CATAN Rivals for CATAN Card Game - Build, Trade and Conquer! Strategy Game, Family Fun for Kids and Adults, Ages 10+, 2 Players, 45-60 Minute Playtime

I never played the previous 2 player card game version of Catan, but from what I read - this is a fair improvement. The cost is currently $20, and when you open the box you might be thinking "I just paid how much for this???" But the real value is in the incredible depth of the game rather than in the inclusion of several trinkets. Oh and an important note: In the rule book they keep talking about the shield icon or some such. My version has a knight icon instead. So after a few frustrating minutes, and the possibility of having to contact Mayfair, we realized the new piece just had a different icon! Update the rule book guys! I won't get too in depth into the rules. Basically the game is a card based strategy game. You take a starting set and lay out your territory. Then you select some cards for your hand. You then take turns rolling two die, one for a resource and one for an event. You have events such as plentiful harvest (players gain resources), bandit attack, draw event card, and celebration. Each has a unique function. The 1 - 6 die determines which resource(s) the players acquire. Next the active player uses resources or cards from their hand (typically costing resources). One can either build additions to the kingdom, or play action cards or lay out building or character cards. The action cards typically give the player an immediate bonus (a few can be used before rolling dice or before selecting cards for their hand or drawing region cards and so on). Green cards typically give a permanent bonus and are played on the town or city upgrade spaces. The final two actions are drawing cards up to three (or more if you have bonuses allowing more) and then exchanging one card with another random card from one of the draw piles. The game has a lot of complexity and a little luck. I would say the luck factor is much lower than people estimate. With smart planning, a character can acquire resources they need or exchange for those they need. There are a few strategies for winning, but the game is won when a person acquires seven victory points and ends their turn. Newcomers might find it easier to build up towns and cities for the inherent victory points. I found gaining trade the most fun and interesting method. Included are three small expansions. They all add an interesting dynamic to the base game despite just having a handful of cards each. It's an interesting and immensely fun two player card game with a lot of variety. I highly recommend it for fans of Catan and Dominion. It's easy to learn the basics, but has enough depth that it appeals to players even after several games. The box states 45 - 60 minutes, but I find that most games run about 30 minutes once the rules are well understood. But the length of each game varies and players will play at their own comfortable pace. My only one drawback if there is one is that the square cards are tough to shuffle. Highly recommended!

Ever want to play Settlers of Catan but you only have one other person to play with? If yes, then buy this game. The Rivals for Catan takes the basic elements of Settlers (roads, settlements, cities) and some of the expansions (trade ships, barbarians, heroes, city improvements) and creates an almost entirely different game. There is no board, just several cards, a standard die, an event die, and two tokens. Without going into the gameplay much, I'll say that the goals and mechanics are similar to Settlers: collect resources, expand your colony, and claim a certain amount of victory points to win. Also, as in Settlers, the competition in Rivals is often indirect. It's more of a race to get victory points than a one-on-one battle, though one of the themes gets a bit nasty (more on that later). However, many of the games I've played have kept the opponents neck-and-neck, so the tension of Settlers is still prevalent. Strengths -The basic game comes with three themes (Gold, Turmoil, and Progress). These are supplements to what is called the Basic Set. Each theme brings its own unique cards to the game and one's strategy must change depending on what theme is chosen. While they don't carry as much nuance as a Settlers expansion might, they certainly prevent the game from getting old. You can even combine all three themes for what is called Dual of the Princes. Mayfair Games sells more themes separately, too. -There are a variety of strategies you can take, regardless of theme decks. You can build a resource-efficient colony with grade trade ships, focus on strong heroes, or just expand as widely as possible before your opponent does, since you share the same pool of settlements and cities. -Many of the cards have special abilities that are a lot of fun to employ. Once you get to the second half of the game or so, your abilities have dramatically increased, adding even more variety to how you approach victory. -Games can range from 15-45 minutes, so it's shorter than typical Settlers. Weaknesses -You can't trade. Well, you can, but there's almost no point. Mayfair removed it from the rules when they revamped the game. Since trading is about 30% of the gameplay in Settlers, it feels like something is missing in Rivals. The bartering, begging, alliances, and betrayals aren't here. -Unless you're familiar with Settlers, I wouldn't recommend you play this game. The rule book will explain everything but I think the game would feel overwhelming. The game was essentially designed for people that already play Settlers. -While very portable, the game takes up a lot of space. There are several draw stacks and a lot of cards get played, so you might need more than a two-by-two foot table. -You may need to develop some house rules. It's hard to explain unless you've played a couple times, but there are a couple mechanics that can make the game very uneven. Overall: a wonderful Catan fix for two players and a very fun game.

My wife and I are huge Catan fans. We love the strategic gameplay and the thrill of building our little empires. But sometimes, when it's just the two of us, we crave that same Catan experience without needing a whole group. That's when we discovered "Rivals for Catan." It captures the essence of the original Catan beautifully. You're still gathering resources, building settlements, and trying to outsmart your opponent. But it's streamlined for two players, making it a perfect fit for a cozy evening at home. What I really appreciate is the variety. The "Theme Games" – Age of Gold, Turmoil, and Progress – add so much replayability. Each one presents different challenges and strategies, so it never feels stale. Plus, the card play is engaging, and the dice rolls keep things exciting and unpredictable. It's got that same Catan feeling of balancing strategy with a bit of luck. You need to plan your moves carefully, but you also have to adapt to what the dice throw your way. It's that mix of skill and chance that makes it so addictively fun. If you're a Catan fan looking for a fantastic two-player experience, "Rivals for Catan" is a must-have. It's a 5-star winner in our book!

