The latest addition to my collection is an unusual custom set of Catan. While it was made by a fan, its production quality is to a commercial board game standard. The game was never released for sale and was, by all accounts, only ever given to family, friends and business associates as a gift. Yet this fan set also looks to be an authorised promotional set.
So who builds a high quality custom copy Catan for fun? Billionaires that who!!!
Tech entrepreneur and LinkdIn founder Reid Hoffman is reported to be a huge fan of Catan. So much so he made this version called "The Startups of SIlicon Valley." In the rules he explains out of the many board games he has played, why Catan is the game that nost approximates the strategy of entrepreneurship. Originally I had thought this game was only a few years old, but now I have the game in my possession I see that the copyright date is 2014. While I presume a billionaire has lots of friends, I would still guess the print run for this game was relatively small.
The game itself features new resources (being capital, customers, talent, technology and intellectual property), as well as other renamed features including markets (ports), and the disruptor (robber). The building pieces become Market Expansions (roads), Products (settlements) and Companies (cities). The desert becomes the junk yard and harbours are called markets.
The number tokens are nice solid plastic pieces and I could see me using these in other Catan games. The unusual feature of the number tokens is each token has a symbol of some kind on the rear. There is no explanation in the rules or on the box about what these symbols mean or why they are there. At first I thought they may relate to some custom rules this set may feature but this is not the case. The game is simply the base game in a new skin.
Back in 1999/2000 there was a customised promotional version of Catan created by Alcatel as a giveaway for a technology exhibition. The set was called "The Communication in Catan" and the traditional resources were replaced with telephones, cable tv, internet, mobile phone and multimedia. The story goes that only 2000 sets were made for this event and none were made available to the public. Also it is said after the event up to 75% of the sets were destroyed when they were no longer needed. The game has become very collectible nowadays. I wonder if this set may go the same way as it is very well presented and has oddly pleasing and quirky artwork, as did the Communication game.
Below are images of the game and clicking on an image will show a larger version. I welcome any information any one has on the game and if by chance someone actually knows Ried Hoffman, then I would love to ask him some questions about Catan and his passion for it.
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