Carcassonne Central

I guess it was inevitable that someone would start a post for Catan. Well, since I am currently the only editor for the catan.wikia.com project, I guess it makes sense to be me. But I actually have a purpose for this post.

I am a huge Catan collector (player, yes, but I prefer collecting the obscure expansions for it more), but have not yet purchased the 4th edition Settlers or Cities & Knights. I am wondering if anyone here would be willing to scan copies of every page for those two rules and almanacs for me. I know it is a bit of burdensome work, but I can't afford to purchase two games I already own, but require the rules since I am trying to make a Completely Annotated Catan Rules (a la CAR) and would much prefer to be using the current 4th edition rather than the dated 3rd edition rules that I currently own. I also need them for my website since I am roughly transcribing verbatim the rules from the 4th edition on to the site as separate wiki pages. Thank you to anyone who could do this for me. Even if you can only scan one of the rules, that is fine. You can scan them in black and white if that is the only option you have. Just message or reply here and I can get you my email information (if it isn't already on my profile page). Cheers!

Joff was so kind to scan me a copy of Catan: Settlers. Does anyone have the 4th edition of Cities & Knights that they could scan and send me? Once again, it doesn't need to be of high quality, just readable. Although it would be nice if it were in good quality because then I could use the images for the Catan CAR. Thank you and please PM me if you don't want to respond here. Cheers!

Ooooh, Catan CAR!  I'm looking forward to that!

I should have draft 0.8A up tomorrow for review and edits. I am cheating slightly by using the recent 4th edition English rules, but I am trying to incorporate over a decade of FAQs that remain unresolved as well as succeeding in integrating the almanac with the rest of the rules (I hate simplifying rules so much when the game is pretty basic). I am also including 5-6 player expansion information at the end. I plan to take FAQ requests and email Guido Teuber before posting this on BGG. I should have a link to the draft up tomorrow. Until then, cheers!

I don't enjoy playing Catan, but I enjoy thinking about all the expansions for it. Fortunately I am not feeling obliged to become a collector. The wiki page on BGG for Carcassonne: I was the one who reorganized it based on the wiki page for Catan on BGG.

I think a CAR for Catan is a most excellent idea and I wish you well in this endeavour. I look forward to reading it when you're ready for proof-reading.

The Settlers of Catan Completely Annotated Rules & Almanac release candidate 1: Download PDF (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/SettlersCARAbeta.pdf). (Updated to version 0.8b on 3 Feb.)

Here is my first public beta for my Settlers CARA. Overall, it is the Settlers rules and almanac (integrated), plus the Settlers 5-6 Player Extension rules. In regard to annotations, the only things I have currently are the unresolved (or at least completely resolved) FAQs from www.universityofcatan.com (http://www.universityofcatan.com), notes and tactics from the rules and almanac that did not fit well inside the actual text, and random facts known to me about previous editions (specifically the 3rd edition). In other words, I could use some more information for the annotations, although I don't want to flood the document. I was originally expecting it to be around 24 pages once completed. Currently it is 20 pages long, including the acknowledgments and version history. I am guessing there is some newer FAQs available that I can add information from, and I am fully willing to try and email Guido Teuber at Mayfair to get some answers to other FAQs, if anyone has any. Feel free to post here or message me. I want all the editorial work that can be done on this before I post it to BoardGameGeek and on my website (if that ever happens).

I am going to take a break to clean up this draft before I start on the Cities & Knights CARA. I should probably do my homework too.  ;D Cheers y'all!
-Whaleyland

I am assuming you are keeping an exact copy of the text of the 4th edition rules (i.e. Americanised spellings). Personally, coming from this lush and green (and bankrupt) land, I would change the rules to British English ;)  ;D

Edit: BTW, my apologies, the document looks really good. I will appreciate it.

Page 2, Paragraph 3: "You play the game The Settlers of Catan on variable game board."
There should be the word "a" between "on" and "variable".

Page 6, Paragraph 1: "The sum of the dice determines which terrain hexes product resources."
The word "product" should be "produce".

Footnote 13 is on the wrong page.

Page 7, Paragraph 1: "A settlement or city build adjacent to the desert..."
The word "build" should be "built".

Page 11, first example: "Emily must not give the Special Card to Coleman"
The word "not" should be "now".

Page 16, third sentence: "If offers the promise of bountiful harvests and limitless riches."
The word "If" should be "It".

Page 16, under Additional Components: "20 settlements (5 of each of two colors)"
How does 5 x 2 = 20?

