Game Description from Catan
Age: 10+ Players: 3-4
Playing time: 30 min.
Publisher: SimplyFun
Simply CATAN is a simplified version of the CATAN base game published in 2006 in the USA by SimplyFun.
Differences to the base game: For beginners, the rules provide recommended starting positions of harbors and terrain hexes, while still providing enough variation to make for a different game each time you play. Also, playing to 7 Victory Points instead of 10 speeds up the time to play. Other than this, the same rules apply.
My own comments on the game
The first thing you notice on opening the box is that the board is rectangular - not round as shown on the box. It doesn’t affect the game and the instructions show the correct board. It is interesting that the next release (Gallery Edition) also uses a rectangular board but all sets after that are round. Oddities like this always have me curious as to why such a thing happened.
The hexes are strips that you can place in different combinations to vary the board layout, with the numbers also separate and placed after the board is put down.The harbour positions are fixed.
The card designs are really great. The artist is Damon S. Brown and it is a shame this artwork was not used more widely.
The playing pieces are the traditional wooden Catan shape, but made from a solid and classt looking plastic material. The have strong lines and feel much more substancial than the later cheap looking plastic pieces in the more recent family editions.
