The Cutters of Catan
From World Of Catan
The Cutters of Catan is an unofficial variant to The Settlers of Catan created by George van Voorn. It is designed for 3-4 players using the base set plus additional forest hexes and the special ax and sickle cut-outs located at right.
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Backstory
The newly colonized island of Catan is covered in forests. The colonists are trying to improve the possibilities of their new lands by cutting down forests and plowing the soil. Some of these efforts are done in harmony and friendship. Some of them are not.
Set-up
Build the board using:
- 1 desert tile
- 3 hill tiles
- 3 mountain tiles
- 12 forest tiles
It is recommended to distribute the hills and mountains such that there are no large clusters of these types of tiles.
Set aside 4 grassland tiles and 4 wheat tiles for later use.
Every player gets an ax piece and a sickle piece.
Variant Rules
Use the standard rules except in the following situations:
- On your turn, during the build phase, you may pay 1 timber and 1 ore to place the ax piece on a forest tile where you have at least one settlement or city. That tile does NOT produce timber for the whole turn (place your ax on the number tile). During your next turn, after resolving the dice roll, remove the ax and replace the forest with a grassland tile. The number chit remains the same. Players with a settlement or city on this tile can now receive wool when the appropriate number is thrown.
- On your turn, during the build phase, you may pay 1 timber and 1 ore and place the sickle piece on a grassland tile where you have at least one settlement or city. That tile does NOT produce wool for the whole turn (place your sickle on the number tile). During your next turn, after resolving the dice roll, remove the sickle and replace the grassland with a grain tile. Players with a settlement or city on this tile can now receive wheat.
The grassland and grain tiles are limited to 4. A fifth grassland tile cannot be built, unless a grassland tile becomes available after a grassland is replaced by a grain tile. A fifth grain tile can never be built. At most there are four grasslands and four fields at any point in the game.
It is not allowed to put more than one token on the same tile at the same time. It is allowed though, to first cut a forest tile and then in the next turn reform this tile from grassland to a field of grain, thus never collecting wool from the tile.
Strategies
You can cooperate with other players in land reform or you may decide to reform a land tile without the consent of other people with one or more settlements on that specific land tile. As such players can annoy one another significantly. Ownership of the timber harbor is quite powerful, but it can make you a target. Ownership of the wool and wheat harbors is not lucrative in the beginning, but since players can reform land, these harbors will increase in significance. To secure a steady flow of all resources, try and claim some tiles for yourself, so no other player can interfere with your income!
Optional Rules
Land Exhaustion
For this extra option you need more desert tiles, and you need another die in a different color (for instance the red die from Cities & Knights), that functions as an ecology die. Trees play an important ecological role in nutrient recycling and water management. Cutting down too many forests leads to massive overuse of lands and erosion. To mimic this effect the following rule can be applied:
- Should a player role a number in the resource phase that produces only wheat and/or wool, roll the ecology die. If it is a one, that player must replace one of the two appropriate lands with a desert tile. Hills and mountains are considered to have some vegetation also, and therefore numbers that produce at least one bricks or one ore are safe from this effect.
It is unwise in this variant to cut down both forests that share the same number tile.