I am curious about this Catan Almanac. Does it come with the game? What is in it?

It sounds like you are planning to have Cities & Knights as a separate document. I think it would be better to have Cities & Knights, Seafarers, etc. all together with the base game and 5-6 player expansion in one single document.

Scott: Thanks for the corrections. As you can see, transcribing all this made me make some silly errors. I plan to combine them all in a super document, but I am releasing them one expansion at a time to make it easier to edit. I already have started with an introduction to the full Catan CARA document and have a cover for it all, I just haven't had the time to get them all transcribed, photoshopped, edited, footnoted, etc. C&K is the next expansion I am working on. After that, Seafarers should be a breeze (except I plan to include the old 3rd edition scenarios as well) and then T&B will be easy, but have a lot to write out.

The Almanac is at the back of the Settlers rules booklet. It actually comprises about 2/3 of the rules booklet. It is formatted like an alphabetical encyclopedia, making it very difficult to use, so I integrated its material throughout my rules.

Joff: I did hesitate writing it out in American English (sounds like a contradiction), but I was trying as best as possible (combining the rules with the almanac and all) to keep the language as close to the original document as possible, "colors" and all.

I expect at some point you'll also be doing the Fishermen of Catan and Great River of Catan mini-expansions too?

Those were both included in Traders & Barbarians. Even though there are slight rules changes between the stand-alone and the T&B versions, I don't consider them worthy of separate entries. I will just note the changes in the footnotes.

The Settlers of Catan Completely Annotated Rules & Almanac release candidate 1: Download PDF (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/SettlersCARAbeta.pdf). (Updated to version 0.8b on 3 Feb.)

New update up with Scott's notes and a few slight changes, nothing very noticeable, though. Anyone else want to provide edits or supply more official FAQ information? I guess Mayfair did a pretty good job this time fixing all the ambiguities.

Unless the component list has actually changed, there are only 4 3:1 harbours in the base game. And I'm sure I've seen a set with blue dice instead of white.

You may want to add that previous versions had letters on the back of the number chits, from A to R, so that the order would be correct. (Small note from personal experience: starting from a corner is important, as if you start from the middle, it puts 6s and 8s next to each other.)

Rules query: Most of the people that I have talked to recently about the game say that you may play a Knight before rolling the dice. The current draft do not mention this, so I am wondering if it is (or was) an official rule.

The expanded board setup looks incorrect. Having not played with a 4th edition set (and so only knowing the sea tiles method of setting up), the 22 sea tiles should alternate harbour and blank. So the frame should be set up to match this. Versions that have tiles say that the harbours should be facing the longest stretch of land tiles. I don't know if that is possible with the frame pieces. If it is possible, there might be only one way to do it.

Page 18: You may want to mention that some groups feel that a "current player" marker is necessary. I also remember reading somewhere that a version of the 5/6 player expansion was released that doesn't have a special building phase, and instead the hand limit is higher (10 cards, I believe).

Thank you for the editorial suggestions, Lardarse. I need to note that a number of things have changed in the 4th edition, primarily the introduction of frame tiles replacing the sea tiles completely, except with Seafarers. The set up is still flexible (albeit slightly less than before) regarding the harbors, but the harbors are now printed (with changeable pentagon tiles that can go over them to change things up).

The printed numbers still exist on the front of the number chits above the numbers, and I mention them in the extension, but I may not have included it in the basic game. I'll check and correct that if I see it.

I've never seen blue dice for Settlers, certainly not in the 3rd or 4th editions, but if you know which edition featured it, I would like to know. That sort of information I plan to include on a version chart for the full Catan CARA.

The Knight rule is somewhat implied in the Development Rule clause that states "Exactly one Development Card can be played before the dice are rolled." I will add a footnote to make it more clear that a player can thus play a Knight.

I've never heard anything about no Special Building Phase in the Settlers 5-6 player game, but again, if you find where that rules comes from, I can include it as a footnote. 3rd and 4th edition rules clearly include it in Settlers, Seafarers, and C&K (Traders & Barbarians have different rules for each scenario, so it varies).

Thank you for your help. I will input what I can and if you can provide any sources for the blue die and the no building phase, I will certainly include those two. I only have copies of the 3rd and 4th edition rules, so I am lacking in the earlier versions and the foreign versions. Thanks!

The Settlers of Catan Completely Annotated Rules & Almanac release candidate 3: Download PDF (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/SettlersCARAbeta.pdf). (Updated to version 0.8c on 4 Feb.)

