Welfare variant
From World Of Catan
The Welfare Variant is a fan adaption to The Settlers of Catan created by Alf Seegart. These rules are unsupported by the official Catan sites.
Contents |
Justification
Many criticisms of Settlers of Catan stem from the fact that falling behind early in the game—which can easily result from unlucky die rolls—will keep you from being able to compete in later stages. This is all too true, and has been the source of much annoyance for members of my game group. In fact, we stopped playing Settlers for a long time because of this. Recently I was introduced to a simple variant that makes gameplay much more balanced.
Story
The Catanians are struggling. Rich settlers continue their climb to the top of the financial tree, but many Catanians are fighting just to survive. At last, the government has turned a compassionate eye on the fleeting Catanian farmers and has enacted a welfare program to bring them back into the fight.
Rules
- 1. Each time that the dice are rolled and you receive no resources (and the roll was not a '7'), you receive a welfare token.
- 2. During your turn you can trade in welfare tokens at the rate of one per victory point you presently have for one production card of your choice.
- Example: If you have 4 victory points, you can cash in 4 of these welfare tokens for a single resource or commodity of your choosing.
- This really helps those falling behind, but does not lead to inflation because as you become more powerful with more victory points, cashing these welfare tokens in becomes harder and harder.
- Suggestion: Use the money tokens from the Catan: 2-player variant for this variant. (Image from that variant.)
References
- Obtained from boardgamegeeks.com
