Simple Variants
From World Of Catan
Contents |
Natural Disaster
My brother thought up this variation originally, and we improved it as we playtested it. He didn't like the fact that both the Robber and the Soldier make the players into robbers, and wanted something that was less nasty and more cooperative. This replaces the Robber and Soldier with Natural Disaster, Foriegn Aid, and Disaster Recovery Corps.
Natural Disaster
This replaces the Robber. When a seven is rolled, the player rolls again to see what hex the Natural Disaster is going to strike. The Natural Disaster token is placed on the hex which matches the second roll and which is closest to that player. If a seven is rolled for the second roll, reroll.
As with the Robber, a hex with a Natural Disaster on it does not produce anything as long as the Natural Disaster token is there.
Foriegn Aid
If, when a seven is rolled, any player has more than seven cards in their hand, they still lose half their cards. However, instead of them all going to the bank, most of them are used in Foriegn Aid.
The player with too many cards choses which cards he will lose. This then becomes a pool for Foriegn Aid. Foriegn Aid is distributed as follows:
1. to the players upon whom the Natural Disaster struck
* if there are three players, they get one card each
* if there are two players, they get one card each
* if there is one player, they get two cards
2. to the player(s) with the least number of victory points
* if there is one player, they get one card
* if there are two players, and there are more than three people playing, they get one card each
* if there are more than two players, then no cards are given in this category.
Therefore between two and five cards will be given in Foreign Aid, and since there will always be at least four cards in the Foreign Aid pool, this should be sufficient in most cases. If there is not sufficient Foriegn Aid to give it to all those who qualify, the victims of the Natural Disaster go first, and roll a dice to see which player gets the remaining Aid.
A player may qualify for Foreign Aid in both categories, and get cards accordingly. However, a player cannot give themselves Foriegn Aid, even if they qualify for it.
If more than one player has more than seven cards when a seven is rolled, all of them will give Foreign Aid. (Therefore it is possible for people to receive Foreign Aid from each other, even if they cannot give it to themselves).
Disaster Recovery Corps
This replaces the Soldier. When a Soldier card is played, instead of robbing someone, it simply removes the Natural Disaster from active play, putting it back into the desert.
Desert Resources
A way of making the game easier is to abolish deserts, instead making them a resource hex -- either clay, or ore, or a special resource called "mineral sand", which can behave either like clay or ore.
You need to take a spare blank number token and write a number on it (possibly something like 4 or 5) and add it to the pool of number tokens and distribute it along with the others. This is easier to do if you are using the "semi-random" method of token allocation (pull the tokens from the pool at random, and if you get either the same numbers next to each other, or a 6 or 8 next to each other, put the token back and pull another one).
To use "mineral sand" you'll need to make yourself a set of "mineral sand" resource cards. A mineral sand card can be used as either a clay or an ore. Which actually makes it the most useful card on the board, so maybe this variation is a bit unbalanced.
Absolute Longest Road
A variation used by my other brother, which makes the "longest road" harder to keep. If a player has the longest road, instead of keeping it until someone else makes a longer road, if another player makes a road of equal length, then the "longest road" card goes back in the box, since nobody has the absolutely longest road.
Presumably one could do a similar thing with "largest army".
