright Pods, 28 coloured Balls, 6 Game Board tiles, 16 Space Sectors, 4 Friendship markers, 40 Fame Medal pieces, 36 Number discs, 16 Special tokens, 100 Resource cards, 32 Encounter cards, 20 Friendship cards, 12 Overview cards, 92 Player pieces, 2 Dice, 2 Component trays, one sticker sheet, and 11 Storage bags.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have been playing Catan (then called Settlers of Catan) since 1999, along with all its expansions. I have also played extensively the present game's previous edition (The Starfarers of Catan) more times than I can count. I will try to compare the two in this review, even though I parted from my copy of that game a long time ago and I will have to count a lot on memory. I have also participated in competitive events years back, achieving top-3 placements at my best. To make a long story short, this is not your average playtest.
Gameplay: Catan... In... Space! The game is played on an (almost) 15 x 11 hexagon map of space, most of which depicts empty hexes. The players start from one of four sectors located on the same side of the board. Each player sector has a planetary system with 3 different planets. A player starts with one Spaceport, two colonies, and one Colony Ship, as well as three facedown resources and one fame medal piece. He also begins with one enormous mothership improved by one booster (increased speed). The mothership will dictate the player's movement in every turn of the game, and stores all the player's modifiers.
The board has locations for another 16 sectors, their contents however will be decided randomly. They might hide planetary systems, outposts (which allow for the establishment of space stations with alien civilizations), or they might even be empty. You read 'hide' correctly. At the beginning of the game space is unexplored.
The game shares some basic principles with standard Catan. Planets are marked by a production number from 2 to 12 (bar 7), and produce resources (ore, fuel, carbon, food and goods) when that roll comes up on the two six-sided dice.
A turn is comprised of three phases. First comes the resource production. The active player rolls the dice. Each tile on the board that shows the number that came up will produce its resources. A player with a colony or a spaceport next to that tile can claim one resource. In contrast to other Catan games, the active player (the player who just rolled the dice) will also get a number of random resources from a reserve pile depending on the number of victory points he has. The more points on has, the less cards he will receive. Number 7 does not exist on the map, thus nothing gets produced when it is rolled. The active player may instead steal a resource from another player. In contrast to almost every other Catan out there, there is no physical Robber/Pirate, and no tiles are occupied or stop producing resources. If at that point a player holds eight or more resources, he discards half of them to the supply. In yet another break from standard Catan, every other player apart from the player who rolled the 7 gets to draw a resource from the reserve pile.
The second phase is the Trade/Build phase. In contrast to standard Catan which distinguishes between the two, a Starfarers player can mix trading and building as much as he wishes. The active player may trade what he already owns with the other players; the other players may not trade amongst themselves. Anything goes when it comes to the deal itself; this is a game based on supply and demand. The active player may also trade with the supply, yet not all resources have the same value. In particular, Goods are traded at the extremely favourable rate of 2:1, while every other resource is traded at 3:1. A player may build within the confines of the resources he holds. He may build Spaceports (2VPs, allows the building of Trade Ships and Colony Ships, in contrast to standard Catan it does not produce more than a Colony), Trade Ships (may later establish trade stations with the alien civilizations), and Colony Ships (may establish 1VP Colonies). Unlike standard Catan, all the aforementioned buildings are built exclusively on Spaceports and have to be transported and established to their final destinations. Yes, you will be transporting a fully made colony or trade post throughout space. Once you place it there is no unplacing it; it becomes a permanent fixture. The ship that transported the building dissolves; you will have to build new Trade Ships and Colony Ships at your spaceports to be keep on going. A player may also upgrade his Mothership by adding cannons (increased combat strength), freight pods (increased freight capacity), and boosters (increased speed).
Alien Civilizations deserve their own paragraph. When a player brings his Trade Ship to an unutilized outpost he may establish a Trade Station. This allows the player to claim the Friendship card of his choice from that alien civilization. Each civilization has five friendship cards to hand out. These provide permanent, game-altering effects like increased production, the possibility to institutionally steal from other players round after round, better trades with the board, increased efficiency of your ships on any of their modules, and more. The player that holds the most friendship cards with a particular civilization also wins 2 VPs. There are thus 10 VPs that can be won this way.