Well, let me first say my friends and I are Catan addicts! We aren't the standard "Settlers of Catan" board game players. We play with "Seafarers of Catan", "Cities and Knights of Catan", and "Traders and Barbarians of Catan" all together. (Yes the official rules exist for that.) We play every Sunday. I say all that in a way that kind of gives you my credentials. We know Catan inside and out. When I heard the card game was getting rebooted, I thought it seemed intriguing. The more blog posts that came out from the creator (Klaus Teuber), the more I wanted it. The card game is based on a book about the early days of Catan. I have not read the book myself, but I understand that is where many of the hero cards come from. The game is complex, more so than opening the base board game and playing. But thankfully, the creators made an introductory game where you play to 7 points and get used to the game. Play that a few times before getting into the theme sets. We then played each theme set in the order suggested: Era of Gold, Era of Turmoil, and Era of Progress. Each theme adds elements to the game that causes you to change your strategy. The most vicious one is definitely Era of Turmoil. If you don't get the strength advantage, you can spend your whole time rebuilding what you lost. Eras of Gold and Progress have cards that are more about building yourself up, but there are some devastating events in those themes, too. You better have a really good relationship with the person you are playing against! Ha ha. We did not preview the cards in each theme, preferring to be surprised as they were drawn. We finally played "Duel of the Princes" with all theme sets. To be honest, it was chaotic and we've only played it once. I believe several play throughs of each individual theme are needed before feeling comfortable enough to tackle the whole set. We've sent off a few questions to Mayfair about vague rules; believe it or not, my first reply was "We don't know; we'll have to get back to you." Ha! So you just have to feel out the game and take your time for the learning curve. I highly recommend doing the interactive tutorial from Professor Easy that is on the rule book. Mayfair has said expansions are coming, just like there were with the old version of the game. Tournament rules are also due out this year. If each person has their own set, then we'll be able to play with more than 2 players. I'm looking forward to that. My friends and I are just short of saying this is better than the board games, but it is without a doubt equally fun!

My wife and I have been wanting to get into Catan-type games for some time, but as we are new to our area and not yet savvy enough to hit up a game night, we looked for a two-player introduction. It took us only a few stabs at the "basic" variant of Rivals to get a good grasp of the game, and have been moving on to the more involved variants included with the game. Some of my early observations: The game has a very good balance. It could be that both of us are starting as complete newbies, but in every instance of play thus far we have both been close to winning by the end of play. It is a very, very enjoyable game. Setup is quick and the initial basic strategy of town-building quickly gives way to more advanced (but easily grasped) strategies, especially once the other themes included are brought into play. We both enjoy how flexible the game is with play types. If we want a more aggressive experience we can go with the "Age of Turmoil" card set, while a quick game can be had with just the basic (good for those moments when we're waiting for dinner to finish in the oven). The instructions are fairly easy to understand, though somewhat out of order. For example, at numerous points they inform the reader that some concept important to the current discussion will be discussed later on. Now, this is obviously a byproduct of the interconnectedness of the various facets of gameplay, but I felt that it could have been a bit more smoothed out in order to minimize confused page-turning (especially for people like us who are completely new to these types of games). The cards are decent quality, albeit a bit flimsy. This shouldn't be a problem, though. The box for the game also lacks a way to secure all of the cards (but nothing that can't be fixed with a card sleeve). All in all, this is a great (and cheap!) introduction to the Catan games. We look forward to moving up to the more advanced "Settlers" when we get there.

Besides gin rummy and chess there really are not many good two-player games out there, so this is particularly welcome for those who tend to be around only one other person. On top of that, it is an EXCELLENT introduction to the larger Catan game and will prepare you well for both the basic version and Cities and Knights (and if you are playing the latter already, Rivals will be familiar). We started with a couple rounds of the introductory game, then played one or two each of the theme games, and have since only played Duel of the Princes - which I am sure is where most all players will quickly end up. One modification we have employed is that we re-insert four of the omitted "half-moon" cards in each theme, blindly, each time - because some of the cards that are removed from Duel of the Princes are pretty interesting. Other than that, it's a great game as-is: fairly quick to learn, very easy to travel with, very engaging.

I like this game better than my boyfriend, and I'm not even the one who usually wins. So go figure. This game has a base game and then a few more sets of cards you can add singly or all together which is called the duel of the princes. Like others have mentioned, I like that you gain resources with every die roll and that there's no one number "combination" that gets rolled more frequently. I dislike that roads cost more and that you can store fewer resources per card. But. I am glad for the two person variation for Catan because I do really love the game dynamic in general. My favorite part of Catan is rolling and getting tons of resources in one fail swoop, even if I end up losing the game anyway. Always nice to look out over my "empire" and be impressed with my settlements and such. As everyone says, if you love Catan and want to make it a two player game, you'll probably love this as well.

I love it. I play it with my wife every week, and having so many different styles of gaming makes it super engaging, while the basic one is super easy to learn! So you'll never get bored. It's a bit bigger than expected. and I'm not willing to take it anywhere since the cards could get lost easily, so not a travel game but still amazing and easy to save.