Note that if wheat looks to be in short supply (due to 0 or 1 marquee numbers), other players WILL try and restrict your access to it via trading. © 2020 Ultra BoardGames. It is important to pick a spot that will produce a lot of resources for you. This means, there is a 50% chance per turn for the barbarian ship to come one step closer to Catan. The aquaduct is also the strongest special ability, especially if you are lacking a 6 or and 8. It is often better to take a 6 or an 8 on a resource you don't need more of than a 2, 3, 11, or 12 on one you do. Therefore, they stay on the island where they were built. Personally, I am not a big fan of such variants. One consideration that a lot of people miss is how important the progress tracks really are - particularily at the start of the game. But if you can use it to your advantage, definitely do! Don't underestimate the power of the yellow progress track, especially early in the game. Consequently, we play that the robber steals your production, but it still counts as production, so you would not get to use the aquaduct if your only production is stolen by the robber. The game ends when a player has acquired 15 Victory Points. In “Explorers & Pirates,” building cities is not allowed; you build harbor settlements instead. When multiplied by 6 players, this can really bog down the game significantly and extend the game out to the 3 hour point. The Robber is also unaffected by any cards or Knights. This should make for a balanced resource distribution. Don't telegraph your moves too far in advance. Each player has just finished building a settlement and a city, when dark clouds gather over the peaceful island of Catan. Besides collecting more resources, unscrupulous opponents have been known to play two roads (or a road building card) and build a settlement on the spot you were wanting to build on! Especially given how streaky the dice can be over the short term - having duplicates of more than one number can be painful when that number doesn't show up for a long time. Road Building: You may only build roads – not ships. 08/03/2020. Wheat is often useful for trading to other players, and ore is important to keep for yourself for upgrading to cities and building knights. Cards such as “Merchant,” “Merchant Fleet,” “Trade Monopoly,” or “Resource Monopoly” create advantages with regards to trade. Grain is very important in terms of defending Catan. We remove the intrigue card from the blue deck. For a city on a gold river field, one always receives only raw materials, never merchandise. The aquaduct is incredibly powerful, especially if you are missing a marquee number (or two!). If absolutely necessary, you can move a knight to a spot where you want to build a settlement but don't have the resources for yet. One major appeal of the game is attributable precisely to the threat of the barbarian army, which players have to prepare for as early as possible in the game and include in their strategic planning. Only cities and metropolises may have walls, and each city or metropolis can only have one wall, up to a total of three walls per player. If you place the pirate ship, the owner of the pirate ship that previously occupied the sea hex must return it to his supply. The official Kosmos ruling is that if the robber smooshes your production, and you have the aquaduct, you can use the aquaduct to draw a card of your choice. When determining the strength of the barbarians, all cities are considered – that is, the cities on the starting island as well as the cities in the discovered areas. The expansion can also be combined with “CATAN® - Seafarers” and “CATAN® - Traders & Barbarians.” Requires the CATAN® base game to play. Don't let players know you're close to winning if possible. In addition, under the “Explorers & Pirates” rules, you receive 1 gold. Our mission is to produce engaging articles like reviews, tips and tricks, game rules, strategies, etc. Do not rush this. This site is dedicated to promoting board games. Even if they aren't precisely what you need, maybe you will be able to trade for what you do need. Furthermore, it's one of the two resources that still gets double production from cities, and city walls aren't as useful as the other improvements. I recommend to calculate the victory points required to win the game as follows: When combining scenario 4 of the “Explorers & Pirates” with “Cities & Knights,” this would result in 20 victory points. This counts for the Pirate Ship as well, should it also be used in the game". Medicine: By paying 1 ore and 1 grain, you can convert a settlement into a harbor settlement. My group plays with three house rules (and the official errata rule mentioned above): We changed the robber/aquaduct rule. The aquaduct allows you to draw a card if you get no production on any roll that isn't a 7. Most essential to the game is the basic understanding of probability. This pays for itself very quickly. Many of the "Traders & Barbarians" scenarios combine well with "Cities & Knights" and the scenarios of the Seafarers expansion. This unfortunate event always affects the player who had the lowest total strength of active knights when the barbarians attacked. If you have the “Fast Gold” advantage, instead of a resource you may also sell a commodity for 1 gold. Do whatever it takes. This typically happens when three different players grab the metropolises, and another player grabs the longest road. It's worth your time to make a trade that will allow you to flip the first page of something, even if you have to trade 2 to 1 or worse -- you only need one commodity to flip that first page, and the benefits are immense. That means you will likely need either the longest road, or a metropolis. If the knights of all players combined have enough strength points to defeat the barbarian army, the danger is averted for the moment. Cities and Knights (CaK) is my gaming group's favorite board game, and as a result, I feel pretty confident about write a strategy guide based on my