Flight is the turn's final phase. Inside each player's mostly opaque mothership are five differently coloured balls. These dictate the speed of a player's ships during his turn, as well as whether any random events will take place. The player shakes his mothership and lets it rest. The two balls that become visible after a shake determine the ships' speed and any potential encounters. The chances of a random encounter (and a rather average speed of 3) are 22,5%. If there is no random encounter the ship flies that number of hex corners. If there is, the player to left of the active player reads the encounter card. These are tree-like structures where the active player gets to choose what he wishes to do and how. This is not a simple yes/no engagement. Some encounters ask the player to donate from 0 to 3 resources (with different bonuses or penalties, depending on what he does), in others the player may trade with space pirates and either get out of it unscathed or lose something for the privilege, or even fight them and get punished for it or come out triumphant. In any event, when a player reaches an undiscovered space sector he reveals it. Depending on the type of ship he has he might not be able to immediately build there, a case in which his quest will continue in future turns. Some sectors also host pirate bases and ice planets. These need to be dealt with if the player wishes to establish a colony there. This awards fame medals, which in this case count as VPs. Fame medals pieces (earned through other endeavours) translate into VPs at a ratio of 2:1. It must be fairly clear by now that there are no fixed roads in Starfarers, and that a player cannot cut off another into a suboptimal part of the map. There are many rules in fact about illegal placements and not cutting off opponents. The universe is too vast to engage in such pitiful tactics.
In contrast to standard Catan, VPs are tracked for everybody to see. The game is won as soon as a player reaches 15 points. That's a staggering amount for Catan standards, I know!
The strong points: I have no idea why The Starfarers of Catan remained out of print for so many years. It is a great game for a million reasons. It is recognizable as a Catan design, it is not however a simple riff. It is fresh, it has a narrative, it has clever mechanics. One by one:
The first thing any standard Catan player will notice is that there are no roads. You will have to physically transport your buildings through space to their final destinations. Yet, what will you find there in the first place? You might be carrying a colony and stumble upon an alien civilization, or conversely, have an outpost and just run into another sector of planets. Your planning has to take into account of these uncertainties and how fast you can start producing. This isn't the instantaneous build and consume from original Catan; things take time.
The theme of space, vast distances and all the difficulties in production comes out very thoughtfully through the rules. The second thing a standard Catan player must understand is that what he receives does not necessarily come from the colonies and outposts he has placed on the board. At the beginning most of your income will be random cards. Nothing produces two resources; your spaceports facilitate your production and create opportunities for reaching deep space faster, yet they do not accelerate production. Imagine how poor a game would feel with the players drawing only if their initial three planets' numbers came along. That's what the reserve deck is for. The active player will always get a boost in order to be able to do something. This ultimately translates into the following: don't hurry into placing a building in a place that sucks. Unless you immediately upgrade it into a Spaceport, the colony sitting right next to it will come from very very far.
The fact that the resource cards coming from the reserve are totally random speaks volumes about the game's design goals. The game is about handling the unexpected, not about the linear planning that standard Catan is about. In Catan the only variable are the dice rolls. Starfarers has dice rolls, the flight, the encounters, and more. Compare how Starfarers handles the now abstract robber. You get to steal a random resource from a random player, yet no production tile is blocked. Even more importantly, every other player gets to draw a random resource from the reserve. So on a robber roll a number of resources equal to the number of players minus one will enter the game, something inconceivable in the tile-rich standard Catan. Sometimes you will be rooting for a 7 for reasons that are altogether positive: you are not the person rolling, and you might just get a chance to obtain a good that you have otherwise no access to. It sounds counterintuitive, it is however entertaining!
You might be thinking that what I describe sounds too random, in reality however it is not. All the mechanical innovations (or rather reinventions, seeing how Starfarers existed in another form before) serve in order to mitigate randomness. The alien civilizations are a prime example of an island of predictability surrounded by the waves of the unknown. Forget for a moment the important VPs that they grant when you bother to invest in them. The effects that the alien cards offer are very serious. Depending on the phase and circumstances some might prove stronger than others, the more you have however the better. The interesting part is that you get to choose the benefit that an alien civ will grant you, thus planning for the future. The 15 VP victory threshold also ensures that the best player will win. You might get lucky once, twice, or thrice. In a 10-point game that might have made a difference. In a 15-point game, you will need to play well no matter the randomness.
Catan never had a narrative element. One could imagine how the inhabitants of this faction or the other perceived their expansion in-game, that was all however related to the theatre of the mind. Starfarers goes the opposite route. The encounters are admittedly random, yet they are diverse and very well made. They all are rather innocuous in the way they ask the starting question which is, as expected, the same in many of the cards. The results of the encounter however are not. In one case offering a lot of cards might be a good idea, while in other situations it can lead to disaster. If you play often you should better memorize the encounter cards, and keep track of what has already been played. That will definitely give you an edge.
