Reviewing EVERY Catan Expansion 

Some minor rules clarifications, helped from Catan Studios! None of these change scores or final assessments about the expansions. (1) In Seafarers ships and roads can’t combine, they must be separated by a settlement (1:19). Also pointed out by a commenter below! (2) In Cities & Knights you will not lose a city that has a metropolis during a barbarian attack (9:18). 3. Also in C&K, if you play the deserter card it removes a knight from another player and you get to place a knight, but it must be in a legal position near your own roads (to avoid 15:12). Deserter card is still really good. (4) Players pirate ships in Explorers & Pirates replace each other when rolling a 7 to avoid choke points like in (27:28) Also pointed out by a commenter below.

My favorite variant of Catan is the one where you have perfectly balanced dice and yet the majority of rolls are 3 and 11 and almost no 6s and 8s.

In seafarer's you can't just alternate roads and ships like that. It's written in the rules, there must be a settlement before you change your route type and the ships can't go across land. This difficult adds a lot to the game play

Cities & Knights is the best for sure, once you have 4 players that know how to play its goated

Cities and Knights is definitly slower and more complicated but that's what I love about it. It gives so many more options and allows for more tactical decisions with the knights and development cards. I agree on the randomness of the development cards and having to be able to get a knight before the first invasion being a bit annoying at times.

Cities and knights is definitely my favorite!

The most popular variant I've ever introduced is having the 2 and 12 tokens be treated as 2/12 tokens that generate a resource whenever either number is rolled. It has a very small effect on the game but people like it.

The choice to use Age of Empires music for the background of a Catan video works so well!

I like how the review is very respectfully saying how they don't like C&K, and the comments are all respectfully saying why the love C&K.

Absolutely phenomenal review Ashton!! Great work covering this entire series so comprehensively as only you guys can

Explorers and Pirates is highly underrated. It makes the game longer but the different scenarios make it a lot more fun than regular/base Catan. Playing the full expansion i.e. all five scenarios takes an an average three hours. It's definitely not the ideal choice when you want to play something quick and have people who have never played Catan. But if you have a group of Catan fans and looking to make the game more exciting, this is the expansion. The pirate lairs, fish shoals and spice islands all employ similar but different mechanisms of scoring. We don't play Base Catan anymore. If and when we have time, E&P is the top choice.

We in Europe have different pieces of C&K for knights, they are real miniatures holding a flag with 1,2 or 3 spikes so you can easily tell and when you activate then you put little helemt on them! Also cities upgrade looks different ad well

One good thing about cities and knights is that it reduces the randomness of the game a lot. You can compensate more with skill.

The Bazaar: any player with a settlement built on the desert may trade any four resource cards for a resource of their choice(as opposed to four of a kind to the bank). If the settlement is upgraded to a city then it's any three resources.

So well made. I've already played of these, but you definitely clarified and helped me understand each one on a deeper level. I really appreciate the work put into this.

Great video! My friends and I exclusively played C&K once we learned it. We played with a house rule that expending knights to fight off the invasion was optional. Really added extra strategy to being able to respond to them in ways to help ourselves or make others lose a city.

10:29 the European version has actual knights and cities and when you activate the knight you put a helmet on and even its more beautiful

I would recommend trying more Cities and Knights. It’s so deep and there’s a lot of richness to it. My online play group plays almost exclusively C&K. Though I would say combining it with Explorers and Pirates is the most epic way to play.

THank you for putting so much effort into these videos!

Our family plays standard Catan with three elements added. We play with gold/taxes (bought a roll of pennies which we use as gold) which means that even if you don't get a resource, you're always getting *something* with every dice roll, and we tie resource trade with gold to how many victory points someone has. Players with less VPs will be able to get resources a little more easily and so don't get left behind so easily. We add fishing to add incentives to settle on the coast. And finally, we use the Catan Helper Cards! They are so much fun in adding an additional ability to someone's turn.

Loved the background music in this video! I haven't noticed it it in y'all's other vids but I liked it a lot in this one! Great video as always

Great video this was great you went through all of theses I just got into this game 4 days ago and fell in love

Thanks so much. Really helpful and competent for choosing my first expansion game as a Catan enthusiast! Thanks a lot!

