Catan: New Energies is a variant and a standalone game in the Catan universe. 95% of the original The Settlers of Catan is still here. Some elements have been added. The additions are a social commentary. This game explores the concept of sustainable development. In order to do well, you must develop your cities and towns in an environmentally-friendly way. Otherwise you will be penalised. 

 

 

You start the game with one town and one city. Every turn, the active player rolls two dice, and they determine which hexes produce resources. If a producing hex is next to one of your settlements (town or city), you gain a resource. Resources can be spent to build roads and new settlements, or to buy development cards. You can trade resources with others. You can also trade with the game supply. Your goal is to get to 10 points. Towns are 1pt, cities 2pts. Some development cards are 1pt. Having the longest road is 2pts, and having played the most clean-up cards is 2pts. These are all the same as base Catan, just that some resources and components have new names. 

 

Here are the new stuff. At the start of every turn, event chips are drawn from a bag. When a specific number of chips for a particular event type is drawn, that event is triggered and players suffer (or enjoy) the effects. The bag starts with bad events, but when players build clean power plants, good events will be added to the bag. A new way the game ends is the bag being exhausted. Depending on how polluting the players are as a whole, the number of chips being drawn from the bag differs. The pace of the game is affected by player actions. 

 

 

Cities no longer produce double the resources. Instead they produce one resource and one science. Science (lightbulb icon) is a new resource. You can spend science to build power plants. Dirty power plants are cheaper than clean power plants. Dirty power plants, towns and cities all increase your carbon footprint, while clean power plants reduce it. It is always good to have a smaller carbon footprint. Many events penalise players with the largest footprint. Power plants produce yet another new resource – power. Power can be spent to increase your storage, remove pollution, remove dirty power plants or take resources. 

 

With these elements added, the game is a bit more complex than the standard Catan. 

 

 

Along the edges of the board there are spaces for event chips. Whenever a set is completed, the corresponding event is triggered. Brown events are bad. 

 

 

This track indicates how polluting everyone is as a whole. At different pollution levels, the number of chips being drawn from the event bag differs. 

 

 

Towns can have at most one power plant, while cities can have three. The town pieces have only one curved indent, while the city pieces have three. These indents remind you of the number of power plants allowed. 

 

The game instantly feels familiar because almost all of what you have seen in The Settlers of Catan are also here, just that some are called different names. I like Catan, so this game works for me. I’m just playing Catan with some additional rules. Do they make the game better? At the moment it’s hard to say. I’m certainly fine with basic Catan, so the additions are not a necessity. To me it’s just a variant, and it is nice to have some variety if you have played a game many times. 

 

I played this online at BoardGameArena.com, and I think it’s not very well suited for asynchronous play, because this is a trading game. The trading aspect is slow and tedious. If playing face-to-face, or playing a live game with Zoom on, we will be able to negotiate and conclude trades very quickly. In asynchronous mode we have to wait till the next time we login, only to see our trade proposal declined, and then we try to propose another trade, and then we have to wait again. I want to play this game again, but not in async mode. 

 

 

I call this game social commentary because it feels like I am being preached to. It is more expensive to build clean power plants, but if you build dirty power plants and have a large carbon footprint, you will cause bad events to happen more frequently, and you will likely suffer from them more too. Pollution slows your production. More towns and cities mean more production, but also more pollution. Still, I think it is a good thing that they make a game to create more awareness about sustainable development and clean energy. Catan is a huge brand, which means they have social impact. 

 

 

Our game ended unexpectedly (to me), due to the bag running out of chips. This is a new way the game ends, and I was not prepared at all. We were all still far from the 10 points winning condition. I feel I was unlucky with the die rolls, and often couldn’t do much. My progress was slow. Overall we became pretty green. When you are very green, the game actually speeds up, with two event chips being drawn instead of one. I didn’t pay close attention and was caught unprepared. When the chips run out, the greenest play wins the game.