General

The Fishermen & The Great River of Catan

They came!!! I'm sooooooo excited!!  Surprised

Using my birthday money, I ordered two recently released in the US expansion scenarios for Settlers of Catan: The Fishermen & The Great River of Catan.

Both expansions were originally released in Germany a few years ago as a free promotional – now they are available for a few bucks in English. Much happiness all around. Laughing

The Fishermen of Catan

This is by far the coolest of the two scenarios. In this pack, the people of Catan realize that the sea not only provides opportunities for trade, but it provides fish – if you can catch them. Tongue out

Here's how it works: You place the fish tiles along the edge of the island between the ports. These tiles have the numbers 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 & 10 on them. If you have a settlement on one of the fish tiles and that number get's rolled – you get the opportunity to pick up a fish token.

The fish tokens are upside down and could be worth 1, 2 or 3 fishes. These fishes can be traded in at the following rates:[@more@]

  • 2 fish = Move the robber back to the desert (do not steal any cards)
  • 3 fish = Steal a random resource card from another player
  • 4 fish = Take a resource of your choice from the bank
  • 5 fish = Build a free road
  • 7 fish = Draw a free development card

However, there is one catch (as you knew there must be). Included in the pile of fish tokens is an old boot. If you draw the boot, you must get one more victory point then the game usually has to win. For example, if your playing regular Settlers, you need 10 points to win. But if you have the boot, you would need 11 points. Tongue out

The good news is that you can give the boot away to anyone with the same or more victory points then yourself… a great way to stop someone from winning!!!  Innocent

The Great River of Catan

This scenario is pretty simple – you get a three tile piece that you place in the island somewhere. The piece includes a swamp, mountain and hill (brick) hexes with a river flowing through each of them. The cool thing is that there's gold in that there river!

 Seeing that there's gold in the river, if you build a settlement, road or ship along any of the three tiles, you get a free victory point. If the settlement is along the swamp (which replaces the desert as the home of the robber) you get two victory points.

As you can see, this expansion doesn't add much… but it does make the original game a little more interesting. Cool