Settlers of Catan: Barbarians and Traders Expansion

by John Vincent
(NY NY, USA)

Game:
Settlers of Catan: Barbarians and Traders Expansion
Board game manufacturer:
Mayfair
Number of players:
2+

Quick verdict

If you can't get enough of the award-winning Catan, then the Settlers of Catan: Barbarians and Traders Expansion will definitely satisfy your need for even more cutthroat diplomacy and cunning trades! This edition collects a number of existing and new expansions and variants into one seamless package.

The game and gameplay

Five entirely unique scenarios are included in this package.

The Fishermen of Catan allows water tiles to be transformed into useful fishing grounds for added resources.

The Rivers of Catan adds rivers to some tiles, which allow you to accumulate gold points, which work toward another valuable victory point.

The Great Caravan forms caravan routes through Catan, which gives settlements and cities built alongside them one extra victory point!

The new Barbarian Invasion allows barbarians and knights to wage war over your precious territory-- but who will emerge victorious?

The last, and eponymous, scenario is Traders and Barbarians, where Cataners try to reconstruct a castle using marble, tools, sand and glass.

Four cool variants are included with the Settlers of Catan: Barbarians and Traders Expansion, which change some basic gameplay mechanics that you've grown accustomed to in Catan. If you want to win, you can't be complacent and rely on old strategies!

Catan for Two adds in new two-player rules -- this lets not only smaller, but more intimate games occur. Of course, Commercial Chips are added to facilitate trade with an unbiased 3rd-party, to avoid disagreements.

Catan Event Cards allow you to replace the dice with some cards instead, which lowers the random nature of the game, but increases strategy! Also, Harbormaster Cards give you two victory points for controlling harbors, like in the existing Atlantis expansion.

Last but not least, the Friendly Robber appears! This merciful variant stops the robber from stealing from players with two victory points, so everyone can get a leg up and compete. Each of these variants could easily be applied to your next game of Settlers.

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Pros and Cons

The biggest con for this expansion is that many of the variants already exist elsewhere. It is also worth mentioned that this expansion requires you own the original Settlers of Catan.

Nonetheless, having all of these variants all together, with clear rules and strategies, is very convenient for the Catan enthusiast who'd rather play than track down a bunch of obscure sets.

Also, this set contains a number of really useful Catan pieces, like wagons, new regions, new cards and special tokens for victory points, which could augment even a normal game of Catan, or one based on a different expansion entirely. Maybe you can create your own mind-boggling rules?

The verdict

If you're reading this review then you probably love Catan, so the Settlers of Catan: Barbarians and Traders Expansion is right for you. If you don't know Settlers of Catan, then get that instead-- and when you're ready, pick up this set of intriguing strategic variants!