New update up with Lardarse's comments mostly included. Two new footnotes and an additional clause in the Number Chits section. Please review and provide comments. I am starting work on Cities & Knights tomorrow. Seafarers, T&B, and both 5-6 player extensions need to be scanned (hopefully my scanner still works) before I can work on those.

Lardarse, I think that your blue die comes from Starship Catan. I was looking around online and found the blue die, then remembered that in my copy, it indeed has a blue die. Perhaps Starfarers of Catan also has this die. I'm not sure since I still haven't forked over the cash for that and its extension (which is apparently mandatory if you want to have game that is less than 3 hours long). I didn't include anything about a current player marker, but I added a footnote about the alternate Special Building Phase option of just changing the card limit. I also added a clause about the letters on the number chits and a footnote about playing the Knight Card (or other cards) before the dice roll, using a paraphrased FAQ from www.universityofcatan.com.

Thanks again and please, continue editing this! I want it to be perfect. I will have C&K up as soon as I can. If anyone has any suggestions for additions, I still have four pages available for such. Cheers!

I'm somewhat curious to know what the buildings are on the victory point cards. I don't have the game, so this might not be of interest to someone who does...

I think you need better headers and footers; make it look more professional. When I did the CAR for H&G, I stuck pretty close to Matt's format, mainly to be consistent. I'd also be inclined to use different fonts than Times New Roman and Arial. I used Baskerville for my paragraphs and Barbedor for the headings, which is the same as the original H&G rules from Hans im Gluck. I think Matt used Baskerville as well, and Casque Open Face for the expansion name headings. I have no idea what the Settlers rules look like or what fonts they use, but I highly recommend Palatino Linotype and/or Calisto MT. They are both similar, but one works better for headings and the other works better for paragraphs. The Lucida family of fonts also has some nice options. That font drop-down in your word processor is asking to be clicked!

The Settlers of Catan Completely Annotated Rules & Almanac release candidate 4: Download PDF (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/SettlersCARAbeta.pdf). (Updated to version 0.9b on 5 Feb.)

Yet another release candidate for The Settlers of Catan CARA. I have added the names of the five Victory Point Development Cards as well as a footnote about previous card names. I also changed the font throughout, except for the introductions, to Baskerville Old Face, a variant of Baskerville, and increased the general font size to 13 from 12. Unfortunately, I am working on a Mac and don't have access to Casque Open Face or Palatino Linotype. Calisto MT didn't look right and nothing in the Lucida family was to my liking. Perhaps unfortunately, the original rules to Settlers 4th edition are written almost exclusively in Times New Roman and Arial. This only highlights Mayfairs lack of creative talent in creating their rules (a problem present since at least the 3rd edition rules).

During this process, I had to resize a number of images and fixed a number of minor errors. The page count is now up to 21. Since this CARA is just for Settlers, and not the series, I am not sure if I want to include a Table of Contents and/or Introduction yet. Any thoughts? Also, are there any other additions I should include for a Settlers-only CARA? I plan to expand to the other expansions and create an uber-rules guide a la Carcassonne CAR, but I want to release them as stand-alones first so I can tweak and receive feedback on them properly separately. Matt did this for all the Carcassonne expansions, although I can't seem to find them on CC anymore (they are still on BGG). Scott, give it a look through and tell me what you think. I prefer this to the previous version, so thank you for the suggestion. I bumped the release number to 0.9 now because of it.

Edit: Three alignment issues and a run away image. Corrected.

It looks very polished now!

I appreciate your explanation about developing each expansion separately and then integrating them later. It creates more distinct milestones that you can see your progress by. I am feeling inclined that you can hold off on a Table of Contents and Introduction until you get to the integration stage. By then you will also have a better idea of what needs to be said in the Introduction.

Even at this stage, however, I think a cover page would be nice. The full page "Game Overview" is a nice back cover, but the beginning feels like somebody tore the front cover off the book. I wonder if something can be done with the box cover (http://www.mayfairgames.com/mfg-shop/3000-3299/pics/MFG3061-cl.jpg (http://www.mayfairgames.com/mfg-shop/3000-3299/pics/MFG3061-cl.jpg)) to make it more vertical than horizontal... I'll see if I can come up with anything.

Here's my attempt:
(http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/9745/mfg3061cleb3.th.png) (http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/9745/mfg3061cleb3.png)

It's designed to be 6.5" x 9", so it will fit on an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper with a 1" margin on all sides.

I'll hang on to the layered image in case I need to do the expansions in the same style at some point.

