Mayfair Games Catan: Explorers & Pirates Expansion 4th Edition

My family and friends actively seek new and different games, including variations and expansions on existing and well-known games. Thus, we've tried, loved, and hated several times the number of games most people will encounter in their lives. That said, there are still too many out there to try them all, so we must all make choices. Hopefully this review will offer a little more moderation to some of the 'more helpful' reviews currently available for this expansion to The Settlers of Catan.First, let's define what is meant by 'expansion'. In all prior cases, whether full (Seafarers, C&K, T&B) or small (Oil Springs, Frenemies, Helpers), expansions have relied heavily on the original Settlers pieces and format. Then there are variants (Star Trek, Ancient Egypt) which retain familiar game play elements with slight variations but bring all new pieces and components, making cross-play difficult and usually undesirable. As a quick side note, I'm disappointed with both listed variants, as Star Trek brings only a theme that is not covered by original Settlers and Helpers expansion, and Ancient Egypt again makes us of Helpers but adds a pyramid element that is marginally interesting. Sure, both offer new and different components which are fun and might be a good choice if you wish to play only original Settlers with the option to enjoy a specific theme/variant.Back to the review at hand and first point, E&P (Explorers and Pirates) is sort of a mix of an expansion and variant. You use the settlements and roads for each player, the hex frame pieces and about half of the original hexes. And the dice. That's it. Sure, the core mechanics are retained and if you are unfamiliar with how to play Settlers, E&P will be time consuming to learn. And sure, had Mayfair instead published this as a variant, there would again be great redundancy. But there is MUCH more unique to this 'expansion' than there is to Star Trek of Ancient Egypt. Curious choice of packaging and branding, considering some of the other notes that I reference briefly and are covered exhaustively in some of the other reviews. Mayfair calls it an expansion, which is true since the base game is required, but you might think of it more like a variant. I think it should have been released as a variant, allowing different frame construction (perhaps like Ancient Egypt) and better presentation of components (instead of lame bagging and cardboard pieces with bag-specific manifests).Second, a couple of admin points.a) There is now a 5-6 player expansion. It is kind of absurdly expensive for what you get, but it is necessary if you want to play with more than 4 people; faking it would require at a minimum Seafarers (to get the necessary hex frame pieces and sea hexes) and you would lose some 'structural' value from the hex 'chunks' of E&P 5-6 player.b) Barring ridiculous redundancy while sticking with the limitations of compatibility (consequence of expansion vice variant), there is little that Mayfair could have done about the ill-fitting nature of the pieces, particularly the hex frame pieces. Make sure you press your pieces to minimize warp and actually the fit isn't bad. Since E&P is built around discovering island hexes, which require flipping over to reveal, a tighter fit would be prohibitive and some elasticity in the frame fit is actually kind of nice when fumbling to flip hexes with big fingers like mine.c) It's a cardboard game...don't forget that. I was annoyed while unpacking my game to find that many of the hexes were printed slightly off-center, meaning that, for example, the pasture touched on two edges of the hex, thus leaving a large neutral edge on the opposite edges. But during the ~6 hours we spent playing the game, not once did I notice during the game and thus it never bothered me when it mattered.d) The thicker pieces are a bonus! Sure, it makes them inconsistent with the base game and other expansions, but again, E&P centers around flipping hexes. I found the thicker hexes to be a blessing for flipping, as the original weight is prohibitive to consistently flip without long finger nails or a tool. Plus I imagine the pieces will be nice and durable...also important since, again, you'll be handling these hexes during the game in ways you will not in any other expansion.e) The piece design is a bit frustrating, but I offer no better/more realistic option with wood components. True, your 'cargo' will fall off of your ships. True, if you are clumsy and haven't pressed your pieces, you may spend a good deal of time re-placing the cargo. But a little care goes a long way; in a full game with 9 & 11 year old boys, we had only a handful cargo dumps, which actually consisted of a couple of isolated incidents and one giant pile-up that lead to a few minutes of hysterical laughter as we each took our turn failing to fix it while still laughing. The ship and settlers designs are questionable, but again I offer no better option. It is no more annoying to me than the original settlements (oh look, a shed) and cities (oh look, a tall shed with a lean-to attached), or even the roads (hello, railroad crosstie). The intent conveys clearly, even if the settler would be 'better' served to look like two people instead of a person and spice sack. If the ships were any smaller, the cargo would be too small to handle with adult hands. Any bigger and they'd require a slimming redesign to avoid be unsightly large for the scale of the game. And creating cavities in the ships (like the harbor settlements) would make them too wide (again, wrong scale) to run parallel to other ships or it would require a cavity in the wood, which I would not vote for since the inconsistency/cost of such cavities being tolerable is unlikely.f) Some of the hexes come in chunks (3-6 hexes in one piece) and some interlock with each other and/or E&P frame pieces. The chunks are