The resource chits are color coded and feature production numbers for the planets nothing fancy here. The encounter cards have nice little flow charts to lead you through the encounters.Ĭhits & Chips: These cardboard pieces are printed on nice cardboard which matches the gameboard. The friendship cards make good use of icons as shorthand for what they do. The resource cards clearly match planet color with resource produced (though there are a few flaws: the red and orange planets are a littlle too similarly colored, and the resources in this case are obscure enough, including items like "carbon" and "trade goods" that the icons that represent them aren't entirely intuitive). As tends to be the case with the Catan games, the cards all make very good use of icons. The friendship and resource cards are small, while the encounter cards are oversized. The colors (red, green, blue, and yellow) are a bit too bright for me I might even call them garish.Ĭards: All of the cards are printed on sturdy cardstock and feature rounded corners. The pieces are all well-sculpted, and show what you can do when you're using plastic instead of wood. Player Game Pieces: Each player gets 23 hard plastic pieces in his color, including 9 colonies, 7 trading outposts, 3 spaceport rings (which easily slip around the colonies), 3 transporters (which fit right on top of the colonies and trading outposts), and 1 victory point marker (which goes on the victory point track). The boosters and cannons are made of a soft plastic which looks much more durable than the hard plastic the rest of the pieces are composed of. They're each monotone, but nicely sculpted. Cannons set in the top, fame rings slide down the ship's prow, freight rings latch onto the side, and boosters clip on the bottom. The four "expansion piece" components all clip onto the mother ship in various ways. A couple had broken off after just a few games of normal usage (and according to other Internet comments, this has been a common issue). In addition the clips used to hold the boosters are small and brittle. The glue is weak, and so one of our ships flew apart when it was "rolled". Unfortunately the mother ships aren't made of the best material.
![starfarers of catan starfarers of catan](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/515JKFRYC2L._AC_SY450_.jpg)
Personally, I find it silly, and would have preferred a cardboard technology display and the accompanying lower price point. It also marks your color and is your individual randomizer. The mother ship itself is a sort of scoreboard that you use to keep track of the various technological advances you've made. (When I first reviewed this game, I had a very negative reaction to the plastic, but that's since been tempered as more European games have come out featuring plastic pieces, including the newest German version of Settlers of Catan). Given the genre of this game and the huge number of pieces, it's pretty obvious why plastic was used. plastic is always a trade-off the one feels more natural while the other allows for much finer sculpting. Mother Ships & Expansions: The ships and expansions (as well as the soon to be described player pieces) are all made out of plastic, which will probably come as a shock to the die-hard Settlers player. The board itself is made out of solid, textured cardboard which appears to be somewhat water resistant.
![starfarers of catan starfarers of catan](https://i.imgur.com/7pw0Lbd.jpg)
Overall the standard eye for ease of use that can be found throughout the Catan family is here. A victory point track makes it easy to keep track of who's winning, something I wish all the Catan games had, while other boxes on the board list victory conditions. Also depicted are the trading outposts of four alien races.
![starfarers of catan starfarers of catan](https://d3t32hsnjxo7q6.cloudfront.net/i/b509417339b25a7cfd0fd694a5ba6eff_ra,w403,h806_pa,w403,h806.jpeg)
At one side are the clusters of close-Earth colonies, while scattered about the rest of the board are three-planet clusters intended for exploration and colonization.
![starfarers of catan starfarers of catan](https://thepopinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/CatanStudios_Starfarers_Featured.jpg)
Game Board: The gameboard shows a fairly plain starfield. Starfarers of Catan comes with a very large set of components, including: This is a revision/expansion of a review I wrote in November, 2002. As with the rest of the Catan family, it was originally printed in Germany by Kosmos. Starfarers is a totally standalone game that doesn't require the original Settlers game in any way. The Starfarers of Catan is a Catan-mechanic game, meaning that it uses many of the same concepts of resource production and resource usage as the original The Settlers of Catan, but otherwise may vary widely from the original with new game systems. In Klaus Teuber's The Starfarers of Catan, players are given the opportunity to explore the galaxy, meet alien races, and otherwise engage in science-fiction board gaming.