That does look quite stylish. Its colours fit nicely with my rules too. I had actually created a cover for the finished rules, which are pictured below, but hadn't even tried to create one for each individual expansion. At least not yet. I think I will use yours. I may tweak it in Photoshop a little, if that is alright, but I like it quite a bit, especially the bit where the The Settlers of Catan and the other text have been removed from the picture. The images for the other three expansions aren't all so clean, but I see a lot of potential here. Thanks.

Tell me what you think of my image for the final cover. I was thinking of placing a similar text box on yours, if I reorganize it that is. That way the text boxes and Catan logos will just seem consistent. If you don't like that idea, we can work on a new one. Cheers.

My image is linked here (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/catancaracover.jpg).

I do like your cover Derek. I have not been able to connect to ImageShack as yet to view Scott's cover.

I would have to agree with Joff here :)  That's a nice cover.  A lot more busy than Scott's but nicer IMO.  Sorry Scott.

As I mentioned, I liked Scott's idea for a cover, but didn't think it quite fit the style of my Settlers CARA. Hence, I have created a hybrid for your consideration. Find it here (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/settlersCARAcover.jpg). I still plan on using the expansion-montage cover for the finished product, but for each individual cover, I think something like this may be nicer. Tell me what you think. I begin C&K tomorrow (distractions, troubles, etc. made it harder to start it yesterday). Cheers.

I like the changes you made to my cover very much. I'll clean up the box covers for the expansions and post them as I go so that you can make cover pages for the next three PDFs (C&K, Seafarers, T&B).

I agree that the final cover should be a compilation, but I personally don't like the boxes that are cut in half. I don't have a suggested solution yet, but I will keep thinking.

I don't mind that the boxes are 'cut in half'. The four boxes pictured are just the 5-6 player expansion boxes, so I don't think that's a major issue.

Thank you Scott. I really appreciate that. I added your cover but haven't yet posted the update. I am contemplating adding blue borders to each page, anyone like/dislike this idea? It would require yet another reformat, mostly to shrink each page's margins a little (they are at .75" right now). Personally, I like the idea, but it also may just become an ink-waster.

I'm thinking maybe just horizontal blue lines, one below the header and one above the footer.

Here's the cleaned-up box image for C&K:
(http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/4423/mfg3065clyi9.th.jpg) (http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/4423/mfg3065clyi9.jpg)

Here (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/citiesCARAcover.jpg)'s my cover for Cities & Knights, fresh off the press. I also have a second use for those covers that you are editing and chugging out...photos for my montage. With your images, I can create a slightly less messy cover for the Complete Catan Rules book (not going to be done with that for a while). On that note, Scott, is there any way you can remove the "Klaus Teuber" name from the Settlers cover like you did with Cities & Knights. It's not that I want to get rid of the name, but I rather prefer the image without it. Thanks again. I am looking forward to the other two covers. Cheers.

I wanted to get rid of it too. Part of me was shamefully avoiding it because the tree branches looked like a potential pain in the backside, but turned out to be not near as bad as the brickwork on C&K.

(http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/9666/mfg3061clpq3.th.jpg) (http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/9666/mfg3061clpq3.jpg)

Seafarers:
(http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/5844/mfg3063clff6.th.jpg) (http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/5844/mfg3063clff6.jpg)

Traders & Builders Barbarians:
(http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/1448/mfg3068clur9.th.jpg) (http://img124.imageshack.us/img124/1448/mfg3068clur9.jpg)

Event Cards:
(http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/1012/mfg3112cluy5.th.jpg) (http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/1012/mfg3112cluy5.jpg)

Am I missing something here? How does ImageShack work? I have yet been unable to view any of Scott's images uploaded to it. I click on the thumbs and ImageShack opens in a new window, but there is no picture.

I'm not sure what problem you are having with ImageShack. The images loads fine for me. Thank you again, Scott. I picked up the three covers you (re)did. I am not sure yet if I will use the Event Card deck, since it is included in T&B, but if I do, then yours will probably be the best resolution version, compared to those in the rules book. I feel like scanning my copy of Atlantis to use that image as a desktop background or something...oooh, that sounds fun. Too bad the picture on the rules isn't big enough and my box is at home (and dented pretty badly). I will get the other two covers done today and hopefully start transferring the C&K rules over. Every time I want to get started, I get distracted with something else. ::sigh:: Well, as long as it is all in the name of progress (or beating up Diablo in Diablo II), I guess it is okay. Images up later today!

