Customer Reviews

Starfarers of Catan

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have loved Settlers of Catan since I first played it. I was thrilled when I first saw Starfarers (I loved the retro Flash Gordon look).

Unlike the other Settler games, this one actually uses plastic and not wood for many of the pieces/parts. My friends can be quite rowdy late at night but in the years I have had the game, no piece has ever broken.

Play is a little different than in other sets. Its sort of like Seafarers with lots of little islands. Development cards are there (although there are some new resources) and they have been joined by encounter cards where you deal with alien races, traders and pirates. Play lasts a little longer than the original but is comparable to Cities & Knights.

The board is beautiful and rather large (no small contained hex this time). Players ability to move and fight are modified by upgrades to their central ship/die roller/neat thing. There is currently an expansion set for adding up to two more players which I just picked up (so I don't know how it affects play yet).

All in all, this is a really fun addition to the Settlers world of games (I have eight of them so far). If you liked the original and wanted a bit more of a challenge, this is a great addition to your game closet.

Our family of four, parents plus 10yr old girl and 12yr old boy had a blast with this game. Lucky for us we were able to spend a couple of hours to figure out how this game works before we actually played a "real" game where the winner meant something. Our major complaint was one of the plastic motherships broke upon our first application of the booster pieces. The motherships are too brittle and I suggest a different design because it set a negative note until we remedied the problem by placing a rubber band around the mother ship and applying the boosters under the rubber band so we wouldn't break any more ships. With that resolved, the game was enjoyed by all.

Also, we found it better for all the players to set up the colonies and spaceports before the numbers (resource chips) were turned over. Fairer all around. The rules and instructions were well written and we found ourselves always referring to them to get the best rules possible. My son thinks that 15 victory points should be higher because after about 3 hours of game, you still didn't hit the farthest corners of space so maybe it should last longer. Geez - if that doesn't speak enough about how much fun it was, I don't know what else would.

I bought this game because I liked Settlers of Catan and I'm a sci-fi fan. However, this game is not much like Settlers.
The game might be compared to a combination of Risk and Monopoly. It takes about three hours to play and longer if you are teaching a beginner. There are a lot of small pieces to break or lose. Also, you really need three, and not more than four, people to play a game.
All that aside, we really enjoy the game and I would highly recommend it for teenagers to adults.

Starfarers of Catan is a fantastic game. However, it seems that more than half of the new owners of Starfarers end up breaking one or more of their motherships, within the first couple of times playing the game. Which is a crying shame, considering the price of Starfarers (around $40-50, depending on where you but it).

The problem with the motherships is mostly due to the poor design and the brittle plastic of the brackets that hold the booster rockets onto them. Customer support at Mayfair Games says (I quote), 'this truly is a rarity and only occurs in 0.4% of all ships'. But this appears to be a gross falsification on Mayfair's part when you consider the many, many complaints on websites such as Board Game Geek, Fun Again Games, and Amazon.

The brackets on three out of my four motherships broke, and this happened to me the first time I tested putting the booster rockets on and taking them off. (And I have fairly nimble fingers!) I was able to get replacements for my broken motherships from the guy who sold me the game. After I did, I thought hard on how I could possibly fix this problem, before I ended up breaking my replacements as well.

The problem is that most of the time, the brackets fit too tightly around the boosters and the plastic of the brackets is brittle. So, the solution is to loosen the brackets before you snap the boosters into place, the first time. To loosen them, use a metal file; one that is small and preferably has a round head.

First, test a bracket on a mothership. Chances are, the bracket will be too tight, and the booster will not easily go into place. But do NOT try forcing the booster, because more than likely you will break the bracket.

Then, gently file the inside rim of the bracket, especially at the outer prongs. Do this carefully! File away just a little bit, then test the bracket again with a booster. Eventually, you should be able to press the booster into place with just a *gentle* pressure. If you file away too much of the inside bracket, the fit will be to loose, and the booster will not stay in place. If you don't file enough, the bracket may break when you try putting the booster in or taking it out.

Do this with all six brackets, on each mothership. (Yes, this will take at least an hour of careful, meticulous work.) Once you're done, load up all four motherships with six boosters each, to make sure you've gotten all the brackets to fit just right.

There! Now you can play your Starfarers of Catan game, relatively worry free. (You and your fellow players still need to be gentle with the motherships, for they are delicate in other areas as well. Despite appearances, this game is not for kids! Heh.)

This game is great. However, on the first day we played it, two of our mother ships broke when trying to take off the booster packs. The plastic is very cheap, and that is a dissappointment.

