CAR for the Catan Series

[Whaleyland]

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.

[meepleater]

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

[dprski33]

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:

Third, place the circular number tokens on top of the designated terrain hexes. Finally, place your settlements and roads.
Each player receives the 3 resources from the terrain hexes adjacent to his settlement marked by
the white star. The oldest player is the starting player. The oldest player takes the first turn and
rolls for resource production.

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.

[Whaleyland]

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!

[dprski33]

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:

You must move the robber away from his current spot and onto the number
token of any other terrain hex.

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:

Thereafter, a player that has the most (at least 3) face-up Knight
Cards takes the Longest Road card

This should probably say:

Thereafter, a player that has the most (at least 3) face-up Knight
Cards takes the Largest Army card

~D

[Whaleyland]

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 – 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!

[meepleater]

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?

[Whaleyland]

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, 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.

[dprski33]

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

[Whaleyland]

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.

[Novelty]

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.

[Whaleyland]

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. hope it works for you!

[Novelty]

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.

[meepleater]

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?

[Whaleyland]

"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.