Atlantis:
(http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/522/pic213744wk9.th.jpg) (http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/522/pic213744wk9.jpg)

I changed the hyperlink part to link directly to the full-size image instead of a web page, so maybe Joff will be able to see this time.

When you finish the CARA for the Catan board game, do you think you will do one for the card game too? I think somebody needs to.

Are you going to include scenarios in the CARA? Do I need to clean up those box covers too?

Beautiful! You are a champion of scanning, Scott! I am holding off on the scenarios for now, mostly because half of them are rough remakes of earlier scenarios (see Atlantis remakes of Das Buch scenarios). Also, since there are so many of them (Das Buch, Atlantis, Historical Scenarios I & II, 999 Games scenarios, Hesse, Nordrhine-Westfalen, Luxembourg, Saggsen Gaden, Austria, Discworld, and probably a few more), I am not sure where the line should be drawn between should-be-in-Catan-CARA and shouldn't be. I would need translations of the 999 Games scenarios (which are unfortunately too expensive for me to afford right now [come on trip to the Netherlands!]) as well as the Discworld scenarios (which I haven't translated yet nor has anyone else on BGG). Everything else I already have digital translations of, but the question again is: should any/all of them be included? I think I will wait until I am done with the 4th edition expansions before I contemplate the others. I already am thinking of changing Catan CARA to Catan CARAS (Completely Annotated Rules, Almanacs, & Scenarios); adding a bunch more would not change that probably expansions of the title.

Concerning Catan Card Game, I kind of do want to do an annotated rules for that game. Unlike the Catan CARA, I would definitely include the Short Tournament Rules from Das Buch, but other than that, I haven't really seen much to add in footnotes. I am not sure what the merit of a Catan Card Game CAR would be except to have one. Anyone have ideas about this? This would, quite obviously, be done in a number of months, when I am done with the Catan CARA(S), but it is very possible if only there is interest and information that needs annotation.

Okay, as promised, here are the covers (all 5 of them) for the individual expansions, as well as the final cover for the complete set.

Settlers of Catan (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/settlersCARAcover.jpg)
Cities & Knights (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/citiesCARAcover.jpg)
Seafarers (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/seafarersCARScover.jpg)
Traders & Barbarians (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/tradersCARScover.jpg)
Catan CARAS (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/catanCARAScover.jpg)

I copied the rules booklet color schemes from the official rules, so that is why the borders are blue in some and yellow in others. I chose to stick to the original Settlers color scheme, though, for the complete edition. Thanks again Scott for all the covers!

I had no problems viewing this image. Still have been unable to view the others though :(

I went back and changed all the previous images to link directly, so you'll be able to see them now.

The covers are looking great! I am glad to have been of assistance. They are not scanned by me, of course, since I don't have any Catan games.

I think the "C" standing for "Completely" would necessitate including ALL scenarios, or at least working towards including them all.

I am fairly resourceful, so let me know what you need a translation for and I'll do my best to find it.

Thanks for the images Scott.  You know I now have to buy Catan after reading through this.  *sigh*  I should put up a sign saying "Will work for euro boardgames" somewhere...

It's definitely made me want to try playing Catan again. I've only ever actually played two or three times in the past. The time elapsed since then has given me opportunity to rethink my strategy. I'm afraid of getting hooked.

I can deal with getting hooked.  I'm not sure if my wallet can deal with me getting hooked...

Seriously, try BoulderGames if you are going to buy the 4th edition of Catan. So much cheaper than anywhere else. Strangely, my girlfriend really doesn't like playing Catan with any of my friends. Still, I really enjoy the concept of the game and the changeability of it. If you have played Settlers and didn't enjoy it a ton, try playing the Cities & Knights expansion or the Traders & Barbarians scenario (not the expansion, although the scenario is included the expansion). Both really add a new dimension to the game and make it feel very different, yet strangely familiar (perhaps it is the robber?).

Novelty, what summary did you want me to include in the Catan CARAS? The different scenarios and whatnot or the different games? I want to include at least a mention of both in the final rules but if you could point out which you were referring to in your PM, that would be much appreciated. Cheers.

Both!  Thanks!  I'll look forward to the final rules :)

I spoke about the Catan Viking pieces to Whaleyland in a PM. For those that have not seen the basic Viking pieces for Catan, here they are:


The front are the regular Catan pieces and their Viking replacements are at the back.

Hello again, just thought I'd give you all an update. I've been busy with in-life work, but managed to finish transcribing the Cities & Knights rules. My early release draft is located here (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/citiesCARAalpha.pdf).

