Catan Expansion - Cities & Knights

Product Description

Dark clouds gather over the once peaceful landscape. Wild barbarians, lured by Catan’s wealth and power, maneuver to attack. Their massive warships loom against the bright orange horizon. You must be strong! Barbarians attack the weakest targets, and the victim of their onslaught will be the player who contributes the least to the defense of Catan.

Don’t take any chances! Field your knights!

In Catan: Cities & Knights you engage in the defense of Catan and compete to build the three great metropolises of Catan. Each of these magnificent urban centers is even more valuable than a city. They’re also immune to the dangerous barbarians. Invest in city improvements, which you acquire using three commodities of trade: coin, paper, and cloth. If you improve your culture, muster your knights, and enrich your fine cities, you will be the master of the great realm of Catan!

Components
36 Commodity Cards
54 Progress Cards
6 Victory Point Cards
3 Wooden Metropolis Pieces
1 Wooden Merchant Figure
1 Custom Event Die
1 Wooden Barbarian Ship
24 Wooden Knights
12 City Walls
4 Development Flip-Charts
1 Sea Frame Piece
1 Rulebook

Top Reviews

The "Gamer's" Catan
by S. Whipp (4 out of 5 stars)
September 14, 2017

I could easily give C&K a five-star review. Firstly, my reason for the -1 comes down to you, and not the game. While this isn't the game's fault, it could lead to you truly hating this expansion, and I think it's worth mentioning in a review.

IF YOUR GAMING GROUP IS UNBALANCED IN SKILL, more so than in base Catan, C&K can be very unforgiving. If you make a "mistake" during the set-up portion of the game (placing your settlement and city), you will probably be stuck watching others pass you by for a couple hours until the game's inevitable conclusion. More than once, we've watched the one guy in our group with a strong understanding of the game take off running early, leading to a lopsided, long, boring game for everyone else while we waited for him to win. Our gaming night got quiet, since no one else was having fun, and by the end, we couldn't wait to play something, ANYTHING, else.

But we slowly figured out what he was doing differently, and now the game is much more enjoyable for everyone. I think one of the most important aspects of this game that we didn't understand early on, is that you have to somewhat reprogram how you think about your placements during the set-up phase, so that you have a better shot of accruing commodities (not resources) early on. Commodities increase your opportunity to collect the new and improved development cards, which you can acquire for free even on someone else's turn. For our gaming group, the guy who always got commodities early on had much more power over the rest of us.

With that understanding, C&K has the potential to be a five-star game. There are so many aspects of the game to go over that I won't bother to do them here. I recommend looking up the very cheesy, yet very quick and informative Mayfair tutorial featuring "Glover" to get you started. I have to add that our group figured out some of the rules several months after we'd started playing C&K. We still had fun and got the game right for the most part, but this game is very big and it takes a while for all the rules to sink in, let alone the time required to go back into the manual and find what you'd missed.

My rating for this game would be a five. Many people might think this is a one-star game when they start, because of the learning curve. While more complex games exist, I can see more people approaching this game first, having had Catan as their gateway. It will require some patience, so don't pull this game out thinking it will instantly be fun. With more complexity comes a more fulfilling experience.

Lastly, I'd like to mention some of the other expansions, and how I believe they will compare to Cities & Knights.

We do not play Seafarers. We feel that it doesn't bring much of anything new to the game.

We have begun to learn how to play Explorers & Pirates, which one could argue is to Seafarers what Cities & Knights is to base Catan. There is a LOT going on in E&P. It might be just about as "heavy" as C&K, as far as depth and strategy goes, but I do feel E&P is slightly more approachable. E&P takes longer to set up, but it gives you a clearer sense of what you need to do to win. However, E&P needs to be taught in stages. The first scenario is very simple, and you'll never play it again. You might not even finish the first game. But from there, it adds in other aspects of the game to give you the full picture. C&K, on the other hand, is more of a jump-right-in kind of game.

I can't comment on Traders & Barbarians yet, other than to say it has a few very easy to grasp scenarios that I can almost see our gaming group adding to our game every single time we pull out base Catan. While some scenarios still have a range of depth, others are very simple add-ins that enrich the base experience, rather than entirely rewriting the way you think about Catan.

I highly recommend C&K for people who have a lot of patience to learn a new game and sit through a couple of long games. All of the expansions are wonderful, and each one could be the definitive Catan experience for a different person in your gaming group. I see Explorers & Pirates being the more exciting game to learn, and Traders & Barbarians having the most options if you're teaching a new group with different tastes. Meaning, you can grab a scenario that is easier to teach, and it will still be fun for everyone.
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Amazing game, mediocre quality of materials and production for the price
by rebecamontiel (3 out of 5 stars)
September 14, 2016

Seriously? 35 dollars for this??

I love C&K, it's the best Catan expansion by far. But this new edition has terrible quality. The materials should be much better for the money you're charged. I'm extremely disappointed and feel a little robbed. In not returning it because I love the game and want to play anyway, but this is definitely overpriced based on the quality of the products. The old edition is 1000000000 times better.
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Radically Changes and Improves Catan
by Oliver (5 out of 5 stars)
September 19, 2016

It's hard to go back to regular Catan after this version because it feels too simple compared to C&K.

