![rivals of catan rivals of catan](https://catancollector.com/images/catan-collection/2021-01-05-rivals-for-catan-1st-edition-2010/rivals2010-en-b.jpg)
These two changes make it much easier to find the cards you need while keeping cards that are not currently useful from plugging up your very limited hand space.
RIVALS OF CATAN FULL
In the Catan Card Game, you were only able to exchange if you had a full hand at the end of your turn.
![rivals of catan rivals of catan](https://www.gamesparadise.com.au/assets/full/029877031320.jpg)
Now players draw their hand back up to the limit (or discard down, but that rarely happens) then are given the option to trade one card with the draw piles.
![rivals of catan rivals of catan](https://www.hillscards.co.uk/images/catan-studios-rivals-for-catan-the-card-game-3131-settlers-of-board-p48716-47836_image.jpg)
In addition, the end of turn rules have been changed. This wasn’t possible in the original card game unless you were willing to spend resources to search through a deck. Since the Theme deck draw piles are stacked separately from the Basic draw piles, players can choose whether or not they want to potentially begin adding city cards to their hands. There are no City (red) cards in the Basic deck – those are found only in the Theme decks. The Rivals for Catan (and the Catan Card Game) are no exception to this – but one of the major differences between the two games is how the the structure of the card decks & some rules changes help Rivals focus on positive hand management rather than the more common negative hand management in the Catan Card Game. In Lost Cities, you attempt to build runs through the judicious discarding & hoarding of various cards, sometimes holding a card in your hand just to keep it away from your opponent. Most card games contain some element of hand management… in Race for the Galaxy, for example, you decide which cards are expendable in order to purchase other cards. (It does not, however, keep your little sister out of your bedroom.) Positive Hand Management vs. There are rules in the box, then, for five different ways to play the game. The same is true of The Rivals for Catan – the game has a basic deck which is used in the Introductory Game along with three “theme” decks (the Age of Gold, the Age of Turmoil & the Age of Progress) which can be played individually or together (as “The Duel of the Princes”). (My favorite project was a light-sensitive alarm that could detect unwanted intruders into my room.) When I was a kid, my dad got me a Radio Shack Electronic Project Kit… and what with all those diodes & transistors & springy things to attach the wires to, I could pretty much create what I wanted to create using the “toolkit” provided by the nice folks at Tandy Company. There are a number of smaller changes in the names of cards & various events (I like that the region cards now have their names on them in tiny print to remind you of which way they are oriented when they enter the game)… but those incremental variations are not the keys to getting this game to the table 5+ times in 5 weeks. Easy Interactive Game Introduction available for you.)
RIVALS OF CATAN HOW TO
(If you’d like a good overview on how to play the game, has the oddly whimsical Prof. Rather than attempt to explain the game play in detail, I’m going to try to do a comparative review for those of you who’ve played the original game & wonder if the new game is worth plopping down a double sawbuck. Long answer: Well, that’s why you’re reading this review, aren’t you? Just shuffle your eyes onto the next paragraph. The big question was, of course, could he do it successfully? In other words, could he keep the sprawling “build your kingdom” feel of the original game while smoothing out the rough edges of the design? So, when I read that Klaus Teuber was rebooting the card game to both streamline the game play & the playing time, I was pretty excited. The card interactions, especially if you add any of the expansions, require either a devil-may-care approach to making up rules on the fly and/or access to a pretty extensive FAQ. The game has always tended towards being overly long – rarely clocking in at less than two hours and sometimes reaching the three hour mark. My wife enjoyed our first few games of it… until I figured out how to use the various action cards to decimate her cities & her resources. Yet, for a game I claim to enjoy (I recently put it at #90 in my personal list of top 100 games over on my blog), I don’t play it very much. We have a long history, Die Siedler von Catan – Das Kartenspiel & I. (Yep – my first 10-15 plays were with a German deck & cheat sheets to translate the cards into English.) I switched over to the English version when it was finally published in late 1998… and then went through the whole “upgrade” mess in 2003 so that the expansions and older edition would work together. I’ve been playing the Settlers of Catan Card Game since the original German release – I bought my copy in the summer of 1997.