The three robbers in Catan are called Chief, Lucky, and Bert and were personally designed by Klaus Teuber. Many will recognise them as the three plastic robbers found in International versions of Catan since 2002, as well as some special sets of English Catan.

As well as the plastic robbers in standard games, they have also been released as a 1997 hand painted plastic version, in 2006 and as a limited edition hand-painted pewter version. They even had a few cartoon strips drawn.

So it is no surprise that in 2011 these three chaps got their very own scenario. The scenario was called "The Cloth Thieves - Helpers of the Poor and Battered"

• 3 x Cloth Robbers

The rules are as follows:

Preparation:

In a game with three or four players, use any 2 of the fabric Cloth Thieves. In a game with five or six players use all three of the fabric Cloth Thieves. The Cloth Thieves start the game at the side of the board. No one has control of a Cloth Thief at the beginning of the game.

How do you get a Cloth Thief?

If a player gets a card taken from their hand by a player rolling a "7" and moving the robber, or by a player using a knight to move the robber, he/she takes one of the Cloth Thieves.

When all the Cloth Thieves are in play, the player whose card was stolen takes a Cloth Thief away from the player who robbed him. If this player does not have a Cloth Thief, he takes a Cloth Thief from any other player of his choosing.

How do the Cloth Thieves help?

If you own at least one Cloth Thief, you can hold up to 10 cards in your hand when a "7" is rolled before you need to discard half your hand (instead of the normal seven cards). For Cities & Knights, add three to the number of cards you can hold when also counting your city walls, for example one city wall allows 9 cards so with a Cloth Thief makes this 12 cards.

If you have at least one cloth robber and do not have the most victory points, you are protected from the robber: When a "7" is thrown or a Knight Card is played, the robber may not be placed on a hex where you have an adjoining city or settlement

Unofficial House Rule: For Cities & Knights, when the barbarians attack you can add one to your knight total for each Cloth Thief held at the start of the attack.

Alternatives to the actual Cloth Thieves

This scenario does not need the three dolls to be played in a game. You could just grab any three items you like to represent Chief, Lucky and Bert. While we enjoy using the plushies, I do have a set of cards I created for when there is less table space available... or sometimes when I worry the very young players may damage them.

Copies of the cards are shown below.

Copyright: Mayfair Games 2011

Footnote:
In 2008, Klaus Teuber wrote a piece about the Catan Robbers/Cloth Thieves Chief, Lucky, and Bert. As this page is no longer on the Catan website, I have added the information here for people to read. Also on the page are some examples of "Teuber's Robbers", as they affectionately became known as.