I was able to play Catan for the first time this past week, and it very quickly upturned my initial strategy: dominate one region on the board. Seeing a board that was territory/resourced based, I had quickly assumed that controlling territory was important (from playing similar board games). Teamed up with Shana, I found out just how complicated Catan could get.
My game involved 7 people, with only one person having played Catan before. The rest of us were paired off into teams in order to strategize and hopefully win Catan in our first game. We played a Game of Thrones themed version of Catan, which had additional gameplay expansions. As a fan of the Game of Thrones series, I was excited to see how the characters and world were incorporated into the game. The colors of the player pieces allowed association with some of the major houses in the story, to which some players were all too happy to pick the color that represented their favorite house (which ultimately didn’t matter, as it turns out, because the overview of the game is set in a fictional scenario that doesn’t occur in the series, but I digress). The role/power cards were all based on various characters, with benefits that suited the character’s backstory (for those who know it). Personally, I enjoyed the details on all the game pieces, as they were instantly recognizable to me (the little mammoths will always be my favorite).
From a look and feel perspective, I felt that the game did a great job of setting the visual scene of the world. I’m not sure what a normal Catan board looks like, but for this version, I enjoyed piecing the board together and seeing the artistic details in each piece. The hexagonal resource tiles were surrounded by snowy white tiles, emphasizing the snowy lands of The North and the presence of the Wildings at the top of the board. I was particularly interested to find that the board was modular; it could expand to incorporate more Wilding camps and thus make their pressure in the game more intense. You could have more resource tiles if you expanded the board, but with the added pressure of more Wildlings. The game also included icy wall pieces, which had just enough space on top to neatly put guards on top. The information design, from the clear icons and concise cheat sheet, made learning this version of Catan very easy.
The biggest difference between a normal game of Catan and this one was the incorporation of The Wall, and the Wildings that lived beyond it. The added feature introduced a new stressor into the game, where the Wildlings posed a growing threat to players over time. If they made it all the way to and past The Wall, they would permanently affect the resource tiles. For every tile that a Wildling was on, no players could reap the resources on it if the corresponding number was rolled. If players didn’t cooperate or negotiate to place guards on The Wall, everyone would suffer the consequences. This added mechanic introduced a second way to win the game: each time a Wildling breached The Wall, a counter would increment. Once three Wildlings made it over, the game would end. Rather than having a winner through victory points, the winner would be whoever had the most guards on The Wall (thus being the person who defended the board from the Wildings the most).
In the end, our game actually relied on reaching this other (arguably more bleak) ending. On our team, Shana and I thought of trying to keep our corner and expand out from it, but were quickly barricaded from expanding by other teams. As the game went on, it was interesting to see each team bargain and strategize different ways of winning. We hopelessly watched our winning prospects diminish as we couldn’t accumulate enough diversity of resources, forcing us to try our luck at development cards for a free victory point or some other advantage. The pressure of the wildlings only made things worse for us, as they breached the wall and blocked us from our primary source of wheat. However, we tried our best to try to win via guards on The Wall. With the pressure of both the Wildlings and time on our entire game, everyone sped ran rounds until, finally, the third Wilding crossed the wall. Regardless of the outcome, I found the game to be a fun time full of delightful laughter, yelling, and bargaining.
Oh, and now to not win Catan? Don’t diversify your resources, and don’t spread your settlements decently far away enough. At least I’ll be prepared next time!
Hi Annie! It was super cool to play and learn Catan with you for the first time. I also enjoyed the intricate artwork and design of this expansion pack, albeit I’m not too familiar with GoT myself. The Wildlings and the addition of the wall definitely added a new form of a stressor to the game that made it very enjoyable. I also feel that spacing out your settlements could be a better strategy, because my team couldn’t get any wood without trading, which sucked in terms of building. In the future, maybe we can play normal Catan and compare which we like better!
I loved hearing about how playing Catan with a story made the game feel more recognizable to you by being able to identify the houses and powers. This made me think about the importance of worldbuilding in games, such that we can really invest into a place, space, and time within the magic circle of the game. I wonder how might we create worlds around our games that reinforce the theme of our games through the design, and I agree that this version of Catan did a great job!
It was cool to learn about your experience playing the Game of Thrones version and the unique Wildings mechanic. One question I have after reading your post is, do you think that the Game of Thrones version helps resovle some of the issues the reading brought up about Catan reinforcing colonialist values? It seems like in this version, the game seeks to model the story of Game of Thrones rather than European colonialism. I’m not very familiar with Game of Thrones, but I wonder if modeling a fictional story is somehow less problematic then modeling real-life problematic systems?
Hi Annie! It was really neat hearing the perspective of another first-time Catan player. I started with the original version so it was really interesting hearing about the mods and extra features the GoT version included. To my understanding it seems like there’s a common enemy of the wildings that everyone must fight against, and I feel like it includes a nice mix of co-op vs. competition that the original Catan doesn’t have as much. I’d be interested to see what your perspective on playing the original version would be!