Wood for Tritanium? No? How About Dilithium for Sheep?

The Settlers of Catan was the first "German board game" I ever played. There was a time when that was fairly common among gamers, though these days the array of firsts will often include Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, and a few others. I remember that first game so clearly, and how (compared to Monopoly, Risk, and any of the other suspects you'll find at Target or Wal-mart) Settlers felt like a revelation. Luck still played a role in the game, but suddenly there was strategy too -- and not just one strategy that would inevitably lead to victory.

Over the years, my love of Settlers gradually faded. I still think it's a marvelous gateway to the great world of German board games, but as I played more of those, I saw more flaws in Catan. It became a "once every long while" kind of game.

Then, a few months ago, the power of cross promotion came to Catan, with the release of "Star Trek Catan." Roads become starships, wood becomes dilithium, and so on until you're looking at a re-skinned game with a fun new flavor. My boyfriend gave me a copy for Christmas, and now The Settlers of Catan is back in the mix.

If the game were purely a reskin, I'm not sure I'd be completely thrilled by it. If you've had extensive experience with the original game, Star Trek Catan is actually harder to play. Nothing looks like you expect it to. It's easy to confuse your "roads" with your "towns" and "cities." Resources are completely changed... which might not be too tough, except that some of the same colors of the original resources are used for different resources. (For example, yellow is still there, for "food" instead of "wheat." Except food isn't wheat, it's actually "sheep!") I suppose maybe all the tweaks help level the playing field for anybody who hasn't played any incarnation of the game before?

Fortunately, there's a little more to the game than the re-skin. Star Trek Catan adds a fun new element of character cards -- 10 in all, depicting Kirk, Spock, and all the other main characters, plus side characters like Rand, Chapel, and Sarek. Each character has a special power that cheats around a rule of the game. Scotty, for example, can replace one of the resources for building a starship (road) with any other resource. Chekov can force the Klingon ship (robber) back to the asteroids (desert), and gives you one of whatever covered resource it just vacated.

You can use the one character you have in front of you once each turn. Upon doing so, you're faced with a choice: you must either give that character back to the bank and take a different one in its place, or you can turn the character to its "B side." On that side, its next use is your last, and you must exchange it when you use it.

Characters have a very nice effect on the game. They add an additional layer of strategy, as you try to figure out what character you'll want next, or plot to keep a helpful character away from the other players for as long as you can. Characters also serve to make the game play a bit faster; when everyone has the potential to cheat the rules just a little bit on every single turn, it doesn't take quite as long to reach the 10 points needed for victory.

In short, my interest in Catan has been rekindled by this Star Trek version. Certainly, I can't see playing the original any time soon. The characters simply add too fun a twist to ignore. There are still stronger board games out there, but if you're a gamer who likes Star Trek, it's hard to imagine you wouldn't want a copy of Star Trek Catan. I'd grade it a B+.