6/30/2023 0 Comments Catan board game reviewThe Robber Figure here is a sculpted piece featuring three humans and while their feet allow the piece to sit flat, there’s no real good spot for them to sit atop the 3D terrain hexes. Then there’s the Robber Figure, which is traditionally a tall bowling pin-like figure that sits flat atop the terrain hex it has been moved to. Instead, they wobble with every movement of the table or board. Number tokens sit pretty well atop the mountain pieces, almost as if those terrain hexes were designed with the tokens in mind, but on others such as the field hexes, the tokens don’t lay so nicely. Instead, they sit somewhat haphazardly atop the terrain hexes. In the standard edition of Catan, the flat tokens sit on top of the flat hexes in harmony. The number tokens are placed atop the terrain hexes at the start of the match and they essentially dictate every move in a game of Catan. Perhaps the single most frustrating aspect of Catan 3D’s design is that the number tokens and the Robber figure don’t actually sit atop the terrain hexes evenly and flatly as they would in a standard match of Catan. The roads, settlements, and cities still simply sit atop the terrain hexes and in this version of Catan, which is easily the most immersive version yet due to the 3D design, the fact that these pieces still slide, shift, and move when someone’s finger accidentally touches them is a bit of a let down. There aren’t any unique spots for things to snap into place and while that wasn’t necessarily expected considering it’s not how Catan’s layout typically works, with such high-quality 3D pieces, I would’ve liked to see a way for the board to snap together into one ever-flowing piece. Putting all of the pieces together is easy enough, and much like traditional Catan the pieces just sit by and on top of each other. They’re great cards and they work just fine, but it’s a shame the other pieces received so much love only for the cards to remain physically and aesthetically the same. One disappointment is that the cards are essentially the exact same cards found in the standard $40 edition of the game. The harbor, road, settlement, and city pieces are all 3D as well, and the latter three are hand-painted to look antique and match each player’s color (be it red, white, blue, or orange) appropriately. The terrain hexes look as you’d expect - the mountain pieces stretch nearly two inches into the air, the forest hexes are littered with individual tree tops, and the pastures feature flocks of sheep. The six sea frames are a pretty blue, with a scratchy texture meant to mimic ocean waves. The game board is still assembled much in the same way it is in a standard game of Catan, except the traditionally cardboard pieces are now 3D. It comes with a standard game overview and rules pamphlet, as well as a nicely put-together almanac perfect for new players and returning players alike.
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