Catan: Starfarers Game Review

In 1995, Klaus Toiber introduced Settlers of Catan to the world. It won the Spiel des Jahres that year and, without any hyperbole, changed board games forever.

Four years later, Toiber launched his space game with The Starfarers of Catan. This version included a much larger board with planetary systems, new resources to collect, and one large rocket per player. Unfortunately, the production aspects let the game down. The rocket and the parts attached to it often break during repeated actions. As a result, Starfarers disappeared from the shelves, leaving behind a mixed legacy.

Settlers of Catan has since been renamed Catan with many expansions. People like me who have long heard that Starfarers is better than standard Catan have been patiently waiting for a Starfarers re-release. In 2019, this reissue finally hit stores. It came with improved plastic parts and a modular field.

But is Catan: Starfarers really any good? And can it be better than Catan?

Let's bring the game to the table to see for ourselves, shall we?

PREPARATION FOR THE GAME

You will start by creating a playing field. It consists of six 11" x 11" puzzle pieces that, when assembled, will have several empty spaces that you will fill in with matching dolly pieces.

The game's almanac suggests the setup for the first game, including which planetary systems (the pieces corresponding to the empty spaces) go where, as well as the positions of each player's starting pieces at the base of the field. We stuck with this and found it resulted in a well-balanced first game, but then changed the setup for subsequent games.

The planets in each planetary system have their own symbol. Find the matching disks and place them symbol-side up on each planet. Set all other discs aside.

Place all the resource cards in the tray provided, making sure the item cards go into the slot marked 2:1. Each of the other cards are slotted 3:1, meaning they can be exchanged for other cards throughout the game at this exchange rate. Take eight cards from each resource, shuffle them together and place them in the open hole in the tray. Deal three cards from this deck to each player.

Another tray is added for various upgraded missiles (Booster, Freight and Cannon) and broken pieces of glory. Shuffle the deck of Encounter cards and place them in the large hole at the end of the tray.

Sort the Friendship cards into four separate decks and place them on the side of the board. Place the corresponding standing tokens next to each deck.

Then each player chooses a color and takes all pieces of that color. These include colonies (large hex pieces), trading stations (smaller hex pieces), shipyards (hex rings that fit around the colony pieces), and transport ships (tiny missile ships). Place the round score markers on the number 4 on the board. The first player to score 15 points wins.

And there is Rocket.

Let's face it: As far as gaming components go, these rockets are pretty cool.

If you are playing for the first time, carefully unscrew the top of the rocket and drop 2 yellow, 1 blue, 1 red and 1 black small plastic balls into it. Then replace the top of the rocket. Now shake her. (You know what you want!)

Take one of the orange boosters from the rocket upgrade tray and add it to the bottom of one of the three rocket fins. Then everyone gets half a fame token. (Two tokens = 1 point)

Choose the first player and start the game.

GAME PROCESS

If you know how to play Catan, you will be familiar with most of how to play Starfarers.

During your turn, you roll two dice, take the total, and match that number to the numbers on the planets. Players who have a trading station, colony, or spaceport next to a number collect a resource that matches the color of the planet. The active player can then trade resources with other players and/or trade resources to upgrade their rocket or build spaceports, colonies or ships.

If you roll a seven in Starfarers, anyone with more than seven resource cards in their hand must discard half of their cards, rounded down.

An extra action in Starfarers also involves shaking your rocket. In the movement phase, you count the number of displayed balls. This number indicates how many hex corners on the board you can move each of your ships in space.

However, if one of these balls is black, no movement occurs. Instead, the player to your left draws the top encounter card from the deck and reads the top part aloud.

Many encounter cards contain scenarios (“You meet a merchant…” or “You meet a space pirate…”) that require you to make a choice. If, for example, you choose to fight a space pirate, you and the other player will shake your rockets and compare the total number of small plastic balls that appear in the base (red = 3; yellow = 2; blue = 1). ; black = 0). The Encounter card explains the results and consequences.

INTELLIGENCE

As you move into space, you can choose to contact those planetary systems I mentioned earlier. Landing on an intersection that is adjacent to one will turn all three discs face up. Some of these will be numbers, indicating that they will generate resources if a trading station, colony, or spaceport is located on a nearby intersection.