We basically have just always mixed seafarers and cities and knight together and we've always enjoyed it. We also always give people the choice if they want a resource or commodity from a city.

Game of Thrones Catan… best version yet! Adds the teamwork mechanic to defending the wall, but also can allow for alliances i.e. certain people only defend certain portions of the wall etc

once you understand C&K it is so good and so much fun sabotaging but working together at the same time, also combining it with seafarers makes it even more complex and you need 16 points, once you gain some experience you can finish in 2 hours easy

Been waiting for SOMEBODY to make a video about this in actually good quality!! Thank you!

This is actually really helpful! The only reference I had before was the dice tower videos from over 10 years ago!

Cities & Knights is a great expansion, especially if you play it online (through catan universe or colonist) where the clarity issues are less of a problem.

Cities and knights is the only expansion you need man wtf! It takes the game to another level. Anyway great video !

I got both seafarers and Traders and Barbarians with the 5-6 player expansions. We like to merge and house rules both games. We typically have a main Island where everyone starts and has the traders, rivers and fish. Some of the tiles (particularly on Islands we can expand to) have 2 numbers on them to increase resource generation for those who get out there. Also we go for high point games as we like longer games, but I know that is unusual.

Thanks for covering this. Great review

My family plays Catan (base game) with a house rule where each robber moved removes the number on the tile its going to. The number stolen is moved to the tile where the robber came from (including the desert). For us, it balanced the game for all players and made knights more powerful. Some players are even known to role a 7, move the robber to their own resource hex, only to use a robber to replace it with a better number. I recommend people give it a shot if they're looking to spice up the base game.

My all-time favourite variant is the Welfare variant. When anyone rolls the die and it's a number you aren't built (robber doesn't count) on you get a welfare token. On your turn you can trade in a number of these tokens equal to the number of victory points you have built on the boards (don't count VP cards) for a resource of your choice. I usually cap this ratio at 5 to 1 to keep it relevant in the later game. As this increases the flow of resources into the economy it tends to speed up gameplay and helps compensate for poor initial placement..

I bought Catan in the 2000’s and Seafairers and Cities and Knights shortly after. Played C&K expansion a few times but never opened Seafarers. Trying to get back into the game after 10+ years. Since we live next to a game playing family now. Came here for a refresher

What a nice video! Can't believe I have mot seen you channel before! You have a new subscriber!

the barbarian one looks really fun! I might buy that one. also because you have 2 tiny expansions for lesser known catan players and friends who are not that into boardgames

Cities and Knights, bought it for my board game team yesterday. We only got through two games and it took 5 hours haha. Awesome expansion

I love your presentation. Thanks for the help too bro.

Love pirates and explorers. Build harbors on each island and you can fight pirates and pick up fish hauls from each island. It's so much fun.

Explorers and Pirates is the most fun when you go big with it - playing the biggest map with the 5-6 expansion, and you include Pirates, Spices, and Fish

I got rid of my Settlers of Catan, but i could swear that my (german) version had way better quality materials. The cards were more colorful, the Knights were easily distinguishable and no miscuts. I'm quite sure the flipbook size was the same. Only had Seafarers and Cities and Knights, so can't comment on the rest.