generally good, since they provide structure and another visual distinction between tiles to be revealed and known sea hexes. Sure, it limits creative rebuilding options and I wish Mayfair had not made the pieces this way. More annoyingly, it makes packing up and storage more cumbersome with specialty pieces instead of just a larger stack of hexes. But it's not all bad. Glass half full...Third, gameplay.a) True, there is really only one version to play here, with 4 versions to teach you the mechanics in digestible chunks. While I suppose you could opt to play any of the first 4 versions as a simple alternative version, it is my opinion that the elements of E&P work best in concert and felt shallow in isolation of sub-groups. That said, if I were to leave out one major element, it would be the Fish mission; there is a much greater element of chance with Fish than the rest of the game.b) Speaking of chance, we often revealed great disparity between the two islands. That was a bit frustrating, since you don't know where you are headed initially, you can have one or more players 'luck' into an ideal island building location almost immediately while the non-buildable areas make other locations undesirable or often prohibited for other player(s), thus creating a significant swing in early momentum by 'chance'.c) The Pirate (aka Robber) needs some work. The bottleneck layout of sea hexes makes the mobility of the Pirate almost irrelevant. Also, there are no Knights or an equivalent to move the Pirate by choice, so you're stuck to chance of rolling another 7 (never in my life have I seen so few 7s rolled in a day of Settlers) or relatively low odds of displacing him by combination of your ship location(s) and dice rolls. So each player is relegated to paying a gold coin for each ship, each time it wants to pass by the Pirate hex. I offer a simple modified rule for some improvement: forget the player-colored Pirates and simply use the Seafarers pirate, C&K barbarian, or even the original Robber instead. And then impose the change that no player can pass by the robber without paying 'tribute'. That will likely inspire the player to choose the target hex with less devastating indiscretion, as well as force hex transience instead of a rotating door of different colored Pirates on the same one or two hexes.d) Thrifty? It is possible to approximate E&P via Seafarers and T&B. However, you cannot easily replicate it, setup time would extend significantly, and gameplay would be confusing with stand-in hexes and components. Thus, I refute the claim the E&P offers little that Seafarers and T&B already provide. I was underwhelmed by the hodgepodge mess that is T&B (very little good amidst mostly garbage). Seafarers is casual and generally disinteresting. To that point, after playing with 9 & 11 year old boys, they both emphatically claimed E&P as their favorite expansion and a big step up from their previous favorite of Seafarers. To be fair, they are not yet ready for C&K, which is still my favorite expansion by far, so their opinion is of a partial sample.e) I do recommend playing through the 4 teaching versions, unless you have great capacity for new and complex rule sets, especially for familiar games. We played with two players simply to understand the mechanics and then brought in the boys only for the full version, permitting us to explain the major differences upfront and then progressively reveal more information as it became necessary (with corresponding hex revelation) to allow synthesis throughout. Even so, having played all 5 versions, we still found some of the rules unintuitive or easy to forget. For example, for 12 hexes, the discovering player is awarded two gold coins immediately. This was easy to forget and could significantly affect decisions without the gold, so we took to spreading gold coins over the undiscovered hexes as a visual reminder to award two whenever an eligible hex was revealed.f) 5-6 players. Good news. Instead of making the known world longer, it makes it wider. This is definitely a plus, since the map can get a little long and boring to traverse at certain points in the game with limited moves a little bit of bad luck with the chance elements.Fourth, what to buy? If you're like me, you don't like playing the same game repeatedly. Replay value comes with massive variability, great changes in setting or participants, and playing...new...games. Thus, when I choose to own a game, I usually choose to own all the expansions because it usually gives me the most future variability (aka replay value, in my lexicon) for the lowest dollar investment. But if you're not like me, and you own only the base game with plans to buy a single expansion, then you have a simple choice. If you like more complex gameplay, go with C&K hands down. If you like some additional complexity and variability without as many layers, go with E&P over Seafarers or T&B. It's not perfect, but I prefer it in isolation to either of those expansions. If you haven't yet bought any Settlers products, consider buying Ancient Egypt and E&P. Sure, the frames are not compatible and would require no small time investment to overcome, but that would give you the most variability, short of C&K, in the smallest footprint. That's bad advice (don't do it), but you get my point.Settlers is still a really cool franchise, and if you like variations on this modern-day classic, then I think you'll like E&P. I almost didn't buy it because of the other popular reviews out there. I am glad that I did buy it and was not disappointed, in spite of the imperfections. Next up: play with other expansions and see how they cross-play.If you're leaning away from buying this expansion because of the other reviews, I hope this helped moderate the skewed nature and, more importantly, helped you make a decision to buy or not that will leave you satisfied in retrospect. Mark me helpful if you thought so. Have fun!

