Catan Board Game: Gallery Edition, Coming in September
Settlers of Catan has sold more than 15 million copies since its debut in 1995, but this astounding sales total is just the beginning – or at least that’s the thinking at Mayfair Games, which plans to release the Catan Board Game: Gallery Edition on September 18.
While this new release keeps all the major elements of Catan – resource production, trading, development cards, and road-, settlement- and city-building – the game has been streamlined for a mainstream market: The 19 hexes that make up the island are fixed on six pieces that fit together in various ways, although obviously not as many as in the base game. The numbers for resource development are fixed on the hexes. The playing pieces will be plastic, not wood.
Most important of all for mainstream acceptance, the game should retail for $30-33. (Avalon Hill’s new editions of Diplomacy and Acquire also bore a $30 price point as they were aimed outside the core audience of gamers.) Interestingly, the Catan Board Game: Gallery Edition uses a smaller hex size than Catan itself, which means that anyone who does get hooked on this game would have to rebuy the base game before being able to move on to the expansions. I guess Mayfair hopes that anyone eager enough to do this will likely pass on the Gallery Edition to someone else to keep spreading the word…
This game has been added to Gone Cardboard.
Posted by W. Eric Martin on Jul 17, 2008 at 11:00 PM in Game News, Game Announcements / 3849
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I think making it incompatible with the expansions will scare people off to dig deeper into the whole Catan line. Posted by Surya Van Lierde on Jul 18, 2008 at 05:52 AM | #
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Why the name “Gallery Edition”? Posted by Frank Branham on Jul 18, 2008 at 09:59 AM | #
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What’s the difference between this and Simply Catan, from SimplyFun? It sounds tremendously similar… Posted by Tom Vasel on Jul 18, 2008 at 10:10 AM | #
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I agree with Tom. This smells of Simply Catan. I wonder if this is a marketing ploy by Mayfair to have SimplyFun drop their version and sell Mayfair’s. Posted by Kevin Rutherford on Jul 18, 2008 at 10:32 AM | #
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Well, it also sounds like versions of Catan that Kosmos has put out (maybe the travel version?). So the link to Kosmos is there. Given that most of SimplyFun’s line is reprints/renamings of existing designs, it’s hard to see anything too nefarious here. But maybe I’m being naive. Posted by Larry Levy on Jul 18, 2008 at 10:42 AM | #
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Tom, Simply Catan had hex strips, so the island creation was more restricted than in the Gallery Edition. Simply Catan also left out the development deck in the base game, and the game ended when someone hit 7 vp. Most importantly, Simply Catan was available only through SimplyFun sellers and cost $42, while Mayfair sounds like it’s swinging for larger mainstream markets with this release and its $30 price tag. The goal is the same as SimplyFun’s – get Catan in front of an audience unfamiliar with the game – but the approaches are different. Why call it a Gallery Edition, Frank? I don’t know – because it’s better than Tabloid Edition? Maybe Mayfair wants to put the first-time player in an arty frame of mind, wants to have that player think of the designer as an artist rather than think of the game as just another product. Eric Posted by W. Eric Martin on Jul 18, 2008 at 10:43 AM | #
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They could call it the “superstore edition” but then they’d have to bring the pricetag down to $20. Because of these stores, that’s what the pubic now expects, unfortunately. Note to self--start collecting all of the 4 Euro copies I see at flea markets and send with parents to US for ebay. Posted by Jeff Allers on Jul 18, 2008 at 02:39 PM | #
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