Catan: Starfarers Review
A more complex, longer Catan experience.
The classic resource management system now has you upgrading a mothership and settling colonies across space! Move trade and colony ships every turn and encounter aliens and pirates. For 3-4 players, runs 2 hours.
Video published June 23rd, 2023
Settle the universe with trade ships and colony ships!
Shake your mothership to see how fast your ships move!
Encounters may come up for some light space stories.
What we played
Twice at 3 players, with one of those games being digitally played. We played a couple rounds at 4 players, but didn’t get to finish.
Need to learn how to play? Or want more reasoning for our points? Our review video’s got you!
Component/Learning Pros
Great components
Sturdy motherships with balls inside, and nice fitting plastic upgrade pieces
Insert has multiple trays, some of which have resource conversion engraved
Good visual design
Resource cards very distinct
New alien art is endearing and varied for 4 different aliens
Easy to learn
2 booklets: abbreviated how to play & alphabetical almanac
3 player aid cards per person explain most of game
Gameplay Pros
New positioning, where ships have to moved around:
Spaces to build colonies (better resource numbers preferred)
Mid-late game chance to kill pirates or burn planets for VP
Trade posts to get passive abilities and friendship alien points
Cool decision on where to place spaceport
spaceport is only place to build more ships
New strategies
What upgrades to get?
Cannons to kill pirate bases
Freight pods to burn down ice planets
Boosters to make all your movement +1
Alien decks give permanent passives in 4 different areas
Red scientists help mothership upgrades
Yellow merchants let you trade resources better (like ports)
Green Folk help income
Blue diplomats give tech (e.g. expanding your hand size)
New catch-up mechanic, which gives stragglers +2 resources every turn
More resources throughout the game to keep turns moving (no cities in game, lots to buy)
Allows for more comebacks (at least for inexperienced groups), since stragglers have more income
Encourages you to pace your VP in a clever way to get free resources
Visual CONS
Colony vs. Trade ship is hard to see from afar
Small hexagon vs. small pentagon isn’t distinguishable
Removed probability pips on resource numbers
done because more hexes in space, less room for each planet circle
Terminology Cons
Red resource being called “Ore” can trip up some groups
“Ore” doesn’t function like Stone at all in Starfarers
Ore being close to “Or” is confusing
Just call it metal
Calling a green bush food is un-intuitive
Gameplay Cons
Encounter deck is unhealthy variance
Sometimes forced to pick the “0 resources donated” option if had a bad turn
Bad outcomes can be merely annoying (lose upgrades, or lose fame), OR prevent a ship from moving for 1 turn, which is a crucial swing
Rewards can be TOO good, like getting a free trade ship or being able to warp jump (teleport) across the map
Encounter deck is unmodifiable, and you cannot influence the roll as game goes on
“Wear and tear” encounters to reshuffle encounters is making it impossible to keep track of the encounter deck
HOUSE RULE: Use extra included balls to make rolling a black ball (triggers encounters) less likely
Burning down pirate/ice planets shouldn’t be a random resource number
You should be able to see what number it is to let you gauge value from flying around the map
Replayablity Cons
Variants not interesting
Can deal out sectors semi-randomly
Can also deal out sectors semi-randomly but leave them face down
Wild space variant: deal out sectors completely randomly
Changing location of sectors changes strategies a little, but not adding another layer to the game compared to other Catan expansions
Repeating prompts for encounters, only 10 prompts
Gets repetitive when constantly read aloud
Since encounter deck isn’t meant to be taken seriously, why not add more prompts
Nitpicks (Doesn’t affect scoring)
Unnecessary extra token for the pirate and ice planets
Almanac mentions 5 alien civilizations, but functionally only 4
1 of those alien civilizations is only in encounter deck
Playtime is generally longer than printed 2 hrs
Both 3 player games clocked in over 2 hours 15 min
Time boost from: reading encounter cards aloud, looking through alien cards, and attempting to trade resources from charity
Recommender Score
If you’re gonna be getting something MORE expensive and BIGGER than Catan, well it better be doing all of those new things well. Roads and cities have been transformed into ships and spaceports, so you can space travel and upgrade your mothership, and draw random encounters. But are these really things you WANT out of Catan?
Starfarers doubles down on 2 core ideas: Ships to move and explore, and low-conflict. There’s tons of upgrades opportunities for your ships and you move ships every round to seek out points. Then there’s low-conflict in ships not blocking each other’s movement, and the robber literally getting removed from the game- there goes any negotiation about robber placement!
If we combine those ideas with the charity and random encounter system, you’re never OUT of a game of Starfarers like you might be with base Catan if you get boxed in by someone’s road counterplay. But at the same time, winning Starfarers might not be that rewarding because players might just get a lucky or unlucky encounter on crucial turns.
These are all things that aren’t particularly compelling about Starfarers, hence the average score barring price. What are some reasons to pick this up? Well IF you don’t like Catan’s robber, anything in its development deck, or being locked into resources you start on without trading, this might be something for you. Or if you like the idea of exploring, grabbing different alien passives every game, and even hearing random stories and maybe defeating space pirates with cannons, this could be a cool casual fling.
But I’m also gonna try to shake you awake, and tell you, its 2023. Catan Starfarers is an idea that came out in 1999, so more than 20 years later, there’s a LOT of other space board games to be looking at that handle randomness better.
To those who are coming from only playing Catan, don’t be afraid of other board games.
Within the Catan universe, our go-to recommendations are still Seafarers and Traders & Barbarians. Seafarers gives the quick addition of building across water, and that has ACTUAL MEANINGFUL variants with much different maps. Traders & Barbarians has the most bang for buck with a ton of modules to try. That one also has a variant where you move stuff after you roll dice- its almost like they’re made from the same studio, just after way more years of refinement.
And if you’re IN love with the movement of pieces every turn, you may want to look into Explorers & Pirates, which has ships to sail across the 7 seas, with GUARANTEED movement and NO encounters. And you STILL get to fight pirates if you want.
