Catan: Cities and Knights Expansion Review

Game Review – Catan: Cities & Knights

Mechanics: Trading/Economic

Game difficulty: medium

Game duration: 90-120 min

Number of players: 3-4

Best number of players: 4

Language: is a Latvian edition

Undeniably, the queen of Latvian family games has been Catan for many years - it has been able to tear countless families away from the TV screens in the evenings, and has also created more than one fight when the robber was placed on your most profitable field. While I think Catan is a very complete game on its own, it can be made much more serious. This time about "Catan on steroids" or the expansion: "Cities & Knights"

Subject matter

Cities & Knights is like a part or continuation of the 2nd story of Catan. The previous settlers have settled on the island, and now they have the opportunity to develop cities, produce new resources, establish knights' guilds and promote prosperity, but - where there is prosperity, there is always someone who wants a part of it, so now the settlers of Catan are ambushed by robbers, which are inevitable approaching and ready to mix and burn the players' defenseless cities.

Components

The expansion has a huge variety of new elements that are in keeping with the usual, thick and quality components of Catan. I have first release Catan myself, but even the latest release has everything easily compatible with the base game. In the expansion, players are given city books that are developed in parallel and give access to new three types of development cards, there are three new types of resources, city walls and knights. The expansion brings a lot of new and interesting elements that significantly refresh and transform the game.

Mechanics

The first big difference is that cities don't produce two identical resources, but one old and one new. For example, ore fields yield both ore and money cards. These new resources are used to develop city books, the level of development of which depends on how many development cards can be obtained.

It's the development cards that are the coolest part of the expansion. If the only interesting things in the basic Catan are road building, monopoly and discovery, this expansion has three blocks of different crazy development cards, such as "medicine", which allows you to build a city in 3 cards, or "alchemist", which allows you not to throw, but put the dice numbers on yourself. The cards are really cool, they create a lot of new possibilities and strategy maneuvers. Many different new opportunities open up for the player during the journey.

Also new is a third die to indicate which development cards will be available or that barbarians are approaching the Isle of Catan. Barbarians are a threat to all of Catan's inhabitants, so players have the option to recruit knights. It is important that the number of knights is greater than or equal to the number of cities, otherwise the most passive defender will have the city demolished. Knights are a necessity where no one wants to invest and spend resources, but no one wants to be the weakest defender either.

All in all, Catana has always been a great game to play for the whole family as there are opportunities to win for both young and old, while Cities & Knights keeps that special but makes the game much richer for different choices. This is an opportunity to expand a good game and try to play something more serious together with the family and learn several new game concepts.

Multiplayer

Catan in its various guises is one of my most played games and this expansion only makes the game richer. In principle, with the expansion, players have two versions of Catan - the usual and the more strategic. For even more multiplayer, I recommend buying the Seafarers expansion, which allows you to create the craziest maps and sail through them.

Rating

When we first bought this expansion as a family a long time ago, we only played Catan that way for a long time, but over time we learned to appreciate the elegant simplicity of the base game as well. I definitely recommend adding Catan, because it will still be available to everyone, both grandparents and grandchildren, but there will also be a version with much more elements and more strategic options.

You can buy the game in Brain Games stores on the 1st floor of Rīga Plaza or K. Barona Street 55, or in the online store*: Catan: Cities & Knights

Board Game Geek rating: 7.5

Author: Kristaps Auzāns

Images courtesy of Brain Games and Board Game Geek

* Free delivery throughout Latvia.