This draft is merely for proofreading and I would appreciate anyone who can to read through it quickly. This draft:
* is not formatted properly;
* has no images except the cover graphics; and
* has not been proofread at all.
I have most of my footnotes included (most variants for this one), but if anyone has any additional ones that should be included, please suggest them to me. If there is anything else, especially anything major, please mention it now as once the images are in, it becomes a lot harder to fix things.

Also, here (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/settlersCARAbeta.pdf) is my Settlers rules, in their nearly finished draft. If there is anything else that needs correcting, please mention it. I have one more thing I may add, but it really depends if anything else needs to be changed. Otherwise, it is just too big of a pain to correct such a minor detail (it would really make no difference to include or not, it would just be a little helpful). So please, feel free to read through this too and offer any suggestions. I am sure there are still grammatical/punctuation/spelling errors I have overlooked.

Joff, I am not a huge fan of the Settlers or Seafarers Viking pieces, but I like the Cities & Knights ones. Do you know if (a) the City Wall ring fits around the original wood city and (b) the metropolis cap fits on the top of the original city? If you confirm both of those, I am ordering a set for sure. Oh, and do you like the little flags for the knights? Or do they become a pain? They kind of look strange, but I like the non-circular knight pieces and Merchant. I assume the set includes all six colours, this may not work. I play green...always.

Novelty, I will include details of all the accessories and German-only scenarios (and anything else I can think of) when I do the complete rules booklet, which won't be for a while. Seafarers may well kill me because I need to integrate the 3rd edition scenarios with the 4th edition ones. If Seafarers doesn't kill me, then surely Traders & Barbarians will. It has more scenarios and variants than anything else.

Well I do not have Cities and Knights, neither have I ever played it! I do like the Viking pieces and prefer them to the standard pieces. I would assume that the Cities and Knights Viking pieces fit the standard pieces judging by pictures...

Page 1, Paragraph 3: "great real of Catan"?

Footnote 5: the footnote should not span multiple pages

Footnote 6: the word "neuter" should be "neutral"

Page 8, first paragraph under "City Walls": the word "tow" should be "two"
Page 8, Point 3 under "City Walls": the word "a" should not be here

Page 9, under "Promoting a Knight": The non-word "yoj" should be "you"

Page 11, third paragraph under "City improvements": the word "marker" should be "market"
Page 11, second paragraph after the first example: the closing quotation mark is missing.

Page 14, first bullet point: the second "not" should probably be "nor"
Page 14, second bullet point: "face up down" is contradictory

Page 16, description for Deserter: there is a instance of "knight" which should be pluralized
Page 16, description for Intrigue: there is a missing letter "b" in front of the lone "e"

Page 19, second paragraph after the first example:
- should begin with an uppercase letter
- "babarian" should be "barbarian"
- Attack of the Barbarians is missing the closing doublequote

Page 24: "Now you'll have face" is missing the word "to"

Various pages: references to "even die" should be "event die"?

Thank you Scott. As always, your edits are appreciated. For some reason, I really just wanted "even" dies, those events were too much for me. Oh, and "Attack of the Barbarians seems to like escaping without a closed quote. It's because it is a naughty concept and merits a naughty response. (") Thanks! All suggestions fixed (except for the overlong footnote. Still trying to work with that).

I will get a new draft up in the next few days, once I can Photoshop some of the images into it. There are a lot of images in these rules. This PDF will be uber-compressed (hopefully not too much!). Anyone else who wants to help edit, please do!!!

Mr. Monk prefers them that way.

New release candidate: Catan Settlers CARA 0.9f (Final pre-release edition) (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/CatanSettlersCARA.pdf) (3.0 MB PDF Download)

Please review this final release candidate before I propose it at BGG. The only significant change has been the addition of "Catan for Two" rules in the very back of the document. This was originally released in Traders & Barbarians but I decided that it was better suited for these rules. If you can only edit a little, please edit this. Thank you! I will publish on BGG shortly.

Page 23, first bullet point under Replenishing Trade Tokens: the word "mighty" doesn't make sense here.

Very exciting to see this so close to release.

Thanks again, Scott. I have just uploaded this to BGG with a few more revisions and footnotes. It undoubtedly still has problems, but perhaps some wider review will offer corrections. Right now, I just hope it gets approved since it has so many copied images from the printed rules in it.