The game design is great; it's a wonderful expansion to catan that I highly recommend however this review is about the Mayfaire Games US printing of the game- it has printing issues. Of the gold mines, which along with other unexplored territory needs to remain unknown until a player discovers the location, all printed on one of the cardboard sheets in the box have a discolored back. This results in players being able to easily see where 2 of the 3 gold mine tiles are hidden and that ruins the discovery and exploration a significant amount.I've contacts Mayfair of the variations in printing on the back of the tiles and they indicate they cannot/will not be able to fix the issue and send you new tiles. They said: " Due to how many tiles are provided in the Explorers & Pirates expansion the tiles are printed on two different machines and the die lots can vary. I am sorry we cannot offer replacement pieces. Have a great day and happy gaming to you." I explained that the variations in back side printing was just as if a playing card manufacturer printed playing cards where the backs of the aces were different enough from the other cards in the deck that someone could tell if you had aces from looking at the back of your hand - an unacceptable situation. They only indicate they have no control of the variability via their printer. Which I understand to say: Mayfair (the North American manufacturer I think) is incapable of producing a proper, playable complete set of tiles. Why they continue to make and ship such product is beyond me. As it stands, I cannot recommend that anyone buy this expansion as produced by Mayfair Games.See the easily spotted tiles in the photo. Both orange and green tiles have the issue.Additionally the punches of the tiles are not clean and results In some tile back tearing when punching out the tiles initially.I can also attest to the other reviewers' comments about the frame pieces not fitting together ideally and struggling to keep it all connected and flat as border parts don't stay flat and pop out occasionally, as well as being tricky to integrate to the base game parts you reuse in building the border.Finally the resource land artwork is strange and different from the base game I have and as such it took some time looking at all the times to validate the explored new land was indeed mountain. Why Mayfair didn't jeep a consistent look to all resource lands is beyond me.

I bought this after playing the Traders and Barbarians expansion. I figured since I liked Traders and Barbarians a lot that I'd like this expansion. I haven't been disappointed in this. I find putting the frame together easy. It's just that you need to put the frame pieces from the base game into the frame pieces from this game. Trying to push the base game frame into the frame piece from this expansion can be difficult, but if you have the frame piece from this expansion placed on the table and then place the base frame piece, it is quite easy; no effort is required.Since we have played with hex pieces from various editions we haven't had any issue discerning what resource is supposed to be given from any given hex piece. The main island can be randomized with the hex pieces arrangement; they suggest leaving the number placement consistent for any given game. However, I see no reason why one couldn't randomize the numbers as well as the hex pieces.This expansion relies heavily on the exploration aspect with the ships doing much of the work. Roads do not play a big role in this game, unless you are amassing lots of brick. I like the exploration of the expansion. The pirate ships, which replace the robber, have a different mechanic than what is in the base game. I also enjoy this aspect. There is enough familiar things from Catan with new things thrown into it to make it enjoyable for me.I recommend this expansion. Different scenarios can be integrated with different expansions to provide for a massive Catan experience..

By far the best board game I have ever played, you will never see monopoly out of the cupboard again

Good game.

A fantastic addition to the set.Introducing new elements to game play one at a time makes it simple to pick up.An excellent expansion to the original.

Excellent expansion, Make sure you have plenty of room to set it all up

An important expansion pack (apparently) Yet another well received present.