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 axe 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 exploitation possibilities of their new lands by cutting down forests and plowing the soil. Some of these efforts go in harmony and friendship. Some of them don’t.
Set-up
Set-up Instead of all five types of land tiles, use only 1 desert, 3 hills, 3 mountains and 12 forests. Set-up goes as the regular set-up in Settlers of Catan, but it is recommended to distribute the hills and mountains such that there are no large clusters of these types of tiles.
Variant Rules
The rules are identical to the base game of the Settlers of Catan. However, the following additional rules are used.
- Every player gets an axe and a sickle (plow). During your turn, in the phase where youcan build houses and buy knights, you may pay one timber and one ore. If you do, youmay place your axe on a forest tile where you have at least one settlement. That tile doesNOT produce timber for the whole turn (place your axe on the number tile). The next
round in your turn, after the distribution of resources, you remove the axe and replace theforest with a grassland tile. The number tile is kept the same. Players with a settlement onthis tile can now receive wool when the appropriate number is thrown.
- Grassland tiles can also be improved. Again, with the payment of one timber and one ore,you can place your plow on a grassland tile where you have at least one settlement.Again, this land doesn’t produce wool. After one turn, after resource distribution, removethe plow and replace the grassland with grain fields. Players with a settlement on this tilecan now receive wheat.
The grassland and grain tiles are limited to 4. A fifth tile of grassland cannot be built,unless a grassland tile becomes available after a grassland is replaced by a grain tile. Afifth grain field can never be built. At best there are four grasslands and four fields at acertain point in the game.
It is not allowed to put more than one token on the same tile at the same time. It isallowed though, to first cut a forest tile and then in the next turn reform this tile fromgrassland to a field of grain.
Strategies
Observe that 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 in type of resources, try and claim some tiles for yourself, so no other player can interfere with your income!
Optional Rules
Extra option: land exhaustion
For this extra option you need more desert tiles, and you need another die in a different colour (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.
