xploring distant stars, contacting alien civilizations and colonizing new worlds are central themes of science fiction, and a lot of games have appeared on these subjects over the years. But few are such good, clean, competitive fun as the board game Starfarers of Catan, imported from Germany and now available in English for the first time.
Players in Starfarers control colonists on the edge of an unexplored region of space. The object of the game is to earn victory points by trading with aliens, colonizing planets and maintaining honor. Players are in competition, but have few means to directly harm one another. Each player starts with two colonies, one spaceport (where ships are built) and one colony ship. Colonies and spaceports produce resources based on the planet they're on: Each planet produces either food, carbon, ore, fuel or trade goods. Each planet also has a number from two to twelve.
At the beginning of the turn, a player rolls a pair of dice, and any colonized planet bearing the number rolled produces one unit of its resource. Resources are spent building colony ships or trade ships, upgrading existing colonies to spaceports, or making existing ships faster, better armed or more spacious. The player then moves ships around the board. Colony ships go to unexplored planets, the exact characteristics of which are randomly determined. The player then judges its colony-worthiness based on what resource it generates and whether its number is a commonly rolled one like six or eight or a rare one like two or twelve.
Trade ships travel to the edges of the board to open trading outposts with alien civilizations. Each trading outpost uncovers a piece of alien technology; also, the player with the most outposts with a given race has their "friendship" and gets victory points.
Ships randomly encounter a variety of hazards and opportunities, represented by encounter cards. These describe pirates, merchants, worm holes and mysterious aliens. Each encounter requires the player to make choices. For instance, if a pirate offers to sell the player stolen goods, the player must choose whether to accept (and risk losing honor or being ripped off) or decline (and risk attack).
Space opera done right
Starfarers of Catan has a very well-designed structure which encourages players to consider a variety of strategies. They can follow a mostly colonizing strategy or focus more on contacting aliens. They can heavily arm their ships to smite pirates or rely on speed to evade them. They can scatter a lot of small colonies or concentrate on a few spaceports. At the same time, the players have to remain flexible; if the dice are mostly generating trade goods it could be a good idea to build trade ships rather than colony ships; if you find you've got a lot of food, a colony-based strategy might be better.
Tension is added by the race against the other players for the choicest colony sites and to gain and maintain the friendship of the alien races. The prospect of being aced out of an opportunity by another player keeps the game constantly interesting. Further uncertainty is added by the encounter cards.
As to physical characteristics, the graphics on both the board and the cards are clear and colorful, with a pulp-era classic science-fiction look. The pieces representing the ships and bases are very functional and fit together in nifty ways (for instance, a ship piece links to a colony to form a colony ship; a docking ring slips over a colony to form a spaceport).
There are a few minor flaws: The three-player game can lend itself to a runaway victory by one player, particularly if players are inexperienced. Also, both the three- and four-player games seem to end too soon ... both because someone else always wins just as just as
a carefully laid plan is put in motion
and in that there doesn't seem to be enough time for substantial exploration of the alien races. This possible problem is easily soluble however by tinkering with the victory-point threshold needed to win.
Such triflings aside, the only reason not to buy this game is the price tag: At $60 it is pretty pricey for a board game. But it's well worth it for the many hours of fun plying the spaceways on behalf of Catan.
For players of Starfarers' low-tech cousin Settlers of Catan: Starfarers takes the basic structure and adds movement, aliens, combat and little toys you fit together. The cliche applies: if you liked Settlers you will love Starfarers.
— Bob
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