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The Starfarers of Catan 5-6 player expansionEnglish language editionList Price: $30.00
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This expansion contains everything you need to include two additional players in The Starfarers of Catan, the exciting, fast moving, science fiction game. Here you'll find 2 mother ships, 2 sets of playing pieces, additional cards, 2 reusable game board overlays, and a new alien race ripe for encounter.
Now you can play any one of the five or six Starfarers commissioned to explore the galaxy, build new colonies, and expand commercial ties with various races of the Galactic Council. Accept the challenge! Careful diplomacy, clever trade, a firm stance against pirates, and the bold colonization of distant planetary systems will win you the support of humanity, and the other races of the galaxy and make you humanities' ambassador to the Galactic Council.
Note: Of course you can also use the new planetary systems and the fifth race of aliens, the Travelers, in games of only 3-4 players. The shorter flight times will accelerate your exploration, add more action and increase the fun!
If you've played the various other 5- and 6-player Settlers games, you probably noticed that none of them work particularly well. Adding the 5th and 6th player just tends to slow down the game (a lot) and makes it longer, without adding much value. Fortunately, Kosmos and Herr Teuber have done a much more thorough job with the 5-6 player version of Starfarers: the production has been ramped up a bit to accelerate the game a bit, the new alien race has a bunch of solid new special powers (and additionally increase the number of VPs available, which helps), and there have been a few other rules tweaks. The mapboard alterations have been nicely done, with little overlays with a nice tacky substance on the back which doesn't seem to degrade much.It still works slightly less well than 4-player Starfarers (I rated Starfarers as a 4-star game when it first came out; that was a mistake, it's 5 stars). The game is a bit slower and takes longer, perhaps a bit too long. But, it's still a very good game and it handles the extra players much more gracefully than Settlers does. Being able to play this great game with 5 or 6 is certainly worth it.
In reality all the pieces that they add are exactly enough for the two addition motherships.
The extra tradeposts are creative but some are overpowering. In a game where slow and steady wins the race merely grabbing the correct card could change the whole outcome of the game. One card removes ship components off of the leader and gives them to the holder of the card. I think this is a little too powerful and unbalances the game somewhat. I suppose I can just remove the card and play with the others.
The stickers that you stick onto the board work surprisingly well but crowds the board. Adding a small board segment would have been a better idea.
Buy it if you like Starfarers and want to play with more people.
Be warned... the reported weakness in the booster clips are in these motherships as well. One of my motherships cracked during play.
I have enjoyed my flights into Starfarer space, especially with the two-player Starship Catan. This expansion of the original, however, just leads to a glacially slow game with 6 players. Turns take a bit longer because there are more cards due to more resources being obtained. As with most Catan games, bad placement or problematic rolls can mean you have little to no resources, however.
I am interested to try the game WITH the expansion worlds, but with only 4 players. As the review above says, this means you get more things to explore more quickly - thus cutting down the game time (hopefully).
