Seafarers of Catan: 5-6 Player Expansion

by MayFair Games

Product Features

• Expansion Set for the Seafarers of Catan
• Additional Components for 5 and 6 Players

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 6 x 2 x 4 inches ; 1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0006HCA7I
• Item model number: 4099000
• Manufacturer recommended age: 12 years and up
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #185,267 in Toys & Games (See Top 100 in Toys & Games)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

You must have the Settlers of Catan, Settlers of Catan 5-6 Player Expansion, and Seafarers of Catan to use this expansion. This expansion allows you to add 2 more players to the game (for a total of 5-6 players). Now five to six players can sail into the uncharted and explore and settle the mysterious islands near Catan! The 5-6 Player Expansion for the Seafarers of Catan allows you to add 1-2 more opponents without sacrificing ease of play. Try one of ten new exciting scenarios! Designed for 5-6 players, it adds even more drama to the award-winning game of seafaring, exploration, and trade.

Product Description

Note that you will need the basic Settlers of Catan game to enjoy any of the expansion packs. In addition, with all Settlers of Catan expansions, make sure you're picking up the right ones. Each of the three Catan products (Settlers, Seafarers and Cities & Knights) have their own unique 5-6 player boosters.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you liked Seafarers Of Catan and want to play it with 5/6 players, then this is for you., July 22, 2007

By 

Andrew C. Yao - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Durability:4.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Seafarers of Catan: 5-6 Player Expansion (Toy)

This 5-6 player expansion allows you to play a 5 or 6 player game for Seafarers Of Catan. However, it's not a standalone product by a long shot as you'll also need Settlers Of Catan (for the majority of its pieces and components), Seafarers Of Catan (for its red, white, blue, and orange ship pieces as well as other Seafarers components like extra/special tiles, harbor tokens, and frame pieces), and Settlers Of Catan 5-6 player expansion (for its green and brown pieces, extra development cards, extra resource cards, and tiles/tokens) in order to use this game + player expansion. By comparison, the Seafarers player expansion provides relatively little compared to the rest just mentioned. You get 15 brown and green ship pieces, 10 more victory token markers (despite the 6 that the box says, I guess it was a typo as the Catan series has never been known to provide extra or spare pieces, but between the 2 boxes, this does give each of the 6 players 3 Victory Point markers), 8 extra sea tiles, and 1 gold field tile. The manual is smaller since the expansion box is smaller than the 3/4 player packaging of Seafarers, but thankfully, this is also a recent, full color edition, so setting up the scenarios aren't as difficult and time consuming as they could've been. It should be noted that some of the components that would only be used in this player expansion, like the 5-tile `X' frame extensions (2 `XX' and 1 `X' frame piece for each side) and 2 of the 3:1 harbor tokens (up to 10 of the 12 harbors are used in the game expansion) came with the 3/4 player version of Seafarers. I'm guessing it was just cheaper and easier to manufacture it like that, even though the smaller, player expansion box could've fit all of those extras. If you were able to find the player expansion rulebook online somewhere or still retained the physical copy, you could easily get away with combining 2 (3/4 player) Seafarer game expansion boxes to play the 5-6 player scenarios.

Scenarios remain mostly the same as many of them that had separate 3 and 4 player versions, namely The Four Islands, Oceans, Into The Desert, and A New World have now been updated for separate 5 and 6 player variations. The names of the 5 and 6 player versions of The Four Islands have been changed to The Five Islands and The Six Islands respectively (and yes those boards do contain 5 and 6 islands). The 4 player versions of The Great Crossing and Greater Catan have been updated to their respective 6 player versions in the player expansion. Oddly enough, there's no 5-6 player version of New Shores. It would've been possible to fit the larger, oblong shaped island from Settlers Of Catan 5-6 player expansion into the largest frame Seafarers 5-6 player expansion offers, but I suppose they had their reasons against that, possibly because it would skew gameplay or that Greater Catan VI is already somewhat similar to that. So you now have 10, not 11 scenarios to work with in this expansion, but like with Seafarers, the new scenarios that remain will keep the game interesting and players coming back for more. For more insight on Seafarers Of Catan, be sure to check out my Seafarers Of Catan review here on Amazon as well.

Otherwise, the game plays similar to Seafarers Of Catan + Settlers Of Catan player expansion fused together. You have the special build phase where there's no player trading, bank/port exchange, and use of development cards, or one could elect some unofficial variants like discarding half your cards if you have more than 9 cards when a 7 is rolled. Either way, it's now with a delightful Seafarers twist. With overall even larger maps taking even more time to set up, more players to distribute resources to after each roll, and more turns for each round of turns, games definitely take longer than before. Having more players to trade with in theory speeds things up, but in practice, all the different things that add to gameplay length still outweigh having more potential trading opportunities. In fact, many of the scenarios are listed as taking about 1 to 2 hours to complete, with Into The Desert VI taking about 100 minutes and the monstrous, 18 pt Greater Catan VI taking about 3 hours to complete. However, with most games, more players means longer games, and as far as long games go, this one is a blast. Yeah, compared to typical, "mainstream" board games, this is expensive since you need 3 others of them in the series as prerequisites to play, and this expansion is the most expensive given the item to price ratio, but if you enjoy such a unique game as Seafarers with a crowd of 5 or 6 players, then it really is worth it.

5.0 out of 5 stars A good Dominion expansion, November 17, 2011

By 

Brad (Idaho Falls, Idaho United States) - See all my reviews

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Seafarers of Catan: 5-6 Player Expansion (Toy)

We love Dominion and have most of the expansion. This is a good one, though I like Alchemy, Intrigue and Prosperity better. However, one son-in-law prefers this one over the others. You can tell by my rating, that I still think this game is good.

5.0 out of 5 stars best yet, January 23, 2008

By 

family of 5 (Thailand) - See all my reviews

= Durability:3.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Seafarers of Catan: 5-6 Player Expansion (Toy)

We have Settlers of Catan, Cities and knights and now Seafarers. I like Seafarers the most. It is fun to have ships and be able to reroute. there are two ways to block, either the soldier or the pirate. It takes awhile with 5-6 people but it is fun. The only problem is it doesnt come with building cards so you need the original game building cards to know what resources are required for building.