Game Review: Catan Event Cards

By Tom Vasel
August 21, 2006

Publishers: Kosmos / /www.kosmos.de and Mayfair Games / www.mayfairgames.com
Designer: Klaus Teuber
Price: 5.00 US$

Rating: 6 / 10

(I’m assuming that the reader already knows how to play Settlers of Catan)

Eleven years later, and Settlers of Catan is still going strong. With hundreds of variants, many expansions and spin-offs, it truly is a board gaming sensation. Yet the single complaint that I’ve heard the most is about the luck involved in the game. Personally, the luck in Catan isn’t that big of a deal, but there are occasional times in which I’ve seen a string of the same number rolled time after time, regardless of the odds. For this, I’ve preferred a Deck of Dice, even though they do take a bit of fun out of the game - rolling dice is very entertaining for some folk.

Mayfair has now produced their own version of the Deck of Dice, calling them the Catan Event Cards (Mayfair Games, 2006 - Klaus Teuber). It’s a deck of thirty-seven cards that replaces the dice rolled in the Settlers game. Thirty-six cards are representative of the thirty-six different combinations that can be rolled with two six-sided dice, along with events that can affect the game.

To add the cards to a Settlers game, five cards are removed from the deck randomly, and a special “New Year” card is placed on top of them, with the other thirty-one cards placed on top of that. Each turn, the top card of this deck is turned over to show the die roll, rather than actually rolling the dice. If there is an event on the card, that event occurs before the number is resolved.

The events are:
- Catan Prospers: Basically, sixteen of the cards have NO event. This is a good thing, in my opinion, because too many events could bog the game down.
- Plentiful Year: Every player gets one resource of their choice.
- Conflict: The player with the Largest Army takes one resource from every player. This is yet another reason to get the Largest Army, and could possibly change the strategy of some players.
- Robber Flees: The robber moves to a desert tile. This is especially useful when playing with the Seafarers expansion, where the robber can often stay in the same spot for many turns.
- Tournament: The player with the most soldiers takes one resource from the bank.
- Trade Advantage: The player with the Longest Road takes one resource card from another player.
- Earthquake: Every player must turn one of their roads sideways, which is damaged and must be “repaired” by the player paying one lumber and one brick; or they can’t build anymore roads. This is more of an annoyance than anything else, especially if a player is about to build a new settlement.
- Epidemic: Cities only produce one resource for each hex this turn. Not sure about this card, as it slows the game down slightly. Perhaps a “catch up to the leader” type of card?
- Good Neighbors: Each player gives one resource of their choice to the player on their left. This card I like, as it forces some movement of the cards.
- Calm Seas: The player with the most harbors receives a resource card of their choice.
- Neighborly Assistance: The player with the most victory points gives all players with fewer victory points one resource card each. Again, this is another “catch up” type of card.

Each card also mentions special effects if the Cities and Knights expansion is being used. The cards are about the same size as the resource cards and are easy to handle, with more of the “Catan” style of artwork on them. The rules are included on an extra card, but everything is very self-explanatory.

I’ve always been a proponent of the Deck of Dice style play in Settlers, because it is a form of controlled randomness, since one never knows what numbers are going to come up; but the spread is more even. Putting the New Year card in, which forces the deck to be reshuffled when it is drawn, keeps players from completely card counting; but a bit of that can still be done. Say, for example, the “12” card (of which there is only one) is drawn first, then you can be assured that it won’t be drawn again for at least thirty turns. This may or may not please players, and I’ve found that most players are split on their opinions of the usage of a Deck of Dice.

The events, on the other hand, are nice, because they are simple and break up the sometimes monotony of a Settlers game. They push the harbors and Largest Army, which gives players more incentive to go for both, which takes some emphasis off the seemingly universal Longest Road envy. I like the deck enough to ask to use it in every game of Settlers I play (including Simply Catan and Settlers of Canaan) but will defer if someone really wants to use dice. I do wish that the deck was more fully compatible with Starfarers of Catan, my favorite version of Settlers; as the events don’t really work.

The game also comes with several scoring cards (with advertisements for other Mayfair Games on their reverse) that can be used, along with some tokens, to keep track of players’ points. Really, I never thought this to be a problem in Settlers games, and using tokens and the cards almost is more trouble than it’s worth. I do suspect that some people will enjoy them, and it does give you a little more value for price of the deck (currently $5).

My overall opinion is that the Catan Event Deck is not a necessary addition to a Settlers game, but it does provide a useful tool for those who hate rolling dice. It’s better than a generic Deck of Dice, because of the Catan specific events; but those can be ignored so that the deck can be used with another game. However, since I only really pushed for the Deck of Dice to be used in Catan games, the Catan Event Deck is superior and will see play often in our games. It’s a nice addition and adds a small bit of variety without making any drastic changes. And you’ll finally stop hearing one player complain about the fact that a “6” is never being rolled!

© 2006 Tom Vasel

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Comments:

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I found the bias toward the Largest Army to be distastful. There are 2 ‘plus’ events for LA, and no minuses. For Longest Road, 1 plus and .5 (?) minuses. I give Earthquake a -.5 due to it’s road building restriction; road building may not be as vital to the ‘development card/army’ player. BTW the number of events in the deck is variable.. Robber Flees!(2), Neighborly Assistance(2), Conflict (1), Plentiful Year(1), Calm Seas(2), Trade Advantage(1), Tourny(1), Good Neighbors(1), Earthquake(1) & Epidemic (2! on a 6 & 8 no less) Posted by Bob Trezise on Aug 22, 2006 at 02:23 AM | #

That does seem like a pretty strong bias.  Still, I’ll give it a shot as is, and if it is too much, we can always declare one of the largest army advantages null and void. The earthquake card might give one of our players nightmarish flashbacks to a particularly long game of Iron Dragon we once played. Posted by Thomas Pancoast on Aug 23, 2006 at 05:43 AM | #

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