I had an idea for a Catan expansion that tries for the discovery of the unknown and still has a tight board for resource management and trade. Start with the basic board of a 3-hex to a side grid. Add a ring of water around that. Add a ring of upside-down tiles to reveal later. This keeps things tight in the beginning, but opens up options to increase the board side and stretch out over time, but at a risk because you don't know what is there. Each land tile gets a "surprise" token set on it face-down. These are either blank, +1, -1, a silver coin, a card icon, or a gold nugget. Players can opt to Discover a tile, revealing the token and acting accordingly. * A blank token does nothing. * +1 and -1 increase or decrease the availability of resources. Replace the number with either a step closer to 7 to increase value with a +1, or a step further from 7 with a -1. If a 2 or 12 gets a -1 the tile becomes a desert. If a 6 or 8 gets a +1 nothing happens. * a silver coin awards the player with one currency when revealed. Not a great reward, more a consolation prize. * a card symbol gets you a free dev card. Basically makes the resources spent to Discover a wash. * a gold nugget replaces the tile with a gold mine tile. There's gold in there them hills. Instead of Knight tokens, players can make Conquistadors. You can opt to move a Conquistador around the board on your turn, by traveling as far as they want on your road, traveling as far as they want on another road at the cost of 1 silver coin, or traveling across one tile of another player's road or an empty line at no cost. Conquistadors block the ability to place a Settlement, and a player can spend resources to Discover on a tile where one of their Conquistadors sits on a corner. Boats work like Seafarers to keep things simple with the caveat the boat may only be added adjacent to a Harbor or a chain of boats adjacent to a Harbor. The idea here is this enforces discovery of new tiles outside the main island limited to mid game once cities come in play. Harbors are a variant City token for a Settlement that upgrades on the Coast. This is just to keep from having to add extra City tokens so the resource management of City tokens can still be enforced. So what is the reason to explore the outer ring? The outer tiles have one Gold Mine, and one Rich resource tile for each resource scattered in the face down tiles to explore. Rich tiles get you one extra resource when the tile is rolled. Gold Mine gets you one of a resource of your choice when it is rolled. Finally, with Fish you mix spent fish tokens back into the draw pile if no fish tokens are drawn on a turn that a 7 is not rolled. Silver Coins are currency. You get 1 when you don't get a resource card when a number other than 7 is rolled. You can cash in silver coins for resource cards or trade silver with other players.

I think your group would like to play a version of settlers my friend group created where we amalgamated nearly all of the expansions (leaving out explorers&pirates since it didn't exist when we created this version) The 5-6 player expansion sets were used, and we played with 6 people that were regular settlers players. The games take nearly 6 hours, and get very complex and extremely strategic, and there are so many options to gain victory points that it becomes very engaging. The clear downfall is the time between your turns, but there are so many things changing about the board state during each player's turn that you always want to be paying attention to what is happening not on your turn. Since you guys are pretty advanced gameplayers, and tend to like complexity and engaging long play games (some of you) you might want to think about trying to combine those expansions together... I am sure I could incorporate the Explorers & Pirates into this version, but the game board footprint would get just kinda crazy at that point. I do encourage you guys to try and combine all the expansions excluding E&P, and try a game of super-settlers the next time you all get a catan itch.

First video I've seen from your channel. I'd rather watch your reviews than many others out there in this space. It costs me nothing to sub, so subbed.

Thank you so much for this video!!!

Growing up my family played Cities and Knights exclusively, and we absolutely love that game. We only ever played with the original rule-set though, which includes the not rolling the extra die for 2 rounds and different development cards. (Except intrique, if you know this card you'll understand)

great video!! it would be fun to see you review some of the themed Catans

Thanks for this, I've been considering an expansion and at first glance I was gonna go for explorers and pirates but traders and barbarians now sounds like a more worthy expansion to try...especially if that comes with a two player variant!

Citied and knights is my favourite. Now i only play catan including this expansion. The best thing and worst thing about Catan is you can mix all the expansions together and get creative. You end up buying so many and can be hard to get them on the table as often as you would wish.

Thanks for your thorough review.

I no longer own Catan, but I owe to it my affinity for board games. If I were to purchase Catan again and could only purchase one of the expansions (never played Explorers and Pirates), I would buy Cities and Knights. I suppose I fall into that “niche” category. Lol. Still, I wonder how niche it actually is. There are indeed so many games to play, and so little time, but only two plays would not be the requisite amount to appreciate the nuances of this great expansion. The progress tracks (yellow, blue, and green flip-boards) are actually balanced fairly well. Each track comes with its own ways of earning unique victory points. The green one with its ability certainly seems more beneficial at first, but the other two have their own unique benefits. Also, one thing that was not mentioned is that a metropolis cannot be destroyed by barbarians. Regarding the Traders and Barbarians expansion, we only played the scenario with wagons once. Never again. It resulted in a stalemate because no more roads could possibly be built. No one achieved the required amount of points to win. Maybe that’s an unusual circumstance. Suffice it to say, we unanimously agreed to never play that variant again. Lol. Great video! Really takes me back to my Catan days. Happy gaming!

