Star Trek Catan Board Game

You looking to find the "Star Trek Catan Board Game" Good news! You can purchase Star Trek Catan Board Game with secure price and compare to view update price on this product. And deals on this product is available only for limited time.

Price: $60.56 $58.44   

Product Feature

• For 3-4 players
• Takes 75-90 minutes to play
• Combines two classic properties

Product Description

Star Trek: Catan takes two well-known media properties and merges them into, well, into something that is 95% The Settlers of Catan glossed with Trek tropes and spiced with new special powers related to Trek personalities.In Star Trek: Catan, players start the game with two small space stations at the intersection of three planets, with each planet supplying resources based on the result of a dice roll. Players collect and trade these resources

Star Trek Catan Board Game Review

Star Trek Catan is very much the same old Catan we've come to know and love from Mayfair over the years... with a slight twist.

The basic game (Star Trek or otherwise) for the uninitiated is a competition of resource acquisition and management. In Star Trek Catan, players must build colonies around resource producing planets in the hopes that fate (or, rather, the dice throw) will provide them with the tools they need to build and expand their interplanetary trade routes in the hopes of being the first player to reach the minimum number of Victory Points. Players earn said Victory Points by building new colonies or upgrading old ones, racing to see who can get the longest trade routes or largest fleets, or developing their culture with Starfleet Cards.

All the familiar resources are there to be had, just with new names that may confuse veteran players. I've played it with both vets and newbies who were attracted to it due to it's license. Let me tell you, the confused looks on faces when I attempted to build roads (space ships) or trade wood for sheep (which is now dilithium for foodstuffs). Conceptually, I find it weird that ore, the crunch point resource for end game playing, is now water, but whatever. It's still the same old Catan greatness.

That's not to say there isn't a new mechanic, though, and it comes in the form of the officers, a collection of The Original Series (Star Trek TOS) bridge crew and regulars that include favorites like Kirk, Spock, and Sulu... as well as Nurse Chapel (yay, Majel!), Rand and Sarek. Each officer has a special ability that can be exhausted twice at various points before they are returned to the pool and a new officer is chosen. Of course, several are seen as ideal in the early game (Spock and his extra free resource if you didn't produce on a roll) and others are better later (Kirk, for the heavy resource producer).

The art is pretty darn good, though it's kind of weird having all those planets huddled up together. I think I have two main criticisms. First, it uses TOS movie likenesses instead of classic TOS series stills for all the officers, but it's a minor nitpick. My main beef comes from the fact that the backings of both Resource and Starfleet (Dev) cards are similar shots of the Enterprise with the same color schemes, but at different angles. It can make it confusing when you're separating them after a game, one thing you don't have to do with classic Catan as the Development cards are very distinct art-wise from Resource cards.

The game pieces are all plastic representations of Constellation class starships (nee: the Enterprise), Space Colonies and Stations. Each set is color based (like Catan), but are nicely detailed and cleverly designed (in the case of the conversion from Colony to Station), which is a nice change of pace from classic Catan which is just a collection of simple wooden blocks. Unlike classic Catan, though, the ships and colonies in this version all require a little assembly to get them sitting on their tiny transparent plastic stands. A bit more effort than usual, but not annoying.

Overall, Catan... ANY Catan (not just Star Trek)... is a great party game and having familiar faces and a nice new twist (officers) is a great way to introduce Trekkers, who may have shied away from tile and other board games, into the fun.

P.S. - I think Mayfair may have made an oversight not providing access to the 5-6 player expansion right off the bat on release. I understand that they might be worried that Star Trek Catan might not sell enough due to its possible niche appeal or that they wanted to wait and see how the officers in the current edition balance before adding more, but I think a smaller run to gauge the numbers would've been appropriate as veteran players who pick up this edition invariably get the expansion set (which adds more tiles, resources, etc.) and I would've preferred to do it now, rather than later.

Most of the consumer Reviews tell that the "Star Trek Catan Board Game" are high quality item. You can read each testimony from consumers to find out cons and pros from Star Trek Catan Board Game ...