The game goes much deeper with much more comprehensive strategy involved. So if you can barely stomach the strategy and scheming involved in regular Catan, this probably isn't for you.

Games can get extremely cutthroat. If you thought the classic resource trade player to monopoly all of their cards after was too cruel in vanilla Catan then don't buy this game because you can do way nastier stuff to people. Swapping die rolls on resource tiles, deactivating knights so your enemies lose their cities to the barbarians, stealing progress cards, and more!
5 Stars, regular Catan just doesn't cut it after this.
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Active/Inactive Knights - what?
by L. J. Rolly (4 out of 5 stars)
September 20, 2018

We received this extension and played it the same night. So much fun - totally kicks Catan up a notch. There is an issue with color contrast on some of the pieces, for example on the ship/city gate die, is that blue? Or green? The colors are so similar. Ditto with the Active vs. Inactive knights - almost impossible to tell without getting a nose's distance from the board. For the Knight pieces we came up with a fix - on the inactive side, draw a diagonal line in black marker. Haven't tried a fix for the green/blue cities yet - probably just add a single dot under one of the cities so it is visually different. A couple of good opportunities for the 2nd Edition. :-)
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Pricey yes, but hours and hours and hours of entertainment
by NearlySober (5 out of 5 stars)
August 15, 2016

This is not a standalone game. You need the base set of Catan in order to play this game. Just be aware of what you're buying :)

This expansion adds a new level of strategy to Catan. If you and your opponents do not work together, the Barbarians can ransack your towns and set you all back. Or in the right conditions you can hold the power to purposefully allow the barbarians to wreak havoc on your opponents while you remain protected.

The progress cards are much more interesting in this version and give you unique abilities and fun cards to play against your opponents. There's some small rules changes to the game, but it is now our preferred way to play, we never play the base set alone anymore.

This can make your games go much longer, especially while everyone learns the differences. And if the Barbarians attack and set everyone back, that can also drag things out. But the games are much more engaging and entertaining, the time will fly by!
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Greatly Overpriced
by anthony (2 out of 5 stars)
March 1, 2019

I love Catan, since the first time I played more than a decade ago... LOVE IT... have bought pretty much every expansion & extension they offer for the base game... now buying it a second time b/c the first has passed on to other family. But to the point of this review....

It is ridiculously overpriced. Honestly, if I had remembered or been aware that no land was coming with it, I would likely not have ordered this set. The new editions are really stingy on land/water pieces. They're either one or the other and the border is not really worth using most of the time, so to receive none in this expansion... not one bloody piece.... was greatly disappointing.

What you do get.... circle pieces and stickers that count as knights (my plan is to simply number the cooler looking knight pieces from T&B and never uses these circles); square pieces that count as walls (these are cool, but in the past we so seldom used them I'm not sure they're worth it); flip chart with purchase price including walls (I really don't know why wall cost wasn't included on the new edition base, but otherwise these are needed for tracking purchases toward your Metropolis); the rest is pretty generic and could be replaced by other things....

All in all, greatly disappointed and would not have bought it had I remembered or read the pieces included.
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Adds a bit of complexity
by Sindar (5 out of 5 stars)
January 21, 2019

The main advantage of Cities & Knights is that it adds some things to spend resources on so you don't end up without anything to do on a turn.

It takes a while to explain the new rules.

Overall, I think the game balance is about the same as original Catan; it doesn't seem particularly more or less likely that a poor/great start will put you solidly apart from other players.

The components are not amazing - knight tokens require stickers (I managed to mess up ~half), City development flip-charts are a little awkward and not quite as easy to read as I'd like, metropolis arches should match colors of relevant developments, the rulebook organization isn't stellar. Basically, I feel like everything could use another iteration or two.

Still, Catan+C&K is one of my favorite games
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Adds so many different aspects
by Krista (5 out of 5 stars)
July 19, 2019

I did my research before deciding which expansion to buy. Glad I went with this one as it adds so many new aspects to the base game. It definitely makes the game last even longer. We finally decided to use a 2 minute timer per turn and found that it helped a lot! Playing with more than 3 people can feel like it takes an eternity to get back around to your turn. All in all we love the settlers game and think this expansion should be the first one you buy. Next up, seafarers.
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great game
by shenza (5 out of 5 stars)
February 13, 2019

This is a wonderful expansion for Catan! It makes it hard to stop playing and almost impossible to go back to the original version of Catan. It adds so many dimensions to the game while keeping with it's original format. At first view I thought it would be a bit overwhelming to learn but it's not hard to grasp and adds so much to the game. Part of the beauty of this game is that you always feel like you're in the game and could be about to win (with the addition of the marauders, commodities, knights and the progress cards the game has the potential to change directions at any play). As with Catan, the board is different for every game and there are multiple strategies and approaches that you could employ, so everyone can have their own style of play. A great game just got even better! Arrived on time and in perfect condition.
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Good expansion to the game
by Amazon Customer (5 out of 5 stars)
January 10, 2017

This expansion adds a lot of depth to the game. My son and I play it a lot. Only problem is that it does add some time to the game. When I could play a regular Catan game in about 30 minutes this is now at least a 90 minute game with 3 people. When learning this game I would recommend letting your new players play the base game first before trying the edition. The rules are similar but more going on can get confusing if you do not already know the game.

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