In a rather obvious comparison to the previous iteration of Starfarers, the board is now modular. Planets and outposts change places, and you might lose time discovering nothing but empty space. That is an obvious improvement that enhances the game's replayability to infinite levels. The game's learning curve is also reduced by the fact that the VPs are counted on a track. Why doesn't standard Catan have this?
I have nothing but praise for the game's components and materials. I might be a fan of wood, but it would have been a terrible choice in a space-themed game. Plastic is fantastic, and even more so are the Motherships. They are easy to understand and immediately showcase around the board how advanced you are tech-wise. The visibility could have been better, I cannot however seriously complain about it. In contrast to the game's previous iteration, the interior of the ships can now be tampered with. Standing ovation to the designers for providing a higher number of navigation balls. If you wish to alter the game's progress by changing the ball mix inside the ships, you can now do so. Thumbs up!
I like how two of the trays that are included in the box can be used during the game. More games should include such trays in fact. On the other hand this presupposes that you have a big table, I do however take that for granted. Catan: Starfarers is a big game with a lot of components.
Catan Studio includes resealable plastic bags in order to keep your game in top shape and not ruin it by losing a component. Me likes.
Catan: Starfarers has just been released, I would be willing to bet serious money however that a 5-6 player expansion will be released in 2020 already. On one hand I enjoy games that are well supported...
The weak points: ...on the other hand however I find it disgraceful that the game did not come out as a 3-6 player from the get-go. This is not a new title. The amount of anticipation was enormous; everybody knows that it will sell like hotcakes. The staggered player count works well when there is uncertainty about the game's initial success. If it looks like a money grab and feels like a money grab, it probably is a money grab.
Catan: Starfarers does not lie about its duration. It lasts over two hours, on par with original Catan when combined with either (or both) of Catan: Seafarers and Catan: Cities & Knights. Don't expect experience to improve your playing time that much; this is the game's nature. I have of course absolutely no problem with all that, I enjoy long games. There is a reason however standard Catan is the usual tournament game and why other variants or expansions never made the cut.
The game also needs some getting into that standard Catan doesn't necessarily require. This is normal, seeing how many things work differently. At the end of the day the investment pays off. Thankfully the Rulebook and the Almanac are excellently written.
The Starfarers of Catan was published many years before the first edition of Star Trek Catan, while both games went out of print for a while. In all honesty, Catan Studio should have made a bold move and should have tried to obtain the Star Trek IP for this game. The present game is exactly what Star Trek Catan should have been. Thematically it is a perfect fit. It has exploration, the unknown, variable speeds for your ships turn after turn (these warp drives are really unstable), friendly and unfriendly aliens, and a lot more. Yet we get shafted in two ways. Starfarers has a sci-fi universe that is mechanically interesting yet bland. Compare the Diplomats, the Green Folk, and the Merchants that nobody cares about to the Romulans, the Vulcans and the Ferengi, and you will understand what I mean. Xom, Esox and Asox are fantastic names for Lidl detergents, and that's what you get here instead of Sarek, T'Pol and Tuvok. Star Trek Catan on the other hand is 95% Catan under Star Trek's loosely fitting skin. It is not a Trek game, and it remains as close to Catan for the experience to be painful to Trekkies. If there is a definition of a missed opportunity, the unnamed universe of Starfarers is literally it.
Everything fits in the box even after having sleeved all the cards and having put all the game's other pieces in plastic bags. Yey! There are two caveats however. First, you will need to waste quite some time in order to pack everything so that it fits every time. Second, you'd better not have any ideas about holding in this box the contents of the 5-6 player expansion, whenever it comes out. Nothing else will fit in this box unless you bin the box's tray. In other games I do it gladly, here however you will have the problem of keeping the plastic rockets safe. If they break, you literally have no game. Thus, if you ever decide to ditch the tray, you will have to find plastic foam or bubble wrap to protect the ships. Oh, dear.
The game's cards have the same size as the ones in standard Catan. That is not a bad thing in itself, I admit however that I expected a lot better after the much heftier cards in A Game of Thrones Catan: Brotherhood of the Watch.
USD 99 for Catan: Starfarers? There might be other games out there at this price range, but no, this one doesn't cut it. Knowing that the 5-6 player extension will surely follow, this is borderline insulting. Search for a deal around the EUR 60 to 70 mark. The MSRP is way off for what the game offers.
Conclusion: Catan: Starfarers is a great game in its own right. A similar yet vastly different experience to standard Catan, it is a griping gateway game with narrative undertones and unlimited replayability. Find it cheaper than its out-of-touch MSRP and buy it instantly!
For more info on Catan: Starfarers visit Catan Studio at https://www.catanstudio.com.
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