Some discs may have either the Ice Planet or the Pirate Base. In this case, planetary intersections with these markers are prohibited until they are resolved. In the case of an ice planet, one of your ships must be adjacent to it, and your rocket must be equipped with cargo containers equal to or greater than the number on the disc. At the pirate base, your missile must have a number of cannons equal to or greater than the specified number.

When terraforming an ice planet or defeating a pirate base, you first collect a token on the planet and get one point. You then replace it with a disc with the same symbol, placing it face up so that the number is visible.

WE ARE LOOKING FOR FRIENDS

The board is also populated by four outposts. Each Outpost has a central docking point and places where trading stations can be placed. As a goodwill gesture, when you do, you'll get to choose one of that alien race's bonus cards. All these cards give you a special power for the rest of the game.

The first player to reach an outpost will also receive a friend token for that race worth one point. This friend token remains yours unless another player places more trading stations on the outpost than you. If so, the other player claims a Friend. You lose a point and they get one.

CONCLUSIONS

Catan: Starfarers has a lot to recommend it. Let's start by studying the game.

As far as I've seen, the player hints in Starfarers are almost perfect. Even if you're new to the Catan system, the cards are easy to read. They explain player moves and show the resources needed to upgrade your rocket and build a trading station, colony or spaceport.

Like Catan, Starfarers comes with a Rulebook and an Almanac. The rulebook covers the basic rules and details the possibilities of a particular move. The Almanac is an alphabetical listing of all game items with details on each part of the game. If you have a question, it will be answered in one (if not both) of these guides.

Despite the number of planets in different planetary systems, the chance to get resources is much greater in Starfarers. More resources mean more trading opportunities. Also, the standard trade in the game is 3:1 (as opposed to Katana's 4:1). We were still short on certain resources, but there were more chances to build a spaceship or power up our rockets throughout the game.

I'm sure some people may disagree with this, but I welcomed the lack of development cards from Catan in Starfarers. Development cards in Catan are a hidden element of the game that can be obtained as you get closer to victory. I've never been a big fan of these cards, and not having them is a big plus for me. This keeps Starfarers as an open-ended game, which is my favorite style of play.

Starfarers, on the other hand, takes significantly longer to play than standard Catan. Our last game of Catan for three players took about an hour, a game of Starfarers with the same number of players took about 2.5 hours. (Our first four-player game, played by people familiar with Catan, took 3.5 hours.)

Despite the increased access to resources, it will not be enough to stay only on the initial resources. Therefore, you will need to build spaceships and move them to other planets. Although both games take place within a limited field, the field of Starfarers is many times larger than the field of Catan.

Clash cards often pause the game (again, they are drawn when a black orb appears at the base of your rocket), interrupting the flow of the game. Also, many Encounter cards are duplicates. With the attention to detail the team put into the rest of the game, repeating these frequently drawn cards just doesn't make sense. It became something of a running joke every time an Encounter card was drawn, with people around the table saying “You encounter a trader…” before the card was even read.

If there were a greater variety of Encounters, they would be approached with some degree of caution. As it was, even the worst results were only mildly annoying and hardly worth the effort.

Going back to the questions I posed at the beginning of this review, "Is Catan: Starfarers really good?" So. With Starfarers, Toiber took the concepts of its predecessor and turned it into a great adventure game.

This leaves me wondering, "Can it be better than Catan?" For me, Starfarers is better than Catan. On my first playthrough, I realized that I had more fun with Starfarers than I had with Catan in a long time. This wasn't just because of a fancy rocket or new components, it was because the openness of the board demanded exploration, and with it, new things to discover.

Another thing I realized during a recent game of standard Catan was that in Starfarers I could actively improve my position every turn. In Catan, you roll two dice. You may or may not get the resource. You then pass the die to the next player. I've played too many games of Catan where the right numbers didn't appear for too many turns, meaning I had to sit and wait.

In Starfarers, you can push your transport ships further into space each time. This sense of free will is a fundamental change for the better. We're in space, and we're exploring it every step of the way, as you'd expect.

If you like Catan, I recommend you buy Catan: Starfarers. I think you'll quickly notice the differences and, despite the added time, you'll find that Starfarers is a more enjoyable game.