I've only ever played CK but I'm glad I chose this expansion. Imo it completely changes the base game (which can get boring imo). My group love the 'mean ness' of it and the depth and complexity it has. I do agree with others that I wouldn't get a new player started on CK without the base knowledge of base Catan

I have them all but this video is amazing. A lot of effort and time went into it. I think seafarers is a must if you could just choose one. However my favorite of all is probably cities and knights but it’s so niche and you need the right people for it. For most people seafarers is your best choice.

I loved combining Seafarers + Cities & Knights

Wow, so many new features in cities and knights. Seams more like a sequel rather than an expansion

Thanks for the review. I really miss coverage of the top Seafarers scenarios (Wonders and Pirates). As I don't have a big catan group, I made the right choice of T&B instead of C&K

We have the old version of the Fishermen that doesn't include the desert replacement lake tile, which sounds incredible. Anyway, that's our favorite one to play with as it's so easy to incorporate to the base game and really helps freshen it up.

woah thanks for this detailed review, and loved the distinctions n between recommender scores, personal, and who the expansions are best geared towards. can tell a lot of work, gameplay, and thought went into this!

I think the fun part of the expansions is you can pair them to mix it up even more

Small elements from T&B have become staple variant rules, like Harbormaster and Friendly Robber. Those mini rules + Seafarers = easy to implement optional styles that feel extremely in-line with the main gameplay of Catan. This video makes me hopeful for Explorers & Pirates... I think I can come up with a way to mix it with Seafarers and find my perfect exploration Catan that doesn't feel like an entirely different game lol

I have both Traders & Barbarians and Seafarers! So far, I've enjoyed both a lot and haven't played every scenario. I am very hooked on the Fishermen of Catan. It spices up the game, makes it faster and more balanced, combos well with Harbormaster, and can easily be combined with other expansions.

I know I’m super late, but in regards to your last statement, I think catan is a great way of getting people hooked on board games, and then adding cities and knights later on so they can get gently introduced to more complicated games, while sticking with something they know. Now you have someone who feels comfortable with more complicated games really easily, at least in my experience

C&K is def a more complex game but playing with 4-6 people who know how every mechanic works makes the game more fun than base Catan for me.

I enjoy playing with The Helpers of Catan, the expansion that makes regular Catan like Star Trek Catan. I like how it reduces the effect of bad rolls

Thanks for reviewing these expansions! Love the AOE II bgm and sfx. ;p

Love the Age of Empires music :). Nice review! Only played seafarers a few times and Cities and Knights once. I liked C&K! It was a different version, not with a booklet but with tiles you flip over. The knights also were plastic and had a hat if they were active. Was more visible. Seafarers, for me, is more of the same and doesn't add a lot.

I combined seafarers with cities and knights. BOOM! 4x excellence! Exploration & Tech tree, thank you very much.

I love C&K. It's the best expansion and tbh feels more like real Catan VS the beginner base game. Don't get me wrong the base game is fun and simple but the deeper strategies and sabotaging (with built in mechanics to get you back up) makes games feel closer and gets the heart pumping more. I feel c&k is always targeted at the highest ranking player and thus feels more balanced. There are significantly less runaway games in c&k which makes it feel better to play all the way through. Losing never means you've lost in c&k

Yo I am SHOCKED! I thought this was a great review but i loooove cities and knights, it’s the only version I play anymore. I never knew anybody disliked it.

I've often wondered if it would be possible to combine EVERY Catan expansion into a single game. It would probably take a long time, but I figured it'd be cool to try! Seeing this though, some of them seem to be incompatible, or doubling up on mechanics in the same area, like with the ships or different uses for knights. EDIT: Thinking about it, Explorers & Pirates taking bits of the others might make it the neatest one to me, but the concept and mechanics were also done really well in the board game Explorers Of The North Sea, which I love and it's all in the base game rather than expansions.

