Settlers of Catan – Sixth Edition

Settlers of Catan is a classic in the board game space at this point, and while you might not lump it into the likes of Monopoly, The Game of Life, and CLUE, it’s almost in that spot for me. It’s a game that almost everyone in the industry has played, and the game people share with their “non-board game friends.”

Over the years, the Catan experience has stayed relatively the same, with new expansions bringing about new ideas and concepts. But overtime, the look has drastically changed. We recently got to take the Sixth Edition of the game for a spin, and we were quite impressed.

The best way to describe the Sixth Edition of Settlers of Catan is to call it brighter. Everything seems so much brighter. This could be because this was a defining characteristic of this re-release, or it could be that I haven’t played a copy of Catan since Edition 3 or 4! Honestly, though, Settlers of Catan has never looked better, with great artwork throughout.

The artwork might be the biggest change for longtime fans of the series. Everything from the tiles, to the rulebook, to the games various cards have received a makeover. It’s phenomenal. It’s the attention to detail in this release that excites me the most – the terrain tiles that make up the island of Catan in the centre of the table are noticeably improved, with each of the tiles having depth. The forests look like something you could walk through, as do the hills and other locations as well. The rulebook has updated imagery and artwork (more on this soon), as do the resource cards themselves and the other cards you will use. Shoot, has every Knight in Catan always had unique artwork? I don’t remember that!

For less experienced Settlers of Catan players, the rulebook has been overhauled to make it easier to read and use during your experience. Longtime fans might never need to open the rulebook, but new players will find the rules laid out in one of the most accessible and logical ways possible. Great iconography highlights absolutely everything from player pieces to card uses. Settlers of Catan has always been a fairly accessible game in my opinion, and not overly hard to teach. These updated rules make that experience so much easier, and will make getting the game learned a much quicker experience for new players.

Again, I might be talking about things available in past Catan releases, but I’m going to rave about them here nonetheless. I recently played The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era from Chip Theory Games for Review and raved about the included plastic tray for the various cards. I was shocked to find little plastic card trays in the box for use in game – there is nothing wrong with piles of cards on the table, but a tray makes grabbing those cards so much easier, and as a bonus, it keeps the play space nice and tidy as well. It’s small inclusions like this that make upgrading your older copy of Catan so much more worth it.

Player pieces remain unchanged, although I feel like everything included in this release is just a tad bigger than in the original. Still, if you were hoping for an updated robber piece, or perhaps a bit of extra modeling on the roads, settlements and cities, you are going to be disappointed.

These are classic Catan pieces, and I’m not sure you’ll be seeing those changed anytime soon, at least not in the retail release boxes. I do like that each player gets a tuck box to store all their components as opposed to plastic baggies. More and more companies are using little tuck boxes, but I think Catan Studios is ahead of the curve in this regard. I remember getting the tuck boxes in Settlers of Catan: New Energies and really loving them. A box insert also makes putting the game away really easy, with amazing iconography detailing where all the pieces, boards, and cards are supposed to go.

Catan Studios sent over Seafarers and Cities and Knights expansions as well, and they have received the same artistic overhaul as the original. Again, I’m going out on a limb and saying that everything in the Sixth Edition feels just a bit larger, but I could be way off with that assessment. Either way, if you own an older copy of Catan and you play it quite often, there are more than enough reasons with this new release to replace that old copy.