I am working slowly on Cities & Knights. All the major text is in, as well as some footnotes. The images for the Progress cards are really annoying, though. I took a break from Photoshopping them to add the "Cities & Knights for Two" rules that were posted on Catan.com last autumn. They require a lot of editing for consistency and ease of readability, though, so it is taking more time than expected. I will try to have a final (preview) draft up by the end of next week, before I leave for Spring Break, but there is no guarantee. As with Matthew's CAR, these things take a lot of time to pick at, and I have many other things to do, too. At least I have more confidence that Traders & Barbarians will go easily. I am still worried about Seafarers, though, because it is more chart-based and has a lot of large images, which my editing program doesn't like.

That isn't an issue with RGG at least, I have word from Jay that as long as the images aren't used for profit, anyone can use them for purposes such as these.

Version 1.0 is now available on BGG. Check it out at http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/40528 (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/40528)!

Congrats!

Hey everyone. Just a quick note that I am leaving for a month tomorrow. Unfortunately, I have not had the time to finish the C&K CARA before I left, but hopefully I will get it done while I am away (it is on my list). The Settlers CARA is up at BGG under Settlers of Catan. If you download it there, please give me a thumbs up. I am almost a default view on the first page of the files database, which would make my CARA much more visible. I will try to get the other two documents, Seafarers and T&B, transcribed for image editing while I am gone too. I have some flights, so should be able to find some time if my new (old) GBA doesn't distract me too much. Either way, I am shooting for a mid-summer release of the entire Catan CARAS, but that may be optimistic. I am still trying to fix some format problems with the Settlers CARA and would like any suggestions for additional footnotes. In all likelihood, they will force a better layout for the document. Right now, there just aren't enough footnotes to make for a good layout.

Anyway, hope everyone has a good Easter. I'll be back on April 20th officially (though I may check still from time to time). Cheers!

Oh wow, a new avatar!  Enjoy your holiday Whaley, I'm sure the CARA will wait until you get back (and yes, I'm still awaiting the final combined product eagerly)

see you when you return

Hello everyone. I am happy and proud to announce the beta release of...

The Cities & Knights of Catan Completely Annotated Rules & Almanac – Release Candidate 0.9 (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/citiescarabeta.pdf) (2.8 MB PDF Download)

I released an earlier version of this before, but it lacked the majority of the images and was not entirely formatted or edited. This edition is my pre-release version and I want to get it up at BoardGameGeek as soon as possible. I probably won't get a chance to work on Seafarers or Traders & Barbarians for some time, so this will be it for right now. Regardless, can a few of you read through this and provide edits. If you have any suggestions for footnotes, those are also much appreciated. Thank you very much. This project is taking more time than I thought, but I am sure Matt knows that since his Carcassonne CAR sometimes goes months before release (as in the case right now). Cheers. I look forward to any suggestions or edits.

Page 2, under Game Contents: the info in brackets behind "24 knights" is separated with a period, which is inconsistent with the line before where the info was separated with a comma.

Page 8, under Turn Overview: is the "All players produce..." point supposed to appear twice?

Page 17, under Crane: try to get rid of the space between the last two lines.

Page 18, under Mining: try to get rid of the space between the two example lines.

Page 21, under Saboteur: try to get rid of the space between the last two lines.

Page 22, under Merchant: "receives the trade advantage" doesn't fully make sense here - "receives" should be changed to the singular form "receive".

Thank you Scott. It is much appreciated. With some additional edits and formatting, I have uploaded it to BGG and it is pending approval. Thank you to all who contributed to the Cities & Knights CARA. It will be a few months, but next up is Seafarers CARS.

Thanks a lot for doing this! Now I can play C&K on asobrains and actually understand what I'm doing!

I just started taking a look at this document today (I really liked the Carcassonne one), and had a question:
On page 4, it says:

I am an experienced Catan player, but when I read this passage for the first time, I found it confusing.

The quoted portion seems out of place, since the sectional immediately following reiterates much of the same information.  The passage "place your settlements and roads" refers to items that have not been selected until a little further down on the page ("Select a color and take your 5 settlements, 4 cities and 15 roads..."). 

For clarity, it might be best to remove some of the portion I quoted.

Additionally, there is mention of "The Distance Rule" at hte bottom of this page, but that rule is not explained until page 6.

Thanks for the advice. I'll look into the issue. Most of that, unfortunately, was a direct copying from the rules book, so I will have to see if I did a bad job transcribing or Mayfair just did a bad job translating. Either way, I will try to clean that section up. In all honesty, I never liked it much to begin with. Perhaps some rewriting is in order. I will also take note of the reference to the distance rule. I think the original rules also mentioned it before explaining it, but again, I want to remove instances of confusion such as that.

