#RIVAL FOR CATAN HOW TO#

There are a number of smaller changes in the names of cards & various events (I like that the region cards now have their names on them in tiny print to remind you of which way they are oriented when they enter the game)… but those incremental variations are not the keys to getting this game to the table 5+ times in 5 weeks. Easy Interactive Game Introduction available for you.)

#RIVAL FOR CATAN HOW TO#

(If you’d like a good overview on how to play the game, has the oddly whimsical Prof. Rather than attempt to explain the game play in detail, I’m going to try to do a comparative review for those of you who’ve played the original game & wonder if the new game is worth plopping down a double sawbuck. Long answer: Well, that’s why you’re reading this review, aren’t you? Just shuffle your eyes onto the next paragraph. The big question was, of course, could he do it successfully? In other words, could he keep the sprawling “build your kingdom” feel of the original game while smoothing out the rough edges of the design? So, when I read that Klaus Teuber was rebooting the card game to both streamline the game play & the playing time, I was pretty excited. The card interactions, especially if you add any of the expansions, require either a devil-may-care approach to making up rules on the fly and/or access to a pretty extensive FAQ. The game has always tended towards being overly long – rarely clocking in at less than two hours and sometimes reaching the three hour mark. My wife enjoyed our first few games of it… until I figured out how to use the various action cards to decimate her cities & her resources. Yet, for a game I claim to enjoy (I recently put it at #90 in my personal list of top 100 games over on my blog), I don’t play it very much. We have a long history, Die Siedler von Catan – Das Kartenspiel & I.

(Yep – my first 10-15 plays were with a German deck & cheat sheets to translate the cards into English.) I switched over to the English version when it was finally published in late 1998… and then went through the whole “upgrade” mess in 2003 so that the expansions and older edition would work together. I’ve been playing the Settlers of Catan Card Game since the original German release – I bought my copy in the summer of 1997.

Times Played: 5x (Rivals for Catan) 25x + (Settlers of Catan Card Game).

Rival for catan