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Catan: Starfarers
120m - 120m
2 - 4 Players
Ages 14+
In games with a trading mechanic, the players can exchange game items between each other.
Trading
99.00
€
30 day low:
Out of stock
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Kickstarter – Gamefound
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FuzzyLlamaReviews
What an enjoyable version of Catan! I had this one on my radar for a long while (basically since it released) and finally snagged it on sale. So, to give some background, Catan was more or less a gateway game for me into the wide world of modern board gaming. Before that, it was monopoly, risk, etc. Now, that said, I'm not in love with basic Catan (I rated it a 5). It was and is an interesting game that I believe really elevated board games and opened the eyes of many to them. However, once you really delve into modern board games you can see that it's a pretty basic game with rolling dice to collect cards/resources to build. Now, with that history lesson aside let's discuss this version. So, I really love what they've done with the basic Catan formula for Starfarers. I've never played the Starfarers of Catan (original version) so I won't be making any comparisons here, just with original base Catan. With this version you have a large, variable board setup with planets you can explore so you can drop bases down next to them to try and accrue more resources. Which, isn't unlike OG Catan where you build more houses next to areas to increase your chances at getting resource cards. One of the big differences here is that each players has their own large plastic starship figure they can build upon to make their starships on the board "better". This might seem kinda gimmicky to some but I really loved it. So, with those resources you collect, you can spend them to retrofit your ship with boosters to speed it up, storage containers to allow you to trade with the alien life or terraform ice planets, or weapons to go on the offensive against space pirates. Let's talk about each of these a bit to give you a better idea of the differences in this game from OG Catan. When you build boosters you can pluck a booster part from the supply and attach it to you ship model. As mentioned this ship model is really cool. You see during your movement phase you will turn it upside down and then back upright. It will drop 2 little colored balls to the base of the ship. And depending on the colors, depends on how far you can move on your turn + how many boosters you have built onto your ship. Now, if you reveal a black ball, the person to your left draws a tarot sized event card and you get to make some hard choices such as going up against pirates or receive a visiting merchant etc. Plus you still get a base of 3 movement regardless if you drop an event ball. In other words, you are always gonna be moving on your turn if you desire. The storage containers you can attach allow you to treat with the local alien life on certain tiles. There are five different alien lifeforms, each with their own tiles to visit and each with five unique helpful cards you can choose from. You must have at least one container attached to your ship to be able to treat with them and then +1 container for each OTHER player that has already treated with them. To treat with them you must have built a Trade ship and moved it into the center of their respective tile, and then just drop off a trade post in one of the five open spaces on their tile. Then you get to cycle through their available cards and pick one that you want, for ongoing effects the rest of the game. Another benefit is that the first person to trade with them get's 2 VP's BUT those VP's can be snatched away if another person has more trade posts there. The second thing containers are used for is terraforming ice planets. Now, this sounds much cooler than it actually is in practice. Basically, when players are out exploring planets they will flip the tokens over and reveal numbers, pirates or ice planet tokens. The ice planet tokens just show the container icon and a number and if you have equal to or more containers than the number shown, you can collect that token (worth a VP) and settle on that planet. Nothing out of this world exciting BUT it does give you an additional reason to build containers.....although admittedly a much more rare occurrence than trading with the aliens. The last piece you can add to your ship are the weapons. There are a couple reasons for these similar to the containers. The first is exactly like the terraforming except you do this with the pirate tokens that will appear on planets. The second is for the multitude of possible pirate attacks from event cards. Now, I haven't looked through all the event cards or anything but during one game about half the event cards drawn were pirate attacks which basically test your weapon strength. You perform the same action as you would for movement by revealing the ship balls + how many weapons you have attached. If you beat out a certain number or perhaps even another player, then you win something. The other structures you can build are new colony ships to drop more colonies next to planets, trade ships for treating with the aliens, upgrading colonies to space ports so you can build MORE ships to explore and trade in an ever increasing expansion on the board. Each new colony you build nets you a VP, so expansion is key. Overall, I very thoroughly enjoyed this version of Catan. And even though it's still got that same mechanism of rolling two dice and everyone checks where they have colonies to see what kind of resource card they draw, it felt like you could do MORE. The current players turn they get to draw extra cards right off the bat. If a player rolls a 7 then get to just steal a random card from someone BUT everyone else still gets to draw a random card. So, no matter what on your turn you get to draw cards even if you don't roll what you need. It kept the game moving and much more engaging and with all you can build/craft, it never felt like there were wasted turns.
antooki
Genuinely enjoy this game as a Catan 2.0 or a Catan+. Lots of great elements from the original classic, coupled with some neat little upgrades and extensions from various different expansions. The theme fits nicely too which is always good
CHRISDH
Maybe I’m missing something but this is a let down for me. The game is definitely highly produced and looks good. I think where It fails is by having too many random elements. First, rolling the dice for resources will always be a random element, but players can spread to cover more numbers. In Starfarers there is the ship that will give a random speed, then there are random encounter cards that just give stuff or take it away. This I dislike. The encounter cards are too random and are by chance. For a game that can run 120 minutes and have 3 random things going on feels like too much for me. Now, there is some good going on in here, and I can still see myself playing occasionally, but I prefer the vanilla, classic Catan as if right now.