Catan Exp: Seafarers Board Game Expansion by Catan Studio

Catan Exp: Seafarers Board Game Expansion by Catan Studio

Build ships, set sail, and conquer the magnificent island world of Catan. Nine voyages of discovery are awaiting the settlers.

This Expansion Works With:

Expansion Pack

Setup Time
15 Mins
Play Time
90-120 Mins
Players
3 to 4
Age Level
10 and Up
Our Reviews
$78.95 CAD
$78.95 CAD

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Our Reviews Details What's in the Box? How To Play Rule Book Reviews and Questions

Catan - A Family Review

“Want to play a game of Catan?”

Friends of board gamers have heard this sentence for nearly thirty years. Maybe you always suggested something else, or maybe you didn’t think you’d have fun. But it keeps coming up—and now you’re curious.

Any collector worth their salt (or sheep, in this case—you trade sheep in the game quite a lot), has Catan on their shelf. It’s the Monopoly of hobby board games, and like Monopoly, it lends itself to longer game sessions. Evenings full of laughter and frustration and triumph. Catan is great at keeping everybody at the table engaged on every roll and nearly every turn, and if you want to win, you have to get in there with everybody else—trading and haggling with the best of them.

The main fun of the game is in bartering with other players (I’m looking for two wood and want to trade sheep. Anybody?) then strategically placing your roads and settlements to corner markets and score points. You have to strike at the right time though, because other players can block you with their own builds. Which definitely causes vendettas. Friendly ones, but definitely vendettas.

11yo: I loved the betrayal and bartering and making up stories about my settlements.

It’s a competitive game with only one winner, and with your hand of hidden cards, nobody is ever 100% sure who’s in the lead until everything is revealed at the end.

As hobby games go, the turns are pretty simple but can lend themselves to a bit of decision paralysis. We found that we had to remind the kids to make a choice and pass the turn or else they’d get stuck on finding the perfect thing they needed. The box says 10+ for age, and that’s pretty accurate. Our 9yo really enjoyed himself, but he wasn’t thinking a couple turns ahead—he was going after what seemed valuable on each turn.

This game is fantastic for a family with teenagers—older kids who want to plan big swings, make clever moves, and reveal a master strategy or get the best possible exchange at the right time. It’s a cool way to get a little competitive in a fun environment. Even when your plans fall through or you make a bad trade, you can bounce back within a turn or two.

The dice rolls keep players on a roughly even footing, so it’s manageable to play with people of varying skills and investment, and as competitive strategy games go, you won’t find many that fall into the hour-or-two range rather than the two-to-four hour range.

Want to be a little cutthroat and competitive around the table and all in good fun? Catan is the game for you.

Helpful Hints

  • Trading can get confusing. Work on your shorthand for who is offering what and looking for what
  • Catan Junior is a much stronger fit for a younger group

Description

In Catan: Seafarers you control a group of bold seafaring settlers exploring and taming the wild, uncharted Isles of Catan. Each game brings you to new seas and new lands. You might even discover the precious gold fields (a very valuable new terrain).

Every game is unique and full of fun!

Embark on an epic quest to settle the home island, build ships, and chart nearby waters. Guide your brave seafarers to victory through cunning trades and wise development. Be first to create new sea lanes and settle the newly-discovered isles.

The best strategy and a nice dash of luck decide who will be the undisputed ruler of the rich Isles of Catan!

A game expansion for 3-4 players.

Capture the adventure of seafaring, exploration, and trade. Catan: Seafarers is a 3-4 player expansion for the best-selling Catan board game. Share some fun at sea!

A campaign with many varied scenarios awaits you. First, you head for new shores. You leave Catan, land on neighboring islands, and receive special victory points whenever you are the first to settle an island. Then your ships explore entirely uncharted regions and discover either sea or land. Soon, you will meet the mysterious forgotten tribe and court its favor. Meanwhile, the pirates are getting more intrusive. You defend yourself and conquer the pirate nests. For the glory of Catan, you then vie with your opponents to build the most imposing wonders of the world.

The Seafarers expansion contains new frame pieces, which - together with the frame pieces of the CATAN base game - can be used to assemble frames of variable size. Inside these frames, you lay out always varying combinations of islands, using the hexes of the CATAN base game and additional hexes of the expansion set - either as shown in the scenario diagrams or according to your own imagination.

 

15 ships of each player color are included. Building a ship costs 1 lumber and 1 wool. When you build a new ship, place it adjacent to a coastal settlement or a ship you have already built. As you can see, the rules for placing ships are similar to the rules for placing roads on land.

There is, however, one important exception: you may change the position of the front ships of a shipping route! That way, you can react more flexibly to your opponents' actions and perhaps be the first to reach an unsettled, productive island.

Other new features are the gold fields, which help the owners of adjacent settlements or cities obtain any type of resource, and the pirate, who causes unrest on the peaceful seas.

What's in the Box

  • 60 wooden ships
  • 1 pirate ship
  • 50 Catan chits
  • 10 number tokens
  • 10 harbor tokens
  • Color rules & scenarios
  • 6 frame pieces
  • 19 sea hexes
  • 11 unique terrain tiles

How to Play

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