This is officially my first review on Boardgamegeek. I've been avoiding these moslty because of the "baggage" involved in writing a review:

- You get Geekgold for them, good for you, bad for the database
- You need depth. I'm not a great writer... and this isn't even mother language!
- You need to play the game several times. Yes I am one of those that think that to get a real sense of the depts and strategies of a game, you need to play it several times.

So, here it goes, with a most used technique:

Introduction:

I've played Settlers of Catan over 20 times, maybe that does not make me an "expert" on the subjetc but still... Most of them were with this expansion. After the first play in normal Settlers I thought it needed something else, Cities & Knights came to "fix" this.

New Things:

- The Commodities and the "calendar":





Now when you roll the dice instead of getting two of each: ore, grain or wood, when producing in a city, you get one of the resources and one of the new commodities instead: coin, paper and cloth, so when you have a city in say, a mountain, you now instead of getting two ore, you get one ore and one coin. These new commodities help you "advance as a civilization", you keep track of this with your "calendar". Everytime
you spend a certain amout of commodities (1 for the first level, two for the second...), they help you get more possibilities to get Progress Cards in the color you "progressed" (yellow, blue and green), this is explained later, don't despair!, also when you get to level 4 in any of the colors, you get a Metropolis, that gets you 2 extra points:



- City Walls: The small wooden squares, are city walls you can place under (under??, c'mon is a wall) your cities. Everytime a 7 comes, you get 2 more cards in the limit of cards (9 for 1 wall, 11 for two walls, 13 on three walls).

- Barbarians: The tiny black boat is more frightening than it looks, every few turns the barbarians aproach the island to burn cities that are not well protected.



- Knights: Every player now gets a set of knights, they help you to protect your cities against the barbarians and the robber as well, they effectively replace the Soldier cards with their "move the robber out of my territory" ability.



- New Dice: A new "event die" and a red die are added to the game. Now every time you roll the dice you get a result that affects all players in different matter. If you get a black boat on the event die, the barbarians advance one space on the track, if you get any of the three colored cities, you get a card, depending on your progress on your calendar.



- Progress Cards:This cards replace the Development Cards, you get one every time the read die matches the little numbers on your calendars (I told you I'll explain later!). Let's say you roll a 1 on the red die, and a blue city appears in the event die, if you already payed the coin you needed to advance in the blue side of the "calendar", you should see two small red dice that have a number one and a two... see? So, in this particular case... you guessed it!, you draw a blue card.

So... what does Blue cards do?

- Blue Cards: These help you screw your opponent. Really... that's what they do. "This is Settlers" you say?. Well, in C&K things have changed. This is the point where you leave all your Euro "auction confrontation" behind. Blue cards let you move around the robber wherever you like to steal cards to both adjacent players (Bishop Card), they let you remove an open road (Diplomat) to screw your opponent "Longest Road", they let you Sabotage your opponent cities by turning them into useless Settlements, they let you steal your opponet's knights... ok you get it...



- Yellow Cards: They help your tradings mostly with the bank, they help you get more Commodities faster and they introduce a new piece: The Merchant. If you place the merchant on the board, it helps you trade 2:1 the resource or commodity produced in the hexagon it is placed (if you place it on a mountain, you can trade ore or coins with a ratio of 2:1 with the bank)



- Green Cards: In my opinion, the strongest. They help you do most things faster: build, advance your civilization, get resources. The strongest cards in the game are green, one of them lets you change the numbers on the board (except 2 ,12, 6 and 8), one of them lets you arrange the numbers in the dice when you're about to roll them, another one gives you two ore for each mountain adjacent to a settlement/city, and another one the same but with grain... both this last cards have helped me win at least 3 games (combination with a port or merchant is killing!).



How everything fits together, or "comparison to old Settlers":

- Now you roll three dice
- If you get the boat on the event die, advance the barbarians, if they got to the last space, if all players collectively have an equal (or more) number of activated knights, as the number of cities in the island, you're protected, barbarians go away without any action at all. But of you don't... BOOM!, the player with the least number of activated knights loose a city.
- If you get a colored city, all players draw Progress cards.
- Every player gets his resources and commodities
- You can trade, build, use all Progress cards you want to (even if you got them this turn) and then your turn ends
- If you have 13 points you win the game.

Impressions or "The real review"

First of all, this is one of my favorite games, it gives that "extra something" to Settlers of Catan so:

Pros:

- The new cards add confrontation to the game. This may be seen as a con for some, but most of it isn't "take that" confrontation, most of the times you spend your time trying to slow your opponents in the race of the few points left in the game. A little stone in their way always helps.
- Lots of new stuff. How it all fits together amuzes me, all these components, if you explain them apart (like I did), seem somehow overpowered and/or "fiddly" to add to the game, but they balance each other very smoothly in the game, the blue cards are countered by the overflow of resources implicit in the game, the overflow is countered with the walls, the walls protect you from your enemy... it all fits togethet quite nicely.
- Almost infinite replayability. It adds flavor and lenght to the game, but it also adds more replayability and tough decisions even from the start, any feel of "pure luck" (one that I feel in original Settlers) is mostly cancelled by the hundreds of things that come to mind in every turn.

Cons:

- Long... very long. A game can last up to 3 hours, and more if you add the "nasty rule" (the one that lets you use your knights ony to protect you against the barbarians), this cancels Settlers as a "filler" or a quick game.
- The Green cards: I love them, trust me, but a lot of them change the rules so deeply that sometimes is insane, I told you before that they're game winners, these don't have counters, if someone changes a number out of place in the game, it will mostly stay that way the whole game, yes, they are difficult to get, but when you get an "Irrigation" card in the right moment, you can build at least a city in one turn, when there was no possibility for you.
- It can be overwhelming sometimes. When you have so much possibilities without a certain knowledge that it will work or not, it can be a little frustrating. If you want to chase the VP's from the knights, you will lose all possibility of building fast enough to keep up. The delicate balance between so much things is difficult, very difficult.
- It needs four players. With three it can get boring and/or repetitive sometimes, with four, the board is packed, and the confrontation becomes more direct.

Final Ratings, or "Me, in pieces":

Eurogamer: . The game can be seen as a "fiddly, random disaster" if seen overly analitical, the new pieces and rules doesn't really add too much to the strategic or tactics of the game.

Ameritrasher: . The lack of "real" confrontation and the "pasted" theme may not like a lot of hardcore AT'ers. The game feels good, but if played a lot, it can get boring.

Whole: . Brilliant how all the pieces come together, the balancing act and the racing to the points make it my favorite Eurogame.

Thanks to Olaha for all the great images.