The Princes of Catan

Not sure if anyone here is following this story, but Kosmos and Mayfair are releasing a revised version of the Catan Card Game called "The Princes of Catan." Klaus Teuber has written three articles (so far) on the history of the original game and the re-development of the new game.

First article (on designing the original game)
Second article (on designing the expansion packs)
Third article (on re-developing the game)

Some initial thoughts...
- Shortening the game sounds like a good idea. I love the original Catan card game, but the length is sometimes a little prohibitive.

- It seems like the "theme decks" are really well-integrated. I've never played the original expansions, but this sounds promising.

- An introductory version of the game is nice for new players, since the base game has a lot more options than it's board game counterpart.

Overall, I'm pretty excited about this. Some may think its a cash grab, but I do like that its a concerted effort to make the card game relevant. It seems like it gets lost in the shuffle (har har) a lot, and if a little tweaking puts it back in the public eye, I'm all for it.

I don't like the name.

Thanks for posting this.

I love the CATAN card game, but I didn't like it all when I first got it. It sat in a cabinet unplayed for years until I sort of rediscovered it and started playing with the expansions. So yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with a revision because it definitely could use some cleanup. There have been games of the card game that I've played that I thought were better than the full board game.

Michael Barnes wrote:

I love the CATAN card game, but I didn't like it all when I first got it. It sat in a cabinet unplayed for years until I sort of rediscovered it and started playing with the expansions. So yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with a revision because it definitely could use some cleanup. There have been games of the card game that I've played that I thought were better than the full board game.

This is totally how I feel about it. I was planning on getting the expansions as well, but I think I'm going to hold off and just get the remade version.

The game really takes the original boardgame and replaces all of the trading with nasty card play. So it still has interaction, but just a different kind. It is actually more like Cities and Knights than basic Settlers.

And Mad Dog, I think the name is dumb too, but whatever.

Has anyone here played the "Tournament Game" with deck-building? Is the deck-building part of the game fun or interesting? I've never played with the expansion cards.

Mad Dog wrote:

I don't like the name.

They are going to change it to 'The artists, formerly known as princes of Catan'

Where are the princesses of Catan?

metalface13 wrote:

Where are the princesses of Catan?

Dirty secret revealed for the first time: Catan is actually where the Smurfs come from. As such, there's no hope of "princesses" as it would require more than one female of the species.


It was Jeb's posts here that turned me on to the Catan Card Game, for which I'm pretty grateful as I've had fun with it. The reboot looks pretty interesting....