Explorers & Pirates is my favorite way to play Catan. It adds so much scale and adventure to the game. What I enjoy about Catan is that you can pick and choose what scenarios you want and then combine them. When people have multiple ways to rack up victory points, it just makes so much fun. While I respect base Catan for being an OG, I just find it too bland.

my junior and senior years in highschool where dominated by seafarers and cities and knights combo... i feel attacked

Loved the Age of Empires music at the beginning

Catan with Cities & Knight is an awesome game…. It’s is the best expansion of all. It add some extra spice and new challenges to the overall game play but not too much like traders and barbarian… Sea fares is bit dry as it just have ships moving on the board … Cities and Knights add some additional activities such as managing barbarian, upgrading the island and keeping an eye on your knights….. perfect addition to the base game to make it a must have expansion. I will always play Catan with Cities & Knights only.

In my opinion C&K is the best! There are two large cons: a) A lengthy rule-book so you must be quite invested to be willing to sit and learn all rules b) If your not able to build and activate a knight before the first barbarian attack your game is pretty much lost. Then I want to add that the free resource of your own pick is not that overpowered that you made it seem, since it's only for number you have build on yet and by the time you upgraded to level 3 on that tier you already built villages/cities on most numbers. We usually play 3 player and finishes in 45-70 minutes compared to 25-45 min for normal Catan which is great in my opinion. When you feel like moving on from regular Catan and is willing to sit through that rule book, you want to get back a bit more playtime. Sure 4 player will be longer and first time you´re probably looking more like 90-120 min until you figured out all mechanics, but still I think that is decent.

I think the first time I ever played Catan was with a simplified version of cities and Knights and I remember it being quite fun. So instead of the flip book we just played it that you get Knights from the Development Cards and that just becomes greater area control and the shared concern of raiders. Think that was fairly straightforward as I was able to win even as a beginner.

I play wth a house rule for cities and knights that the first barbarian attack doesn't count. It allows players to focus on building early in the game and makes it less likely for people to lose cities and slow down their game. I think it's a big improvement as the beginning of the game can be really slow with the standard rules of cities and knights

I have never played catan, but I Imagine playing on a huge map with every expansion mashed together and tweaking the rules a bit so it would work, would be really fun

Great review! My personal score for Settlers of Catan definitely lines up with yours. Funny enough, my friends who love Catan claim that Cities & Knights is the best version of it, and my one friend even says he wouldn’t play without it, unless teaching a new player. Glad to hear Traders & Barbarians is fairly decent, as we’ve had that sitting on our shelf for years… my wife and I bought it for the potential 2-player variant - but, then we never got around to trying it, haha. Seeing Explorers & Pirates makes me think there’s potential to combine the expansions into a massive board with multiple islands, that likely would completely ruin the game and make it take forever, but hey it would seem awesome, lol. I have the older printing from Mayfair Games, but I’m surprised at the missed opportunity with the Catan Studios reprints not significantly upgrading the quality or appearance of the game… the new expansions don’t really look any better, but they also don’t match the previous edition, so I’m not sure what they were doing there… I bet if they made a modern looking updated edition with high quality components, fans of Catan would re-buy new copies more readily than that plastic 3D Catan they came out with, lol.

Despite all the mistakes, I am glad you did a review of all 4 major Expansions! ... But that is only the tip of the iceburg! There is SO much more Catan stuff out there! 1) You got the Scenario Packs, further add-ons to the Expansions. "Legend of the Sea Robbers" (for Seafarers), "Legend of the Conquerors" (for C&K), and "Treasures, Dragons, & Adventurers" (for SF and C&K!). Both Legends games are story-based campaigns. While TD&A is 6 more scenarios that can use both Expansions... and you white Dragons in 2 of em!!! 2) Then there is the individual scenarios, each only costing a few bucks. "The Helpers", "Oilsprings", "Frenemies", and "Crop Trust" 3) And then there is all the stand alone Catan games... too many to list! 4) And THEN there is a bunch more stuff from the past that isn't sold anymore!!!

