u/RoAndVic

Hi, all. This is a version of the Seafarers expansions’ ability to break the original Catan island into several smaller ones and give plenty of use to its ships mechanic. The original rulebook’s “Through the Desert” scenario already amounts to what we could call five “islands”, but one of them, the actual “through the desert” bit can be reached by road too. Here we do five actual islands, one for each of the four players, plus a fifth one in between. Here’s how it works.

First, build the frame of the board using every available frame piece from the Base game + the Seafarers expansion. Then, fill it with the tiles as in the picture, except for four 5-tile spaces at each corner of the map. This is where the players’ islands will be.

Next, players choose one of those 5-tile spaces and receive 5 tiles to fill it with, one for each basic resource (1 clay, 1 lumber, 1 ore, 1 sheep, 1 wheat). Players can place these tiles on their space in any disposition they want. Also, each player has got 5 number discs: a 1-pip disc (a 2 or a 12), a 2-pip disc (a 3 or an 11), a 3-pip disc (a 4 or a 10), a 4-pip disc (a 5 or a 9) and a 5-pip red disc (a 6 or an 8), which they can also distribute on their tiles as they prefer. Each island is completed with a 3:1 port at one of the ends. This will be each player’s native island. Then, in turns, players place two settlements on their island ONLY, according to normal Base Catan and Seafarers rules: distance, roads, ability to start with a ship if any of the initial settlements are on the seaside, etc (in the picture, in the southeast corner, you can see an example from the White player). Finally, players receive a starting hand of FIVE CARDS, ONE CARD PER RESOURCE, regardless of where they settled on their island.

The remaining pieces after building the four players’ island will have been used to build a fifth island in the middle of the map featuring one more tile for each resource, plus the two gold rivers, plus two of the three desert pieces. The third desert piece is flipped around and used as an extra sea piece. In the pictures you can see as close to a fully-balanced distribution as can be made, but players can agree to other ways of distributing the tiles and numbers: placing one tile each player, or fully random, or foggy, or misty (you can see the numbers but not the tile under them), or numberless until the first player touches/settles it and they choose an available number disc, etc.

The remaining ports afer set-up, which start out of the board, having not been built yet, are all the 2:1 ports and the fifth 3:1 port. Each time a player settles on a new island, that player can choose one of the remaining ports and place it at the site of their new settlement. This is a mechanic that we've been trying in other set-ups, and we're quite liking it as a way to shake things up.

And as an extra touch, and because there will be one number disc left after set-up, the first player to settle on one of the desert spots gets to put the remaining number disc (a 3 in the picture) on that desert tile and decide what resource it yields, turning it effectively into a sixth tile of that resource in the game. To indicate this, you can place a card of that resource from the bank on the hex, between the tile and the number. After that, any time any player builds up on that desert tile (be it a new settlement or be it a city upgrade), that player can change the resource the tile will produce from then on (so, the same player who chose the first resource when settling there can change the resource produced if they build a city on the same settlement spot or build a new settlement). If any player then builds up on the other desert tile, that player will move that number disc form the first desert to the second and choose the resource it produces, rendering the first desert tile unproductive again. Thus, only one of the two deserts can produce resources, the one with the number disc currently on it, and the resource being produced (as well as which desert actually produces anything) is likely to change several times over the game.

Example: Red places a settlement on the northern desert, puts the remaining number disc on it (for example a 3) and chooses wheat. That means that Red will collect a wheat card from the northern desert every time a 3 is rolled (if that tile is not blocked by the robber). Next, Blue settles on another corner of the same northern desert and changes wheat to ore. Now this former desert will produce ore, both for Red and Blue. Then, Blue upgrades his settlement to a city and changes the resource again, to sheep this time. Now the tile will give Blue two sheep and Red one sheep. After that, White settles the southern desert. White then moves the number disc to the southern desert, leaving the northern desert unproductive, and chooses clay as a resource. Then, White will get a clay from the southern desert when a 3 is rolled while Red and Blue don’t get anything. Then, Red upgrades his original settlement to a city and takes back the number disc to the northern desert, changing the resource back to ore, which Red now prefers, leaving White with no cards collected from the southern desert when a 3 is rolled. And finally, Orange is late to the game, but manages to settle in both deserts, so whenever anyone builds, the number disc will move accordingly, but Orange will always get something.

So, is there a play where you can get a new settlement, 2 VPs, a port of your choice and a tile that yields whatever you want, all at the same time? Yes, there is, although the latter bit might be taken away from you by any of your opponents.

The game in itself follows the usual Seafarers rules, with a pirate and a robber, and 2 VPs for settling in a new island (you can settle at your opponents’ islands too) and a win awarded to the first person to reach 14 VPs, like the “Through the Desert” original scenario.

Cheers and, as always, if anyone tries it, let us know how it went. And, as a puzzle question, how would you choose to place your resources and numbers in this scenario? And which do you think is the best-placed island to start from, and why? (We tried to keep it balanced, but some asymmetry is inevitable)

Other scenarios from RoAndVic:

Formula 1 Catan (for 2 players)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/1r8a7zv/yet_another_homebrewed_2player_catan_formula_1/

Catan’s Landing

https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/1rmbx5a/catans_landing_a_settlefromtheports_scenario/

Cycle of Life, aka Catan For All Seasons

https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/1ry57gl/a_catan_for_all_seasons_diceless_and_numberless/

Smallville

https://www.reddit.com/r/Catan/comments/1sk5yju/comment/ogshk14/

This question is not exactly the same as “what’s your favourite house rule”, although there might be some overlap. I’m interested in collecting deliberate actions that lead to cool effects on the game. For example, building a city is one already. Action: you build a city. Effect: you collect double the amount of resources from that intersection. Action: you use three knights. Effect: you get the LA tile, which might be taken from you later. Etc. Those are already basic game rules, but other people have come with interesting mechanics of their own, like “Largest Flock of Sheep”, for example, or “you can place the robber/pirate on a port”, or “you can use ten rocks to knock a city down to a settlement or destroy a settlement”, or “you can move an unconnected road”. To be specific, I’m looking for rules that can be triggered by a player during his turn, so “we place number discs randomly during set-up”, for example, wouldn’t be one of them, or “2s and 12s are the same to us”, or “we play with a 12-sided die”.

Let me know your impressive ones, the fun ones, the wacky ones, and the ones that absolutely positively should be part of an official rule set. Many thanks.