Introduction
Like many, my introduction to modern “European Style” board gaming was through Settlers of Catan. I grew up playing board games, but besides a few exceptions, these games were pretty mainstream like Sorry, Monopoly, Stratego, and Axis and Allies. Settlers of Catan was my true “gateway” into boardgaming as a hobby. Over time, I have found games that I prefer to play, but Settlers remains one of my favorites and I consider it to be a true classic along with the likes of Risk, Stratego, Diplomacy, etc. I have played Settlers over 200 times, which is far more than any other boardgame that I own.
Because of my appreciation for the basic Settlers formula, I have not been a fan of either the Seafarers or the 5-6 player expansion. My personal belief about boardgaming is that the best games are those that use simple rules to offer players difficult (but fun!) choices. The Seafarers expansion adds a few rules that slightly increases the basic game’s complexity, but in my opinion doesn’t really provide a proportional increase in fun choices. The 5-6 player expansion merely adds “more of the same” gameplay, resulting in long, drawn out games that certainly don’t feel any more fun than the original.
Cities and Knights of Catan significantly differs from these previous expansions in that it dramatically increases the complexity of the core Settlers product. The changes in Cities and Knights are so significant that they even change the weight of Settlers from a medium-light game to a medium (or arguably even a medium-heavy) game. With this increase in complexity comes a ton of new strategies, new things to buy, and new difficult choices. The question then is this; do these changes make Settlers of Catan a better game?
I am reviewing the Mayfair Games edition of this game.
Presentation
The Cities and Knights expansion includes a wide variety of new components that add to or replace almost every element of the game. There are new pieces, cards, tiles, dice, rules, and even a small spiral bound notebook for each player to help keep track of the game’s numerous new upgrades. If one were to judge Cities and Knights based solely on the volume of components that you get for the price, it would definitely be rated very highly. As an expansion, the quality of these components is of very similar quality as the basic Settlers of Catan game.
The most noticeable of the new components are the many new wooden pieces. 366
As one would hope from an expansion, all of these pieces seem to be of identical quality to the original game’s pieces. Like the robber in the original game, the purpose of a few of the new pieces isn’t immediately obvious (especially the purple cone that represents the Merchant) but once players learn what these pieces represent they aren’t distracting. My only real complaint with the new pieces is that several of them must be stacked together and they are not that stable.
All of the new cards in Cities and Knights are of the same high quality materials as the original game’s cards, and many feature artwork that is superior to the base game’s cards. At the same time, all of these cards retain the same artistic style that was found in the previous game so despite the slight improvement in quality, nothing seems out of place.
The remaining components are of reasonable quality, but I did have a few complaints. The game includes a “frame” similar to the edges of a puzzle that players can place their tiles in. I would assume that the objective of this frame was to keep the tiles from shifting away from each other. Unfortunately, I didn’t find that the frame helped much; my pieces slipped from out of the frame and still separated from each other. After a few attempts, I just gave up and ignored the frame entirely. I also wasn’t overly impressed with the spiral bound notebooks that players track their upgrades with. The notebooks aren’t exactly unattractive (in fact, the printed artwork is pretty decent), they just feel very cheap. Because I was so pleased with the game’s cards, I would have preferred to use cards to track these upgrades.
Despite these very minor critiques, the overall presentation of the game is very positive. The sheer volume of components helps to provide a sense of value to the expansion and the components are of equal or slightly superior quality as the core Settlers game. Most important, the expansion manages to maintain the overall look and feel of the original game despite adding well over a hundred new components. While the expansion doesn’t approach the quality of a Days of Wonder or Fantasy Flight Games release, Cities and Knights has its own charm and its presentation is very consistent with the game that it expands.
Game Box and Components. 304