I normally keep a weak knight as insurance in cities in knights but you can get hit by the double deserter and then you're just wrecked

My most memorable experience playing settlers of catan was the explorers and pirates expansion. Another player was attempting to bring his fish to sell st the market before me. My ships in the area didnt have anything to do, so i ended up blocking up the trade routes with my own ships, congesting the pass, and making him waste his turn going around me. My friends called me the villian of catan for the rest of the game.

wow I saw the poll and was wondering when this was coming. apparently very early in the morning

The way I play Cities and Knights is that knights can't be moved and the metropolis can only be achieved at the final page of the flipbook. This makes the bandit pawn harder to deal with (And the action card associated with it), but also requires strategic placement of your knights to be able to keep your most important resource tiles running. Cities and Knights is by far the most complex and fun way to play Catan, and while it does make the game last longer, it also adds for way more variety and competition with the other players. (Also, the Dutch version uses way more distinct colors, with the 2 faces of the knight being completely different as well, so the clarity isn't an issue there)

Great summary! Is this an old version of knights & cities? We just bought it a few days ago, ours has plastic figures, where you can clearly see if knights are active or not, or how far a player is on the metropolis flipchart. We have a german version, maybe thats the reason...

Oh man I love it when I hear the Age Of Empires II soundtrack in a random video! Take my like.

Great review!

I had a play group that did 6-player(!) Cities and knights for multiple years (sometimes with gold tiles from seafarers) Still my favorite expansion. Those fish and harbor master rules from Traders is fire though.

The standard OG version of Catan is my favorite and the one I always see in competitive play. It’s the best for me on game night anyway because it’s more casual and doesn’t take 2-3 hours

Greater Catan (Seafarer + C&K, for 20 VP), it is like the pinnacle of Catan

C&K is by far my favorite. One thing is that the physical can be very annoying for the reason said, but when you play online in Catan World, it is much cleaner and you can finish in 30 minutes. It’s much easier to appreciate the beauty of this expansion

The best Catan is the one you create by combining bits and pieces of each to overcome the faults. We love E&P and have introduced elements of C&K and SF in to make our own "perfect" game.

Love to hear a take on the "Helpers of catan" add-on as I use it with the base game any time I introduce a new player to the game b/c there is nothing worse than being resource stuck, or you finally get what you need and someone rolls a 7 it helps resource fixing so much and speeds the game up. Maybe a little less trading/social b/c you don't need to but especially when you have players new that don't even remember you can trade it just speeds things up.

Just noticed, nice music choice. AoE2 was a staple rts for me as I was growing up. 👍

As a 10+ year Catan vet, Cities and Knights is the best expansion but it also has the highest learning curve. Once you've really mastered Seafarers and the base game....dive in to learning it. You will love it once you've got it down. It takes Catan from the level of checkers to chess. For casual players you will probably like Seafarers and the base game alone....but for those who are more strategic... definitely figure out Cities and Knights. Cities and Knights works best with 3 players. 4+ it can make it very difficult to have enough resources/good spots to save your initial city. Also as a heads up you can hold 4 development cards not 3.

It's amazing how different our perspectives are. Cities and Knights is my favorite expansion combined with Seafarers, because I want the deep, meaty 2-3 hour game it provides. I don't go to Catan for a light one hour game; base Catan feels so boring to me. I cannot imagine playing without both Seafarers and Cities and Knights. It's so good.

Super disappointed that he didn't play the true version of explorers and pirates, which combines together all three scenarios of pirate hunting, fishing, and spice trading. This creates the most epic Catan experience by far in my opinion. Also just want to give a shout out to star farers which is awesome as well.

Good, that I have the original City and Knights, where you can clearly see, which Knights are active: The once with the face aren't, the one with the 1-3 fists are. Really amazing, that they made this worse in newer editions. Or maybe you need the German edition. But the next time we play, I will certainly mention that "don't role the event dice for 2 turns" rule, that didn't exist back when we bought it...

It would be cool to see elements of all games to be added. Maybe make a mega sized board?