As soon as I am done with my two term papers in two weeks, I will get back to work on fixing up the Settlers CARA for a 1.2 release. A friend on BGG is also providing me with a scan of the 2nd edition rules, so I can include the 8-player game variant which has been removed since then. Thanks for helping and if you see anything else with the Settlers or Cities & Knights CARA, just post it here and I will look into it. There still isn't an English community like CarcCentral for Catan (CatanCentral?) so I have to get help from people here. Cheers!

Based on a full reading of the document, it appears to me that if you use a Knight to move the Robber, you cannot move the Robber back to the Desert.
Page 15 says:
Implication: since the Desert does not get a number token, the Robber cannot be moved to the Desert by the Knight. 

I am unable to find a copy of the 4th Edition rulebook online (I only have the 3rd edition), so I cannot tell for sure if this was the intent. BGG does not appear to have an answer to this question, so I will post it there.

Also, page 23 says:
This should probably say:

~D

Thank you dprski33 for your suggestions. They have been integrated into my new edition.

Just released! The Settlers of Catan Completely Annotated Rules & Almanac (CARA) version 1.5 (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/file/download/4rffp36lr1/SettlersAnnotatedRules1.5.pdf) – Available from your local BGG download page immediately. Thanks to all who helped in supporting this. I don't plan on another draft until all four expansions are transcribed. Regardless, if you see any errors, please note them and I will make sure to fix them. Cheers!

These have been so helpful! I can't wait for the other two... have given all them thumbs up on BGG... I also like the 'complete combination' rules, maybe give that one the same layout as the others?

I'd like to, but I am trying to get some form of it approved for the official website. The problem is, no one at Mayfair or Catan.com actually responds to emails. It's like "Oh, very nice, yes. Now let us show you the combination rules we've made," as if I haven't already found them and integrated them together. From what it seems, most of the combo documents were compiled and tested at Siedeln.de, the popular german Catan fan site. Unfortunately, I don't speak German and my account keeps getting locked there, so I am having no luck negotiating this document with anyone official. I plan to integrate the combination documents into the Traders & Barbarians CARS, but it is also one of the reasons I am putting that document off...it will take a ton of time. As it is, I have integrated Catan for Two, C&K for Two, and the Friendly Robber into my current documents, so as to lessen the amount of information I need to include in the T&B CARS, but it is still really daunting. Including my personal combination document, which isn't official, I won't include until I get approval/get it posted on Catan.com. Until then, it remains unofficial. I did upload an image for my combination scenario on BGG, though, to help with set-up and whatnot. It's located here (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/450113), so you can feel free to use that with the rules I made. Thanks for the support. I will get the other two documents out eventually. After that, I plan to combine them into a full Catan CARAS with some other information as well such as edition history, running storyline, major rule changes, and perhaps some scenarios from Das Buch and Atlantis, if they don't require m/any additional items. We'll just have to wait and see about that.

I received a reply from rulesguru@mayfairgames.com to the question "When I play a Knight, may I move the Robber back to the Desert?":

No, the robber must be placed on a number.


~D

That's very odd. In other words, if the dice moves the robber, it can go back to the desert; but if a knight moves the robber, it has to go to a number hex. Very odd indeed. I will have to correct that in my rules. Thank you.

Whaley, do you have the scans from the Seafarer rules?  I'm wondering if I can use a ship image in a future Carc fan-made expansion.

It's a terrible image, but I do have it. Mayfair Games was never very good with making nice images of their pieces. I uploaded it to here (http://www.whaleyland.com/downloads/page3.jpg). hope it works for you!

Thanks.  However, I'm sorry for troubling you, since I decided not to use it.  I made my own so that it looks more carcassonne-y and would fit better with the rules.  My apologies again, although I do appreciate the effort.

I have downloaded the rules for seafarers off Catan.com and liked the fog island scenario, but have recently heard of it being changed to the 'oceans' scenario... do you know where I can find the rules for this updated scenario?

"Oceans" is actually a scenario from the 3rd Edition, not a new scenario but an old scenario. There are no updated rules. I can send you a .jpg scan of the old scenario if you want it, but it is pretty much identical to the Fog Island, just designed a little differently because of the different types of frames.

The BGG post I read must have been pretty old then. Don't worry about the scans, but thanks anyway...

(btw. I got Traders and Barbarians yesterday!! :))