experiences. Flourishing trade brings prosperity to Catan. You can choose whether to upgrade a coastal settlement to a city or to a harbor settlement. Settlers has a strong element of luck. Combination of “The Caravans” with “Cities & Knights” Playable; The nomads collect brick and lumber instead of wool and grain. Nevertheless, the owner of the line of ships may not dissolve it by transferring his ships, which are adjacent to the foreign knight. Each player has just finished building a settlement and a city, when dark clouds gather over the peaceful island of Catan. I didn't do badly, but I didn't do great either. City walls are a minor addition to Cities and Knights that increase the number of resource and commodity cards a player is allowed in their hand before having to discard on a roll of 7. Unlike basic settlers, where development cards were largely an optional route, the progress cards in cities and knights are an integral part of the game, and you WILL lose if you don't consider them an essential part of your strategy. If you can't do that, get your settlement up as soon as possible. Wheat is of high necessity because it's imperitive to be able to activate your knights before the barbarians attack. Converting a settlement into a city costs you 2 ore and 1 grain. Place your knights adjacent to wherever you think the robber is most likely to show up. Crews are not counted for the defense of the cities against the barbarians. In CaK, it's often better to take two good numbers on the coast than three mediocre ones in the middle -- in fact, with the aquaduct, it's often better NOT to have any 2s, 3s, 11s, or 12s. There are two primary rules that are often missed by new gaming groups. Welcome to the Almost Complete Cities and Knights Strategy Guide. The exploratory scenarios and all other scenarios with many smaller islands are unsuitable. 3 sides of the event die show the barbarian ship. If a player deactivates an active knight that borders the field with the pirate, he may move the pirate. look. This is especially true in the beginning of the game when you need to get your first knight built. Likewise, try to position your city so it's on at least two resources that generate commodities. That is: Each dot on the tile (in the Mayfair version) represents a 1/36 chance of that number being rolled on someone's turn. Theoretically, it is possible to combine the two expansions and thus create a game that provides an even larger variety of strategies and possibilities to win. It's better if players don't know you're in contention for it. Klaus Teuber besucht den Kosmos Shop in Stuttgart, Cities & Knights – Game Rules & Almanac (3-4 Players), Klaus Teuber im Interview mit dem Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Viele Aktionen für CATAN auf der SPIEL.Digital, Hinweis zur laufenden Turniersaison bezüglich der COVID‐19‐Pandemie (Update), Klaus Teuber liest aus seinem Buch "Mein Weg nach CATAN", Riesiges CATAN Feld auf der Insel Mainau eröffnet. In order to establish a metropolis (which is placed on top of a city), the players first need to improve their cities. That is: 1.1. Follow us on: However, if the Catanian knights are too weak, a city will be raided and downgraded to a settlement. And especially don't forget to tell veteran players about them - that's a great way to make them mad. If you want to combine these two expansions, you should be aware that the resulting game is rather complex and perhaps even a bit confusing. But if you like deterministic games, Cities and Knights isn't any better than basic Settlers in this regard. Consequently, there is usually ample wood supplies to go around, unless there is a general shortage of marquee wood spaces on the board. Each ring on the token counts as one strength point. Subsequent conversion of a city into a harbor settlement or vice versa is prohibited. If you've played settlers enough times, two primary things become clear: 1. the probabilities for the numbers follows a simple distribution shaped like the ^ (caret) symbol. The first is an official errata rule change: "When playing with the Cities & Knights expansion, the Robber cannot be moved at all until the barbarians reach Catan for the first time. This is only a good idea if wood or brick are exceedingly rare and your opponents are likely to steal the resource out of your hand, or if there's no competition for the spot and you're exceeding your card limit. On the sheep side of things, the general uselessness of sheep compared to the other resources means a lower supply doesn't hurt things much. It's better to build to the 11th point, and then get 2 victory points on one turn (build a settlement and/or city, grab the longest road, flip up a merchant card, steal a metropolis, etc..).. You can often catch players unaware this way. If you have at least 2 more knights than another player, consider deactivating 1 if it makes the difference between winning and losing to the barbarians. The best indicator of this is to count the number of dots for each resource - however, in practice, players tend to cluster around the high production numbers and avoid the low production ones - consequently, a good overall view of the potential supply of a resource can be obtained by noting which resources have marquee numbers on them (5, 6, 8, and 9). Yellow: The yellow track is primarily focused on production and trading of resources and commodities. Knights are of no use as long as you don't have grain to activate them. Such preparation will help to avoid being the target of the barbarian army, i.e., losing a city. In reality, this means that you have good production on at least 4 of the 5 resources. A marquee ore spot surrounded by garbage still makes an excellent second spot, especially if that garbage is a sheep and a wheat (= activated starting knight). The primary reason for this is that players tend to hoard around the marquee wood spots in order to obtain green cards and the aquaduct.

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