Catan: Seafarers Trivia Quiz

Answer: Sea region hex tiles

The base "Catan" game features a roughly circular 'Island of Catan', constructed of hexagon-shaped terrain tiles (called 'hexes' for short) and border pieces to hold everything nicely together. With the "Seafarers" expansion, 30 more hexes are included, among them water and gold fields, plus a few more of the original six types of terrain (field, forest, pasture, mountain, hills, and desert, and new number chits to place on them). This allows for creating new, smaller islands with water traversable in-between.

Then there are the 15 ships for each player (in their colours) that allow the player to expand their territory across the water in the same manner as the road pieces do on the 'main island'. 'The Pirate' is a black ship that acts much like 'The Robber' in the base game, only on the open seas.

Lastly, 'Catan chits' are new to the game of "Catan" with this expansion, used for different purposes, depending on the scenario. They can be applied as special victory points, serve as markers, or help to count the results. Special victory points are (generally) earned when building a settlement on a new island. They are simply small round cardboard pieces with a picture of a Catan settlement on them.

Answer: Brown and green

The base game of "Catan" comes with the colours blue, orange, red and white for different players. This extends to the "Seafarers" expansion. For both the base game and the expansion, the 5/6 Player expansion packs come with brown and green player pieces.

This pattern, of course, extends to all the other expansions ("Cities & Knights", "Traders & Barbarians", and "Explorers & Pirates") as well.

Answer: One lumber, one wool

Essentially, the concept behind the purchase cost is lumber for the hull of the ship and wool to make the sails.

It is possible to play a game of "Seafarers" without ever building a ship, but if you don't bother with that aspect of the expansion, then you might as well just play the base game.

Ships in the game do not act like real, individual ships that can move and sail around, but rather they represent 'trade routes', and are used much like the road pieces on land.

Answer: A settlement or city on the coast

When placing settlements at the beginning of the base game of "Catan", you also place a road piece. In "Seafarers", you get the option of either a road piece or a ship, but you can only build a ship at a settlement that is on the coast of an island.

Answer: Attack other players' ships

In the base game of "Catan", the player with the longest continuous road earns two victory points, as long as they don't allow another player to overtake their total. In "Seafarers", ships are used in a similar way, acting as a 'roadway' or trade route across the water. And the total length of your trade route can include both ships and roads, as long as there is a settlement or city on the coast where they connect. The longest possible continuous trade route could be 30 pieces in length (fifteen roads and fifteen ships).

If your path of ships reaches a new island or a new available coastal location on the original island, you can establish a new settlement (keeping the two-space rule away from any other settlement/city).

And, as with roads, ships can be used to cut off or block the expansion of a rival player. You may not be able to physically attack other ships at sea, but you can outmaneuver them. Thankfully, another feature of ships is that you can change the location of a ship at the open end of a route (not anchored between other ships or at a settlement/homeport) once per turn, as needed.

Answer: False

The Pirate actually only has one attribute that is the same as what 'The Robber' does - it allows the player to steal a Resource card (as long as it is placed on a hex with an opponent's ship adjacent to it).

Being placed on a sea hex, the Pirate also acts as a deterring force, as it will not allow any new ships to be placed adjacent to the hex that it is occupying. This is different from the Robber, which does not limit any construction, but does limit resource production from the hex it occupies.

In both instances, the Robber and the Pirate are moved when a '7' is rolled, but only one of them may be played at a time (if both are included in the given scenario).

Answer: Gold field

The gold field or gold river acts as a 'wild card' resource tile. If you have a settlement adjacent to the gold field and roll the dice to match the number token on it, then you can choose one of any of the five resources used in the game. If you have a city there, you can choose two resources.

Answer: False

While the scenarios are designed to follow a progression (even a bit of a storyline), there is absolutely no requirement to play them in sequence. That said, the first four (of nine) scenarios are modeled on the basic rules of "Seafarers", while scenarios five through eight are more complex. They all have their own descriptive titles:

#1 - Heading to New Shores
#2 - The Four Islands
#3 - The Fog Island
#4 - Through the Desert
#5 - The Forgotten Tribe
#6 - Cloth for Catan
#7 - The Pirate Island
#8 - The Wonders of Catan

Answer: Colosseum

In addition to the normal way of winning the game (achieving the required number of victory points), in this scenario you can also win by being the first to build your chosen Wonder to the fourth stage.

There are five Wonders to choose from, and before a player can even think about starting to build one of them, they have to achieve prerequisites:

Cathedral - must have one city and at least six victory points
Great Bridge - must have established a settlement at the strait (marked purple square on the board)
Great Wall - must have established a settlement at the wasteland (marked brown square on the board)
Monument - must have a city at a harbour, plus a trade route of at least five lengths (roads/ships)
Theater - must have two cities

Once a player qualifies for and claims one of the Wonders, no other player can choose the same one. Once claimed (and marked as theirs), the player must then build their Wonder by paying the required five resources for each of four 'stages'. Again, each Wonder has their own selection of five resources.

If you can accomplish all of that before someone else, or before someone reaches the requisite 10 victory points AND has finished a higher level for their wonder than any other player, you win.

Answer: The New World

How this 'scenario' is created is entirely up to the players. If you shuffle the tiles (a suggested number of each type is given), you can completely randomize the board setup... or you could create it how you like from the given tiles.

A suggested number of victory points to win is also given (twelve), but again, if you want to change it, that's up to you.

Greater Catan, by the way, was a real scenario from the earlier (pre-4th) editions that was removed, due to the fact that it actually needed TWO base games of "Catan" to play it.