Seafarers $27: https://www.amazon.com/Catan-Stud...00U26V4S
Explorers & Pirates $30: https://www.amazon.com/Catan-Stud...00U26V6W
(Traders & Barbarians is currently regular price at Amazon [amazon.com])
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My group has played 500+ games of Catan as well, so I'll add my opinion in too. I guess everyone's doing rankings...
1) Seafarers. Catan is a really cool game. But the original game is just slightly too short and small, so there aren't very many options to take on your turn, and not very many sane strategies to go for each game. That makes it repetitive. Seafarers adds a lot of depth by giving you more room, more diverse landscape, more goals, and just a little bit more time in the game. It does this without complicating the game, without changing the core mechanics, and without slowing the game down at all. The fact that you can design your own large island maps each game makes this easily the best (also, people love the fog scenario).
2) Traders and Barbarians. There are a lot of cool mechanics packed into this box. The fish are just pure simple fun. The camels are really weird, but worth a few plays. But one scenario included, "Traders and Barbarians" is so fascinating, by far the best scenario there is for Catan. I recommend seafarers first because Catan's main mechanics (building & trading) are what make it worth playing over and over, but the T&B scenario is really awesome...for a scenario.
3) Cities and Knights. People are going to casually recommend this one to you. These people don't actually like Catan. They don't like it, and they play this instead, because it's long and complex and that's satisfying once in a while. It's actually a horrible, frustrating mess of rules and new mechanics, each one hurting the game's balance, slowing it down, no new aspect having any synergy with the others. I always like to compare it to being like multiplayer Mario Kart, except a version of mario kart where the player in 1st gets infinite blue shells, and the player in last can have blue shells too, but only occasionally, and must stop driving to use it; also all of the players as a group must throw away a certain number of mushrooms every 5 minutes, or else the person in last must complete an extra lap.
I also own
Settlers of America, it's all right. There's only one correct strategy, it's very slow, and you don't trade much, but the rail building and train delivery aspects are very well designed. It shouldn't have been Catan at all, honestly.
Oil for Catan, it's about as good as some of the scenarios in T&B's box. One way to win, but exciting when natural disasters destroy hexes. Speeds up the game a lot because it's easy to build things, so that's fun.
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While you can play 2 players, I don't advise it. I've tried and it's not fun (for me that is lol). I've found that one player always loses by attrition, as they are constantly robbed and blocked.
If you can wait, the base game does go on sale, selling for under $25.
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank frank3000
My group has played 500+ games of Catan as well, so I'll add my opinion in too. I guess everyone's doing rankings...
1) Seafarers. Catan is a really cool game. But the original game is just slightly too short and small, so there aren't very many options to take on your turn, and not very many sane strategies to go for each game. That makes it repetitive. Seafarers adds a lot of depth by giving you more room, more diverse landscape, more goals, and just a little bit more time in the game. It does this without complicating the game, without changing the core mechanics, and without slowing the game down at all. The fact that you can design your own large island maps each game makes this easily the best (also, people love the fog scenario).
2) Traders and Barbarians. There are a lot of cool mechanics packed into this box. The fish are just pure simple fun. The camels are really weird, but worth a few plays. But one scenario included, "Traders and Barbarians" is so fascinating, by far the best scenario there is for Catan. I recommend seafarers first because Catan's main mechanics (building & trading) are what make it worth playing over and over, but the T&B scenario is really awesome...for a scenario.
3) Cities and Knights. People are going to casually recommend this one to you. These people don't actually like Catan. They don't like it, and they play this instead, because it's long and complex and that's satisfying once in a while. It's actually a horrible, frustrating mess of rules and new mechanics, each one hurting the game's balance, slowing it down, no new aspect having any synergy with the others. I always like to compare it to being like multiplayer Mario Kart, except a version of mario kart where the player in 1st gets infinite blue shells, and the player in last can have blue shells too, but only occasionally, and must stop driving to use it; also all of the players as a group must throw away a certain number of mushrooms every 5 minutes, or else the person in last must complete an extra lap.
I also own
Settlers of America, it's all right. There's only one correct strategy, it's very slow, and you don't trade much, but the rail building and train delivery aspects are very well designed. It shouldn't have been Catan at all, honestly.
Oil for Catan, it's about as good as some of the scenarios in T&B's box. One way to win, but exciting when natural disasters destroy hexes. Speeds up the game a lot because it's easy to build things, so that's fun.
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank ShuinoZiryu
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U26V...VG7SM
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