I love Settlers of Catan. I wondered how in the world they would turn that into a game set in space. Klaus Teuber did an increadible job!!! I was absolutly blown away the first time I played.

Besides building on the board in a similar manner to the way you do in settlers, you now have a mother ship you can upgrade! It looks like something McDonalds would give in a happy meal but give it a chance!!! It's actually very functional and a great addition to the game. You use it to figure out how far you can travel each turn as well as to determin the outcome of battles and other things.

Instead of development cards you do trade with alien races to get cards that give you abilities that relate to that alien race.

Another great addition is the Encounter cards!!! These give you options and depending on what you choose you'll have very different outcomes. You could get an upgrade for your ship or maybe have something stolen.

I would never play this game with anyone who isn't an experience settlers player. This is much more complex and you'll really want a good understanding of settlers gameplay before you start.

If you like settlers, and like SciFi, you'll love this synergistic mix of the two!!!

Be careful when you put the booster upgrades on your mother ship. It's easy to break the finger off. These are not well designed. If they do break it's not a big deal. You can just set the boosters down. The don't actually need to be on the ship for anything. The rest is ok. This is why I gave it a lower rating for durability.

As a die-hard Settlers fan, I find Starfarers a worthy alternative. It is not nearly as challenging as Settlers is, nor is it as strategic; however, as a light-hearted 'space' version of the game it suffices.

The object of the game, like Settlers, is to make points. 15 wins the game. You accrue points by constructing colonies and upgrading them to starports, or by amassing fame tokens or dominating certain types of trade outposts. Five resources are involved - carbon, fuel, trade goods, food and ore. Each serves a distinct purpose, and trading is involved ala Settlers. There isn't so much of a trade emphasis in Starfarers as opposed to Settlers.

I agree with the sentiment of the other reviewers - yes, the plastic clips which hold the boosters break easily. However, everything else has stayed together perfectly. It is a fiddly game, I guess, but not that much so. It certainly remains fun and lighthearted. The 'encounter' cards spice up the game no end - if you roll a certain 'score' with your mother-ship, you get an 'encounter' card, which could be a battle with a pirate ship, a requirement of a donation, or a speed-based duel.

One big problem is with an early-game 'space jump' to a vacant intersection. A person who manages to get one of them can move to the other side of the board immediately, which saves them about six or seven turns. It puts that player at a tremendous advantage. All you need to get one, in most cases, is a few resources to donate to the 'Travellers'. Another problem is the fact that the board is constantly the same design every time. Despite the fact the 'probability' tokens vary, it does mean you essentially play the same game nearly every time. There isn't exactly a thrilling 'twist' to the board (contra Settlers) each time you play. And yes, the rocket-ships look very lame, kind of like Ed Wood 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' kind-of-lame. But hey, it's a novelty I guess.

This is a very expensive game and I would wholeheartedly recommend getting Settlers of Catan first, then the Cities & Knights of Catan, and THEN Starfarers, if you like the first two. They are a superior pair. But don't let that dissuade you. Starfarers is a fun game and one which whiles away the hours.

The "Starfarers" are quite different from the "Settlers of Catan", although a few Settlers-concepts (resources, ...) were retained.
A typical round with 4 starfarers takes about 3 hours, so plan enough time for your game-day.
The rules look intimidating at first, but once you understand the general concept, it all falls into place easily. The basic game play is simple and summarized on a small card for every player, which is great for novices.
Based on months of playing, a word of caution: be gentle with adding boosters to the ship - the little plastic pieces that hold the boosters can break if you are too rough. This is my only gripe, really.
Otherwise: I love it and recommend it to every board game fanatic!

Starfarers is not only complicated, it's OVERLY complicated. It's also fairly shoddily put together; in half an hour of play, we broke two pieces (and not by slamming them around, either; by trying to place boosters on the ships.) That being said, it was fairly entertaining. There's not much really educational about it. Settlers of Catan is absolutely a superior game, in its ease of learning.

One thing Starfarers has over Settlers? I didn't mess up the board every time I knocked into it. =)

We really enjoyed this game. It is very engaging and exciting, even more so than "Settlers of Catan".

However, unlike Settlers of Catan which we also really enjoy and have all of the expansions to, the Starfarers game features cheap plastic parts instead of wooden.

By the end of the second game two of the mother ship "fame holders" were broken and a half dozen of the booster holders. As others have said it doesn't really affect the game play (we just place the boosters on the table above the speed calculator.