Thursday Jaeger bought an expansion set to “Settlers of Catan” called “Cities and Knights of Catan”. Saturday night Jaeger, Neal and I tried it out. It took us a while to go through the new rules and once we started I was still a bit confused. However, overall I really liked the game. It required me to completely rethink the strategy I tend to use for “Settlers of Catan”.

“Cities and Knights of Catan” is much more complex than standard Catan. Among other things, Catan now has 3 dice that get rolled on every turn. If the event die rolls a black ship the “barbarian hordes” advance on the island. Once they reach the island various cities are sacked and the barbarians go straight back to their homeland. When we first started playing the game, I figured the hordes would only attack once or twice during the game. However, this was incorrect. The hordes attacked at least 6 times, probably more throughout the 2 1/2 hr game. To defend Catan against the invaders not only do you have to have a knight (preferably more than one), you also have to have the knight “activated.” I was continually forgetting to activate my knight in time. I’d start concentrating on a different part of the game and the barbarians would sneak up unnoticed until it was too late.

I don’t know why, but I think I prefer this expansion to “Seafarers of Catan”. Maybe I just haven’t played “Knights and Cities” enough to understand how horribly I can lose In any case, I’m looking forward to the Fest where hopefully others can be recruited to try out Cities and Knights.